Defining Genres

Spinuzzi, Clay. 2004. "Four Ways to Investigate Assemblages of Texts: Genre Sets, Systems, Repertoires, and Ecologies." SIGDOC. AMC 10–13 Oct. Memphis, Tennessee.


How should we assemble genres? Spinuzzi, in this head-spinning article, suggests four ways to group genres:

1. Sets
2. Systems
3. Repertoire
4. Ecology (110)

Showing the difference in each definition proves tricky—there are so many abstract concepts at work. So Spinuzzi runs a helpful illustration to develop concrete examples of the differences. He presents "Ralph," a fictional character at a telecommunications company. He described all the genres that Ralph used in a simple phone conversation. The illustration bothered me at first, because I'm used to a more firm definition of what a genre can and can't be, provided by Carolyn Miller. But Spinuzzi accepts every post-it note, scribbled pencil mark, and calendar annotation as a separate genre (111). After reading his definitions, though, it made more sense.

It seems as though he builds a framework for understanding "unofficial" genres like those notes. To find the layers of genre definition, he suggests looking through several lenses:

• Model of Action
• Agency
• Foregrounded Genres
• Perspective
• Relationship between Genres (111)

Through these prisms, the genre sets focus only on the product of the work from an individual perspective (111–112); the genre systems work along textual pathways to comprise social activity (here Yates and Orlikowski are cited—I recognize them!); the genre repertoires (again Yates and Orlikowski) "emphasize individual and group communicative performances," but the emphasis is still on communication. Spinuzzi gets to the genre ecologies, which seems to be his preferred assemblage. 

Genre ecologies "emphasize genre as collective achievements that act just as much as they are acted upon" (114). This is based in a theory of distributed cognition. Genre ecologies take into account what Spinuzzi calls "mediating artifacts" such as checklists, calendars, and notes. In this assemblage of genres, none of the artifacts or genres stand alone, they interact (114). The framework seems much more like biology—it's messy and not easily defined. Spinuzzi mentions "The emphasis is on how several genres are simultaneously (or nearly simultaneously) brought to bear on a problem" (115). Together, the genres and artifact something unique together—not as one piece of communication.

Pretty wild, but pretty messy.