Investigating Texts in their Social Contexts: The Promise and Peril of Rhetorical Genre Studies

Abstract

For as long as human beings have used it to organize and conduct their activities, writing has played an integral role in the creation, sharing, and contestation of knowledge.Tracing the intertwined history of writing and secular knowledge of civilizations in Europe, the Middle East, the Mediterranean, China, India, and Mesoamerica, and Europe, Bazerman and Rogers (2008a, b), for example, map out the complex ways in which writing has been instrumental to the formation of knowledge institutions, disciplines, and communities.In the last few decades, however, the question about the role of writing in the production of knowledge has gained new salience with the rise of what has commonly been termed the knowledge society, where civic life as well as much economic activity depend on the production and sharing of knowledge.Indeed, according to some estimates, knowledge accounts for about three fourths of the value produced in the knowledge economy (Neef, 1998, ctd. in Brandt, 2005), rendering it "more valuable than land, equipment, or even money" (Brandt, p. 167).And because much of this knowledge is created, shared, inscribed, contested, and used largely through various textual forms, writing has moved centre stage in all sectors of society.As Brandt (2005) observes in her study of writing in contemporary knowledge-intensive organizations, with its integral role in the production of knowledge, writing fuels the knowledge economy, with written products becoming Together, the contributions to this book paint a compelling and nuanced picture of the diverse roles writing plays in knowledge-intensives societies, the exigencies that arise for writing in knowledge-intensive societies, and the ways in which rhetoric and writing work to produce, share, question, marginalize, or advance knowledge in civic, workplace, and institutional spaces.Drawing on diverse theoretical traditions, the chapters also offer important insights into the ways in which we conceptualize the epistemic nature of writing and the implications these have for the study and teaching of writing.What unites the work presented in this book is the recognition that what knowledge is, what counts as knowledge, how we arrive at knowledge, who gets to participate in the production and sharing of knowledge are questions negotiated rhetorically by local communities, institutions, disciplines, or other groups engaged in the production of knowledge.Most importantly, perhaps, what cuts across all chapters is the realization that in knowledge-intensive societies, we mark an historical moment in the development of writing studies as a discipline dedicated to the study of human thought and knowledge: It is an historical moment in which much depends on the ways in which the discipline finds its curricular and research space in institutions tasked with the production of knowledge.As the contributions to this book testify, we have arrived at a stage in human development where we can no longer afford to produce knowledge without a discipline that offers the research base and theory to allow for rigorous critiques of how our discursive knowledge-making practices enable and constrain what we can and cannot know.

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