Multimodal Genre Systems: Bakhtin, Voloshinov, and the Question of Writing

i n t ro d u c t i o n Over the past 20 years, so much has been written on genre, so many astute analyses have been undertaken, so many important theoretical observations have been made (see, e., that it is challenging now to say something new that needs to be said, especially in the context of a volume dedicated to genre studies. It has been widely agreed for some time now that genres are not solely textual phenomena, that genres should be understood not as templates but as always partly prefabricated, partly improvised or repurposed. Over the last 15 years, in different terms and with somewhat different emphases, but with increasing clarity, genre analysts have been moving from a focus on genres as isolated phenomena to a recognition of how specific types of texts are formed within, infused by, and constitutive of systems of genres. Theorists have also begun to highlight ways that genre theory has privileged public texts whose primary functions are informational, rhetorical or aesthetic. For example, Swales (1996, 2004) has identified the category of occluded genres, and Spinuzzi (2004) has highlighted the way many workplace genres are designed primarily to mediate activity (e.g., to work as aids to thinking and action rather than as means of inter-office or external communication). Attention to modes other than writing has also grown. Räisänen (1999), for example, has examined the chains of written and oral genres involved in presenting at academic conferences. Analyzing topological and typological dimensions, Lemke (1998) has argued that scientific texts are, and long have been, routinely multimedia genres, whose mix of modalities plays a crucial role in the construction of meaning. Situated genre analyses in specific sites (e. have also highlighted ways that literate activity involves