The Author-Function, The Genre Function, and The Rhetoric of Scholarly Webtexts

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compcom.2011.04.003Get rights and content

Abstract

In this article, I compare Michel Foucault's (1994) author-function and Anis Bawarshi's (2000) genre function as explanations for the use, categorization, and value of scholarly webtexts. I focus much of my analysis on Anne Frances Wysocki's (2002) “A Bookling Monument” because it is explicitly designed to destabilize our reading practices. I also situate Wysocki's webtext along a spectrum with Charles Lowe's (2004) “Copyright, Access, and Digital Texts” and Collin Gifford Brooke's (2002) “Perspective: Notes Toward the Remediation of Style.” In using the author-function and the genre function as lenses on these pieces, I aim to articulate multiple possible modes of being for scholarly webtexts and their users. In the process, I illustrate the ways these concepts speak to the status and social function of authorial ownership and originality; multimodal complexity; and formal reflexivity. Ultimately, I argue that bringing traditional concepts like authorship and genre to bear on scholarly webtexts not only reveals the values of the Computers and Writing community but also presents a unique opportunity to continue testing the uses and limits of our rhetorical theories.

Section snippets

Digitizing the Author-Function

In seeking to “locate the space left empty by the author's disappearance,” or the “death of the author” posited by Roland Barthes and other structuralist and poststructuralist theorists, Foucault (1994) argues that a work is constituted by the author-function, which refers to the author's name as it exists in relation to his or her works rather than simply to the individual named (p. 345). This link between the author's name and his or her texts plays “a classificatory function” of relating

The Genre Function of Scholarly Webtexts

Although the author-function is still a significant system of constraint for scholarly webtexts, other traditional theoretical systems may be equally useful for describing their mode of being. A small but growing number of scholars have begun considering the way genre, for example, can help us understand digital, multimodal, and new media rhetorics. Rick Carpenter (2009) writes, “[W]e can use genre theory to define texts by what they do and how they are used rather than by what they are, a

Conclusion

In his recent book Lingua fracta, Brooke (2009) argues that we may have jumped the gun with our analytical approaches to new media: “Faced with the opportunity to develop new practices and/or rethink our current practices, too often our response has been to search for terms that can comfortably encompass them all” (p. 130). Instead, Brooke (2009) spends his book redefining and even renaming the classical rhetorical canons given the range of ways users engage with new media. I hope my essay has

Acknowledgments

First and foremost, I would like to thank John Schilb. My conversations with him provided the basis for this article, and I am grateful to him for pushing me to think about what systems of constraint I might apply to scholarly webtexts. I would also like to thank Tarez Graban: her guidance and patience as I explored the density of rhetorical genre theory has proven invaluable. Finally, I would like to thank the editors of Computers and Composition and the two anonymous reviewers for their

Christopher Basgier is a Ph.D. candidate in English with a concentration in Composition, Literacy, and Culture at Indiana University, Bloomington. He has presented papers at the Thomas R. Watson Conference, the Conference on College Composition and Communication, and Computers and Writing. Currently, he is developing a dissertation on the genres and practices students use as they analyze and/or produce visual texts in college courses.

References (36)

  • Collin Gifford Brooke

    Lingua fracta: Towards a rhetoric of new media

    (2009)
  • Call for nominations: 2009. Kairos Best Webtext Awards (2009, May 2). Kairos. A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and...
  • Jenny Edbauer

    Unframing models of public distribution: From rhetorical situation to rhetorical ecologies

    Rhetoric Society Quarterly

    (2005)
  • David Fishlove

    Metaphors of genre: The role of analogies in genre theory

    (1993)
  • Anne Freadman

    Anyone for tennis?

  • Anne Freadman

    Uptake

  • Michel Foucault

    What is an author?

  • Diana George

    From analysis to design: Visual communication in the teaching of writing

    College Composition and Communication

    (2002)
  • Cited by (4)

    • More than Just Remixing: Uptake and New Media Composition

      2013, Computers and Composition
      Citation Excerpt :

      Recent studies still tend to focus on interactions between similar genres, a fact that limits rhetorical possibilities. For example, Basgier (2011) drew on Bawarshi (2000, 2008) and Rick Carpenter (2009) in order to mobilize genre as a way of categorizing and valuing webtexts. Although Basgier attended to “generic relations,” he did so largely in regard to relations between texts within the same genre, their ability to construct identities in particular, and he relied on remediation, the process by which new genres “establish relations with antecedent genres,” including “the print-based scholarly article…as the newer genre remediates the older one” (p. 154).6

    • The effects of intellectual property law in writing studies: Ethics, sponsors, and academic knowledge-making

      2019, The Effects of Intellectual Property Law in Writing Studies: Ethics, Sponsors, and Academic Knowledge-Making
    • A gay girl in damascus: Multi-vocal construction and refutation of authorial ethos

      2015, Authorship Contested: Cultural Challenges to the Authentic, Autonomous Author
    • Digital rhetoric: Theory, method, practice

      2015, Digital Rhetoric: Theory, Method, Practice

    Christopher Basgier is a Ph.D. candidate in English with a concentration in Composition, Literacy, and Culture at Indiana University, Bloomington. He has presented papers at the Thomas R. Watson Conference, the Conference on College Composition and Communication, and Computers and Writing. Currently, he is developing a dissertation on the genres and practices students use as they analyze and/or produce visual texts in college courses.

    View full text