[Linganth] Plugging sessions

[Cyndi Dunn]

Panel title:  Conventionalization and Creativity in Discourse Genres
Sat. Nov. 20, 1:45-5:30  Yosemite A

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 expectation for
the production and interpretation of discourse (e.g. Hanks 1987 and
1989; Bauman and Briggs 1990; Briggs and Bauman 1992).   Genres may be
conventionalized at many levels including their formal linguistic
properties, topic, purpose, authorized performers or conditions of
performance, and so on.  In this panel we analyze the relationships
among these different levels of conventionalization and explore
processes of conventionalization, contestation, and change in discourse
genres of various types in a variety of different speech communities.

The papers in the first half of the panel approach genres as
conventionalized frameworks for discourse.  Each of these papers
delineates the formal features which characterize specific genres and
explores issues of variation and speaker creativity in relationship to
those constraints.  They address such issues as how speakers acquire
competence in the conventions of a genre and the implications of genre
performance for claiming social identities whether as a business
student, a Pomo Indian,  or a refugee.  Several of the papers also
address issues of authority and contestation of genre boundaries and of
the implications when certain performances are judged as illegitimate.

The second part of the panel focuses on issues of change and hybridity
as speakers create new or reconfigured generic forms in situations of
social and linguistic change.  The papers explore emergent genres which
alter and blend together the conventions of existing genre forms,  the
redefinition of existing genres to claim new types of identity in global
society, and forms of expression which transgress and redefine existing
generic boundaries.  The papers explore the dialogic and polyphonic
nature of emerging genres by analyzing how speakers combine elements of
existing genres to create new forms in a variety of communication media.
  The theme of identity surfaces here again as speakers draw on both
traditional forms and new configurations to construct various types of
individual and group identity.

Through their common focus on genre, these papers demonstrate how
details of semiotic form are connected to larger issues of identity,
authority, and social change.  They explore how speakers create,
transgress, and change the conventions of discourse and how those
conventions in turn are linked to the creation of social meaning in
diverse speech communities.

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