Reading Interests of Adults Image credit: Victor GAD Marija Dalbello Reading Interests of Adults The Structure of Genre Rutgers School of Communication and Information dalbello@rutgers.edu

Introduction _______________________________________ Genre construction - within and outside texts themselves Genre construction- pragmatics and semantics Crossovers - challenging boundaries Genres call for lateral reading Do genres exist, and are they definable?

Overview _______________________________________ Introduction to genre approach Genre debates Realist - Nominalist arguments Aesthetics of identity (genres) | difference (literature) Genre categorization Relevant concepts and theories Synthesis Defining elements in the study of genre How to study genre as a form of social interaction Current approaches to the study of genre Precepts for the study of genre From semantics to pragmatics

Genre debates _______________________________________ Genre = type entity, applicable across a body of works Realism - universals of genre exist Nominalism - only particulars are real Aesthetics of identity (genres) Aesthetics of difference (literature) Can genre be reduced to formula?

Relevant concepts and theories _______________________________________ What makes up a genre? Syntagmatic - paradigmatic elements Intertextuality Archetypal connection Genres & ideologies Uses and gratifications Methodologies of genre study (13 approaches)

_______________________________________ Defining elements in the study of genre _______________________________________ By the fact that genre is a social form and therefore: is a means of socialization of communities and individuals in a particular type of text and literacy and exists only in the interpretive space constructed by the real readers By the fact that genre is a historical and political construct and therefore: reflects the power relations of groups to mainstream values reflects transformations over time in terms of which groups choose this genre or abandon it (self-organizing nature of genre reading) By the fact that genre is a symbolic space and therefore: may exist in different manifestations of visible language (mediated in print, electronic format)

_______________________________________ Defining elements in the study of genre _______________________________________ For all these reasons: genre as social force (organizing individuals) genre as symbolic space (language + visible form) genre as impact of historical and political context the study of genre is in fact a study of textual communities and their interactions and interpretive behaviors in the process of reading audience research based on genre exemplified by Janice Radway’s study of the romance readers comes closest to a model for the study of genre fiction

_______________________________________ Genres, interpretive communities, and social relevance of texts _______________________________________ “Meaning of texts is constructed from textual materials by a reader who operates not alone and subjectively but according to assumptions and strategies that she or he has adopted by virtue of prior participation in specific interpretive community.” (Radway 1984, 243)

_______________________________________ Study of genre as form of social interaction _______________________________________ Positioning the study of genre in terms of: reading events, reading practices over a period of time “Units” of study: individual reader, some form of institutionalized reading practices such as reading clubs, reading groups organized online Methodologies for the study of readers' interpretations of genre: behaviors implying physical interactions with the texts interactions among the readers by studying reading clubs and organized reading communities how readers interpret texts within their life-worlds as form of social action

Current approaches to the study of genre _______________________________________ Structure Context Appropriation

_______________________________________ Current approaches to the study of genre Structural _______________________________________ Text itself is object of study (define characteristics of structure: plot, textual forms that add up to a genre) Authorial intent: relies on the concept of implied reader to explain genre conventions in terms of objectively recognizable traits (Eco) Protocols for reading embedded in the text itself (Scholes) Purpose of structural approach: design of classificatory models for categorization of genres

_______________________________________ Current approaches to the study of genre Contextual _______________________________________ Book historians focused on infrastructures to reveal how genres are distributed, manufactured, and the study of the construction of genre through publishing infrastructure Studies of readership and trends in audience transformation (objective evidence of reading as related to the context of production, distribution and the book trade) Common reader - historically constructed generalized reader

_______________________________________ Current approaches to the study of genre Appropriation _______________________________________ Genre as a subjective entity the reality of which is formed through a reader(s) interpretation Object of study is the reader as real person in context, networks of readers, and reading events and practices Originally inspired by reader-response Inverts the paradigm of the structure of text as subordinate to the construction of text at the point of reading No boundaries between media (convergence culture)

_______________________________________ Precepts for the study of genre _______________________________________ Need for localization (time, space, community, national spaces) Need for interpretation of historical / transformational aspects of genre Need to study literary as cultural text (dramas, narratives)

Conclusion _______________________________________ Reading - interpretation of individual texts Genre study Recognizing structures and formulas to relate individual texts to their genres Relating genres to society and culture in general Social and cultural aspects of reading emphasized