Composition Forum 31, Spring 2015 - Settling In to Genre: The Social Action of Emotion in Shaping Genres

Oct 15, 2026

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Rhetorical Genre Studies emphasizes emotion’s role in shaping and interpreting genre. The study follows writer “Jocelyn” as she constructs a sorority recruitment video, analyzing interview data and coding her images alongside model text to identify rhetorical function. Findings show Jocelyn aligns with model aims while selecting emotionally resonant images to make the genre feel emotionally adequate and authentic. The article develops “settling in” as an embodied feedback loop for genre pedagogy.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages17

Reading Time43 min

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Settling In to Genre: The Social Action of Emotion in Shaping Genres

Emotion and rhetorical genre studies

Emotional mediation and social turn

Emotion in academic writing and student agency

Pedagogical implications for genre analysis

Current Issue From the Editors Weblog Editorial Board Editorial Policy Submissions Archives Accessibility Search Composition Forum 31, Spring 2015 Settling In to Genre: The Social Action of Emotion in Shaping Genres Faith Kurtyka Abstract: Rhetorical Genre Studies has noted the importance of emotion to the study of genre, focusing on how writers’ attitudes and dispositions influence their perception of a genre. To continue to validate emotions as part of the experience of creating and shaping genres, this study traces the emotional valences of one writer,“Jocelyn,” in shaping the genre of a sorority recruitment video, a genre of media used in sororities nationwide to showcase the sorority in a desirable way. Analyzing an interview with Jocelyn and coding the images in Jocelyn’s video and her model text for their rhetorical function suggests that Jocelyn replicated the rhetorical aims of her model text but selected certain images that were emotionally resonant for her and her group. Jocelyn is inspired to shape the genre to the extent that she finds the existing genre emotionally inadequate and emotionally inauthentic to represent her group. Jocelyn’s video “remakes” herself and her friends as “sorority girls,” but also “remakes” the sorority in a way that’s both palatable and emotionally authentic for her. I suggest the metaphor of “settling in” to genre to represent the embodied feedback loop writers use when they take up a new genre and unpack this metaphor for explaining the role of emotion in genre pedagogy. Carolyn Miller’s redefinition of genre as “social action” in 1984 shifted the focus of genre studies from textual features to the actions that genres help construct, intervene in, respond to, and act upon. By shifting the focus of genre studies from describing features to identifying actions, rhetorical genre studies (RGS) effectively showed the dynamic social and rhetorical functions of genres. The interdisciplinary study of emotion has undergone a comparable social turn. Emotions used to be understood as personally experienced and primarily the concern of psychologists, until the late 1980s when scholars from sociology, education, anthropology, history, women’s studies, and rhetoric began to theorize emotions as part of a “sociocultural system”(Sommers 26) . To forward this idea, scholars in this interdisciplinary field of critical emotion studies have explored how emotions are socially and culturally mediated practices. More recently, scholars have legitimated emotion as a category of analysis in studying how emotion attaches to ideas, beliefs, people, and structures (Micciche Doing), how emotion moves through discourse (Jacobs and Micciche), how emotion animates racial literacy (Trainor, Winans), and how emotion relates to critical thinking (Chandler) . RGS has noted the importance of emotion to the study of genre, focusing on how writers’ attitudes and dispositions influence their perception of a genre. Charles Bazerman notes that orienting oneself toward a genre means taking on “the mood, attitude, and actional possibilities of that place”(13) . Gillian Fuller and Alison Lee also note that orienting oneself toward a genre requires “a joint agreement to perform certain positionalities within a certain regime”(215) . For academic writing, Fuller and Lee contend, emotions such as pleasure, desire, and anxiety tend to end up as “excess” to the “institutional formalities” of genre (209) . Research has also found that the accumulated emotional experience of educational systems makes students reluctant to reshape genres of academic writing (Russell Re-thinking ; Spinuzzi Psuedotransactionality; Wardle Mutt Genres ) . Drawing attention to this role of desire and motivation, David Russell writes that “In most courses,[students] are not motivated by a desire for further involvement in the discipline to the extent they could appropriate its object/motive, or choose it asa life direction” ( Re-thinking 540

FAQs

What does the study examine about genre and emotion?

It examines how a writer’s emotional valences shape genre creation and how emotion functions as part of the experience of producing and remaking genre.

How is Jocelyn’s genre work analyzed in the study?

The study analyzes an interview with Jocelyn and codes the images in her video and her model text to interpret their rhetorical functions.

What is “settling in” to genre, and why is it important?

“Settling in” describes an embodied feedback loop writers use when adopting a new genre, helping explain emotion’s role in genre pedagogy.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by awa