This essay proposes a conception of genre based on conventionalized social motives which are found in recurrent situation‐types. The thesis is that genre must be conceived in terms of rhetorical action rather than substance or form.

Genre as social action

indeed may not be quite possible But I have no doubt it is worth a try It has to do with the nature of thought and with one of its uses It has been traditional to treat thought, so to speak, as an instrument of reason Good thought is right reason, and its efficacy is measured against the laws of logic or induction Indeed, in its most recent computational form, it is a view of thought that has sped some of its enthusiasts to the belief that all thought is reducible to machine computability But logical thought is not the only or even the most ubiquitous mode of thought For the last several years, I have been looking at another kind of thought (see, eg, Bruner, 1986), one that is quite different in form from reasoning: the form of thought that goes into the construction not of logical or inductive arguments but of stories or narratives What I want to do now is to extend these ideas about narrative to the analysis of the stories we tell about our lives: our "autobiographies" Philosophically speaking, the approach I shall take to narrative is a constructivist one a view that takes as its central premise that "world making" is the principal function of mind, whether in the sciences or in the arts But the moment one applies a constructivist view of narrative to the self-narrative, to the autobiography, one is faced with dilemmas Take, for example, the constructivist view that "stories" do not "happen" in the real world but, rather, are constructed in people's heads Or as Henry James once put it, stories happen to people who know how to tell them Does that mean that our autobiographies are constructed, that they had better be viewed not as a record of what

Life as Narrative

This paper describes the role of rhetoric in legitimating profound institutional change. In 1997, a Big Five accounting firm purchased a law firm, triggering a jurisdictional struggle within accoun...

Rhetorical Strategies of Legitimacy

In this revised second edition, Deirdre McCloskey demonstrates how economic discourse employs metaphor, authority, symmetry and other rhetorical means of persuasion. ""The Rhetoric of Economics"" shows economists to be human persuaders and poets of the marketplace, even in their most technical and mathematical moods. It is further enhanced by three new chapters and two new bibliographies.

The Rhetoric of Economics

Introduction PART ONE: SITUATING THE DISCOVERY OF GROUNDED THEORY Situating the Discovery of Grounded Theory within the Tradition of Qualitative Methods Situating Grounded Theory within Its Philosophical, Sociological and Personal Contexts PART TWO: THE GROUNDED THEORY RESEARCH APPROACH Distinguishing Characteristics of Grounded Theories Grounded Theory's Research Operations Evolution of Grounded Theory's Research Operations PART THREE: THE GROUNDED THEORY APPROACH IN MANAGEMENT AND ORGANIZATION STUDIES Grounded Theory in Studies of Management and Organization Writing Grounded Theory

Grounded Theory in Management Research

Introduction Part One: Ways of Placement I. CONTAINER AND THING CONTAINED II. ANTINOMIES OF DEFINITION III. SCOPE AND REDUCTION Part Two: The Philosophic Schools I. SCENE II. AGENT IN GENERAL III. ACT IV. AGENCY AND PURPOSE Part Three: On Dialectic I. THE DIALECTIC OF CONSTITUTIONS II. DIALECTIC IN GENERAL Appendix Index

Thomas Clark Pollock

Papers

A Grammar of Motives.

The Philadelphia Theatre in the Eighteenth Century@@@Old Drury of Philadelphia: A History of the Philadelphia Stage, 1800-1835

The Profession in Perspective: Two Reminiscences of the NCTE.

Words and ideas

The English Language in American Education