[Linganth] Possible panel on Discourse Genres for AAA 2004

[Cyndi Dunn]

I am interested in organizing a panel for the AAA Annual Meeting in San
Francisco which would focus on the intersection of creativity and
conventionalization in discourse genres.  Over the past several decades
there has been a shift from treating genres as analytic categories based
on formal properties of texts to thinking about genres as frameworks of
conventionalized expectations for the production and interpretation of
discourse (e.g. Briggs and Bauman 1992, Hanks 1987 and 1994).   Genres
may be conventionalized at many levels including their formal linguistic
properties, topic, purpose, authorized performers or conditions of
performance, and so on.  I would like to solict papers which examine
processes of conventionalization, contestation, creativity, and change
in discourse genres of various types in a variety of different speech
communities.  Appropriate topics might include hybrid forms that blur
conventional genre boundaries, processes of social and linguistic change
as they affect the form, definition, and performance of specific genres,
studies of how local communities define and contest generic forms, and
the relationship between individual creativity and social norms for the
production of discourse.

If you would be interested in participating in such a panel, please
contact me off the list at Cyndi.Dunn at uni.edu <mailto:Cyndi.Dunn at uni.edu>.


Cyndi Dunn

Dept. of Soc-Anth-Crim
University of Northern Iowa
Cedar Falls IA 50614-0513
(319) 273-6251
Cyndi.Dunn at uni.edu