‘Adjacent worlds’: An analysis of a genre at the intersection of academic and professional communities

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Highlights

  • The academy and the profession in architecture education are ‘Adjacent worlds’.

  • A situated genre analysis can enrich our understanding of genre-community relations.

  • Genre as a space in which multiple discourse communities interact.

  • Guided reflection helps students negotiate genre variability across design studios.

Abstract

Two concepts – genre and discourse community – have been at the core of discussions about language and learning within the disciplines since John Swales integrated the two into ESP pedagogy. While in his earlier work, Swales (1990) proposed a relationship of genres ‘belonging’ to discourse communities, he later (e.g. 1998) understood discourse communities as sometimes cohering around genres, suggesting a more open-ended relationship between the concepts. This paper takes up the issue of this relationship, and reports on a recurrent event in architecture education. The data is drawn from a project on postgraduate design studio pedagogy at a major Australian university. The focus was the weekly activities in a studio taught by a senior academic. Working primarily within a rhetorical genre framework, this paper explores the desk-crit genre from two angles – its evolution over time and its performance in a contemporary studio session. The paper shows how a 'situated genre analysis' contributes to an understanding of the interconnections, tensions, different discourses of the academic and professional architecture communities, characterized in this paper as 'adjacent worlds'. The paper concludes that this type of analysis helps us understand genre as a space in which multiple discourse communities interact.

Introduction

In applied linguistics, an important part of the thinking around text/context relations has been accomplished through the social constructs of ‘genre’ and ‘discourse community’. In particular, these two constructs have been central to discussions of language and learning within the (context of the) disciplines since John Swales integrated the two into a comprehensive approach to English for Specific Purposes (ESP) pedagogy. In his earlier work, Swales (1990) viewed the relationship between genre and discourse community as relatively fixed, with genres ‘belonging’ to discourse communities, and with their function being to assist members to realize a community's shared communicative purposes. In later work, Swales (e.g. Swales, 1998, Swales, 2004, Askehave & Swales, 2001) came to understand the relationship between genres, discourse communities and their communicative purposes as more complex, less transparent, and subject to a range of factors including the social and political hierarchies within communities. Swales also came to understand that the process of enacting genres might generate or organize discourse communities, and thus that the relationship between the two constructs could be, in theoretical terms, more open-ended.

The current paper takes up Swales' ongoing interest in the viability of ‘discourse community’ as a useful heuristic in genre analysis and genre pedagogy. It does this through a case study of a hybrid, spoken genre in the design studio component of an architecture degree. The spoken genre – the ‘desk-crit’ – encompasses the routine weekly discursive events in the design studio, in which students firstly present their design artifacts and secondly the teacher provides feedback and guidance on students' in-progress designs (more of this later). In interpreting these events, there are a number of communities that are potentially relevant.

Principal among the communities engaged in the desk-crit are the academic and professional architecture communities, whose relationship has been identified as the central problem in architectural education since the academy took over primary responsibility for the training and preparation of architects (Mewburn, 2009, Webster, 2007). The design studio is firmly situated within the academy, and yet a significant proportion of the teachers of design studios are industry-based professionals, valued for their contribution to the ‘authenticity’ of pedagogical practice and their practitioner identities. The current study was thus primarily concerned with the extent to which these two communities shape the design studio curriculum – the tasks set, the way the desk-crit is performed, the criteria for assessment – in short what counts as architectural knowledge in the design studio. However, beyond the boundaries of these two main communities, there are other communities with a stake in the products of architecture, including structural engineers, public authorities, planners, contractors, clients and users. The study was thus also concerned with the ways in which these communities might influence the design studio genres. In addition, the extent to which the studio class could be said to be operating as a local discourse community in its own right with its own particular patterns of communication (Cf. Swales, 1990) was another focus of the analysis.

This paper explores the relationship between the desk-crit genre and its communities through a ‘situated’ genre analysis' conducted within a critical rhetorical genre framework. Such a framework invites us to explore how different communities participate in the rhetorical situation of a genre, including which community's exigencies are prioritized, and which community has the power to alter the genre (Cf. Paré, 2014). The analysis reported on in this paper takes two forms: a sociohistorical tracing of the design studio genre over time and a close study of an extract from a contemporary performance of the desk-crit. Underlying these analyses is an understanding drawn from rhetorical genre studies (e.g. Devitt, Bawarshi, & Reiff, 2003) that the process of genre analysis has the potential to enrich our notion of ‘discourse community’. In the current paper, the analyses highlight the dynamic, complex and layered nature of the relations between the communities involved in the design studio. In particular, the paper suggests the idea of ‘adjacent worlds’ instead of ‘worlds apart’ (Dias, Freedman, Medway, & Paré, 1999) as a way of foregrounding the interconnections and tensions between the academy and the profession.

Section snippets

Background: genres and communities

The concepts ‘genre’ and ‘community’ are well-established frames for the interpretation of teaching and learning practices in the academy. Following Bauman and Briggs (1990), the current paper treats these two concepts not as unproblematic frames or tools, but as ambiguous and dynamic and thus requiring careful consideration according to the needs of each study.

The concept of discourse community can be traced back to the early 1980s. Prior (2003) tells us that the idea was “in the air” at that

This study

In this section, background information about the design studio setting is provided as well as details of the methodology of the current study, and evidence for the generic nature of the events investigated. The paper reports on part of a larger research project on design studio pedagogy in a postgraduate degree conducted in a school of architecture in a major Australian university (Morton, 2013).

The approach taken in the study is a ‘situated genre analysis’ (Dressen-Hammouda, 2014,

A sociohistoric approach to the genres of design studio education

In this section of the paper, the writings of architecture scholars are used to chart the shift from ‘authentic genres’ of the workplace to ‘curriculum genres’ of the academy (Christie, 1993, p. 155). This brief history illustrates how the genres of the design studio constitute a space contested by the different communities invested in the education of architects. It also illustrates the dynamic nature of these genres, marked at various times by different exigence-situation relations, as well

The local practices of Anton's studio

The previous section has illustrated how professional and academic architecture communities have at different points in time had primary responsibility and control of design studio practices. I turn now to an individual performance of the desk-crit and show how these communities (and others) are indexed in the discourse of the senior academic, Anton.

The focus of this section is on two extracts in which the expectations for assessment of the final end-of-semester presentation and review of

Conclusions

The current paper has reported on a situated genre analysis of the desk-crit genre in the discipline of architecture. Underpinning the first part of the analysis is the idea that the history of the use of a genre is central to an understanding of its parameters and potentialities (Cf. Coutinho & Miranda, 2009) in the present. Underpinning the second part of the analysis is the idea that through participation in generic events, one can learn about the boundaries of a genre, and develop a nuanced

Dr Janne Morton lectures in EAP and Applied Linguistics at the University of Melbourne. Her research interests include: academic literacy, genre analysis, and the relationship between language and culture.

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    Dr Janne Morton lectures in EAP and Applied Linguistics at the University of Melbourne. Her research interests include: academic literacy, genre analysis, and the relationship between language and culture.

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