GENRE ANALYSIS IN INFORMATION SYSTEMS RESEARCH

Journal of Information Technology Theory and Application, 2003 by Firth, David R, Lawrence, Cameron

Genre Analysis in its most basic form is the process of determining the genres within a given communication. Typically a communicative message is coded based upon the two identifiable dimensions of genre: purpose and form (Orlikowski and Yates, 1994; Yates and Orlikowski, 1992). For instance, in the coding of messages posted by newly admitted MBA students to a U.S. university, Firth (2002) coded the messages using purpose and form categories as follows:

Purpose categories: Topic area (e.g. school-related, non-school-related), and communicative purpose (e.g. solicitation, response, comment).

Form categories: A message's formatting (e.g. greeting, lists included in the message body, e-mail addresses included in the message body).

A particular genre of communication is then determined by the occurrence or not of combinations of these purpose and form categories. For instance, Firth (2002) coded a message from the MBA students as being of the memo genre if:

Topic = any

Purpose = individual or group comment;

Form = no sign-off, no opening salutation (Hello, Hey or Hi), no aside to an individual, no iconics, no embedded message, no shorthand (ellipsis, b/c, BTW, thanxs / tnks, w/), no non-standard grammar, no non-standard punctuation.

An example of a message coded as a memo by Firth (2002) is shown in Figure 1 below.

USE OF GENRE ANALYSIS OUTSIDE THE IS LITERATURE

Yates and Orlikowski (1992) were the first to use genre analysis to study communication within an IT-based system. The idea of using genres to study communication is not new, however. It has been used in a diverse set of fields to illuminate and enrich our understanding of disparate communications. For instance, Achtemeier (1985) in the field of divinity uses genre analysis to show how elements of hymns within the Old Testament can be used to overcome subjectivity, moralizing, and negativism in preaching a sermon. Within the field of literary analysis, genre analysis has a rich tradition. For instance Bakhtin (1986) uses it to examine the repertoire of speech genres, and Devitt, Bawarshi, and Reiff. (2003) use genre analysis to study how ethnographers connect with what community members know and do with their language practices. In the field of education, Kearsey and Turner (1999), for instance, use genre analysis to determine differences in textbooks based on the manner of presentation of the material and the implied relationship between the author and the reader. As a final example, using genre analysis to study the field of corporate communications Tench, (2003), models the rhetorical moves behind the communicative purposes of the news release genre which provides a useful guide to writing effective news releases for practitioners and students working in the fields of public relations and corporate communications.

USE OF GENRE ANALYSIS IN THE IS LITERATURE

The following Table 1 shows the papers we have found within the IS literature which use genre analysis1. We classify the papers into three types, based on the type of communication being addressed: (1) discourse - representing written interaction, mainly two-way, between communicants, (2) document - representing a written one-way interaction between an author and a reader, and (3) web pages - which are a hybrid of (1) and (2) and also can contain some features unique to this type due to the use of technology.