Elsevier

English for Specific Purposes

Volume 60, October 2020, Pages 26-39
English for Specific Purposes

English for specific playfulness? How doctoral students in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics manipulate genre

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esp.2020.04.004Get rights and content

Highlights

  • We examine whether genre pedagogy fosters uncritical compliance to genre conventions.

  • Thirty doctoral students in STEM reported genre manipulation in research writing.

  • Students critiqued conventions and made intentional authorial choices, at times in unconventional ways.

  • Students reported shifts in their perceptions about writing and themselves as writers.

  • We underscore the potential of genre pedagogy to foster agency and creativity.

Abstract

Genre analysis is a powerful pedagogy to foster doctoral students' awareness of academic writing conventions and variation. Nonetheless, concerns remain about the risks of promoting rhetorical ‘painting by numbers’, with writers glumly surrendering agency and authorial voice. Recent reappraisals of genre pedagogy encourage fostering genre manipulation, innovation, and play. We examine whether genre pedagogy can indeed promote conscious manipulation and even playfulness of academic genres, or at least an enhanced sense of control over conventions. Data from interviews with 30 doctoral students in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) collected over a two-year period were analyzed to extract comments pertaining to deliberate authorial choices, unconventionalities in writing or writing processes, and positive shifts in writing perceptions. The findings reveal students' appreciation of genre awareness and a sense of control from knowledge of genre conventions, affording them agency in their writing. Crucially, students do not appear to surrender to standardization, but are instead agentive and metacognitive in their approach to writing, using their genre knowledge to compose, manipulate, and critique their genres.

Introduction

“I will not mix genres.

I repeat: genres are not to be mixed. I will not mix them”

Derrida (1980, Transl. by Ronell)

Derrida & Ronell’s (1980) words encapsulate the “enigma of genre” (p.56): limit, interdiction, norm, law; but also practice, event, a concept that foreshadows what is likely to transpire. The core of this duality is “the law of impurity” of genres (Derrida & Ronell, 1980, p. 57): they are both created and constantly contaminated by their recitation, their repetition, and the sum of their (situated) anomalies. The scholarship around genre analysis and genre pedagogy has long recognized the inherent contradictory nature of genres. Genre-based pedagogical approaches to academic writing have foregrounded both conventions and situational variation, and while analysis of typical generic features is foundational, the fostering of rhetorical consciousness, rhetorical flexibility, and the ability to manipulate genres through deliberate authorial choices is also strongly advocated (Cheng, 2018, Johns, 2002, Swales, 1990, Tardy, 2016).

The “law of impurity” (Derrida & Ronell, 1980 p. 57) also exposes the risks inherent in an educational approach that scaffolds the recognition of conventional forms of genre production, namely focusing on what is typical while neglecting the deceptive nature of this typicality, or in the words of Swales (2017, p. 251), promoting “stultifying standardization” in academic writing. The risk of standardization occurs when students are not led to see that genres are tools to get something done, and as such are adaptable in response to each communicative situation (Miller, 1984). As Tardy (2016, p. 129) emphasizes, “the question is not whether genres should be taught, but rather how instruction can best facilitate learners' ability to use genres effectively”. To this end, Tardy underscores the necessity to help students develop an understanding of genres’ innovation potential: the fact that when skillfully and intentionally manipulated, they can help writers achieve rhetorical goals, including “alternative ways of understanding an issue or constructing knowledge; expressing oneself in unique ways; engaging readers; and resisting, changing and critiquing dominant discourses” (Tardy, 2016, p. 131). Ultimately, this is a perplexing dilemma for teachers of academic/research writing and a significant challenge for our doctoral writers: can doctoral writers engage critically with genre conventions, using their genre knowledge to establish legitimacy through their own authorial choices, and still meet genre expectations? Can students express their creativity and engagement in writing, despite the potential risks inherent in genre manipulation? Are our students willing and able to adapt “the genre recipe” to their taste?

In this paper, we explore what doctoral students in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) do with their genre knowledge in the months following a genre-based course in writing for research. STEM students constitute an interesting group, as writers in science and engineering have been called a “forgotten tribe” (Emerson, 2017), and their writing practices considered relatively standardized and rigid when compared to those in the social science and humanities (see also Tardy, 2016). For these students, the development of genre knowledge may occur prevalently via socialization, rather than via writing instruction, and as a result their understanding of scientific genres may remain relatively implicit. Therefore, it is both intriguing and important to explore what PhD students in STEM do with their knowledge of genre conventions after being exposed to a genre pedagogy course, and to obtain empirical evidence that genre-based pedagogy promotes a conscious, intentional, and potentially agentive use of genres. Our aim is to investigate whether our participants glumly surrender to the dictates of the genre “law”, or instead seem aware and take advantage of the impure nature of genres (Derrida & Ronell, 1980). Do they, manipulate, adapt, or even play with genre conventions when they write?

Section snippets

Literature review and theory

Before returning to genre pedagogy, we will briefly discuss learning to write in the sciences, to highlight the unique challenges shared by the participants of this study.

Setting and participants

This study is part of a larger project conducted at a technical university in Scandinavia. Participants were 30 doctoral students in STEM (see Table 1), recruited from 6 consecutive runs of an 8-week course on writing research articles (RA) over two years. The course aims to foster students’ proficiency in writing RAs and their ability to make discipline-specific and strategic writing choices. Typically, students are required to have already written an RA prior to taking the course. The course

Findings

Here, we present the data in accordance with the emergent themes.

Discussion and conclusion

In this study, we aimed to examine whether genre pedagogy stifles students’ attempts at genre manipulation, or whether the approach can promote playfulness in writing, or at least an enhanced sense of control over conventions. To this end, we examined how students across STEM disciplines intentionally use genre knowledge/awareness in authentic writing contexts.

Our findings suggest that rather than pushing students towards conformity, genre pedagogy has the potential to foster students' agency

Acknowledgments

This study was partially supported by the Magnus Bergwall foundation [grant number 2016-01494] and the Åke Wiberg foundation [grant number H16-0110]. Heartfelt gratitude for their time and confidence goes to the participants. May the force be with you.

Raffaella Negretti is associate professor in academic and scientific writing in English at Chalmers University of Technology, Department of Communication and Learning in Science. Her research spans academic writing, metacognition, and genre pedagogy, appearing in English for Specific Purposes, Journal of Second Language Writing, Applied Linguistics, and Higher Education.

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    Raffaella Negretti is associate professor in academic and scientific writing in English at Chalmers University of Technology, Department of Communication and Learning in Science. Her research spans academic writing, metacognition, and genre pedagogy, appearing in English for Specific Purposes, Journal of Second Language Writing, Applied Linguistics, and Higher Education.

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