Genres in Action: Negotiating Genres in Practice

• In this paper we present the initial findings of a genre based case study at a large Swedish company, with a record of early use of internal email (1982). The design of the particular email system was closely mapped to the organizational hierarchy. One of our informants kept one week of incoming email messages. We then asked questions about each message and how it related to the work of the informant, and to the organization. Based on the messages and the interviews we clustered the messages in different genres. Most literature of genres of organizational communication has focused on the genres themselves, e.g. email messages constituting different instances of genres. We found however that many messages, rather than being instances of genres, were part of informal conversations. In these conversations, however, it was common to discuss and negotiate which genres where appropriate to use in different situations.

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Annan samhällsvetenskap -- Övrig annan samhällsvetenskap (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Other Social Sciences -- Other Social Sciences not elsewhere specified (hsv//eng)

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Medie- och kommunikationsvetenskap -- Kommunikationsvetenskap (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Media and Communications -- Communication Studies (hsv//eng)

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Medie- och kommunikationsvetenskap -- Systemvetenskap, informationssystem och informatik med samhällsvetenskaplig inriktning (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Media and Communications -- Information Systems, Social aspects (hsv//eng)

Keyword

genre analysis

email

intranet

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

kon (subject category)