Genre-Genre

French

Genre

I do not imagine I can present in a few lines the whole body of thought about genre in the French and U.S. theoretical fields. I just offer here a few thoughts concerning some of the specific framing differences between the didactique of L1 French and composition theory.

Literary genre definitions are essentially shared between the two fields, as are understandings gleaned from narrative theory and from the linguistic traditions of modes classifications. Let us just consider a few of the other uses and conceptualizations of the term “genre” in the French and then the United States contexts.

Genres du discours : (Discourse genres)

Jakobson, Benveniste, and Bakhtin all heavily influenced the understandings of genre that have developed at various points in France. Jakobson’s functions of written texts (emotive, conative, referential, phatic, metalinguistic and poetic) have remained influential without being called genres. Benveniste’s division of discourse into “récit” and “discours” depending on whether it is in the moment or distanced, separated from the moment, is heavily developed in French theory. Bakhtin’s heterogeneous genres of discourse in relation to an open range of spheres of human activity has been key in more recent discussions.

Genres rhétoriques : (Rhetorical genres)

The rhetorical genres influenced a great deal the discussions of teaching and analyzing texts, based at first on the five major genres inherited from the rhetorical tradition and found in all classic textbooks: argument, description, explication, narration, and conversation (Adam, 1992, p. 5), text classifications identified primarily through their shared formal characteristics.

Genres de l’écrit et typologie de textes : (Written genres and text types)

In la didactique du français et de l’écrit, key work emerged around the question of genres and text types in the 1980s and 1990s. This work was essential to French research and teaching. The 1970s had already seen strong attention given to teaching writing, influenced theoretically by textual linguistics, literary semiotics, and questions of textuality and discourse analysis (Plane 2002, Dabène 1995). Plane reminds us of the importance of …the definition of textual or discursive objects imagined through the lens of teaching and learning, with two key hinges around which the research has gathered, the narrative text […] and the argumentative text. We can see the evolution of these as objects of research unfolding through the special issues of the journal Pratiques (Masseron, 1992, 1997, and Schnedecker 1994). On the fringes of these major themes, other relevant themes concerning more limited objects became the object of specific research projects of their own in la didactique de l’écriture, such as the summary (Charolles and Petitjean 1992) or the explicative text (Petitjean 1986, Garcia-Debanc 1990, Repères 69, 72, 77) or the descriptive text (Petitjean 1987, Reuter 1998). (Plane 2002)

One of the strongest influences on textual typology in French writing classrooms and French writing research was the “genre-type-component” system proposed by J.M. Adam, which made it possible to analyze diverse texts in units of generic sequences and to thus emphasize textual heterogeneity. This notion of heterogeneity was taken up and developed further by other researchers (see, for example, the THEODILE research group’s work on descriptive texts).

Genre au lycée (Instructions Officielles): (School genres)

Another current understanding of “genre” is inherited from Aristotelian rhetoric (see Aristotle’s Poetics, 1447a, 1448b) but stultified in the school tradition, which recognizes four basic genres: novels, drama, poetry, and essays. The French high school curriculum developed in 2002 under the direction of Viala (and influenced by Petitjean) is based on this understanding of four basic genres mixed with a Bakhtinian frame, in particular the frame of primary and secondary genres (Plane, interview). A review of the Instructions Officielles gives a clear sense of the degree to which various ways of thinking about genre are mixed.

Genre comme outil: (Genre as tool)

The genre as presented by B. Schneuwly in the 1990s was primarily a psychological tool, a material and symbolic mediator between the student subject who integrates the schema of use of the genre, and the situation. The idea of “situation” seems to suggest a relationship to the reader, but this relationship was not explored at the time. J.P. Bronckart presents a different dynamic: speakers realize language actions by reproducing, imitating, and/or deforming available genres (1996, p. 44). He proposed that textual genres are “sociolinguistic formations, organized according to heterogeneous modalities related to heterogeneous determinations” (45). Discourses and texts are thus, for him, socially motivated and oriented (Bucheton, 1997, p. 39). This evolution highlights that there is not “a” language competence—an idea equally central to Bakhtinian descriptions of discourse genres; it became possible to imagine a diversity of forms, an open inventory, to recognize and eventually learn or acquire.

Genre ou activité: (Genre or activity)

The question of genre as activity or as product in school situations has become a key current question. When are we looking at a genre? When an activity? What are the practical or theoretical consequences of each?

Genre premier, genre second: (Primary/secondary genre)

Bakhtin’s influence is manifest in the discussions about primary genres, immediately experienced, vs. secondary genres, distanced from their point of initial production. This exploration lead to extensive work focused on the value of reflexive writing and the meta-activity it can enable, called secondarisation.

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