Using archival admissions records and case histories of patients at a British asylum from the 1860s to the 1870s, the authors examine the medical certification process leading to the asylum confinement of individuals judged to be “of unsound mind.” These institutional texts are, the authors suggest, “occult genres” that function as complex acts of argumentation, whose illocutionary force depends on the success of their felicity conditions. Through the lens of Austin’s concept of “uptake,” the authors analyze the role of medical certification in the admissions history of two patients at Ticehurst House Asylum in the 1860s-1870s. The authors contend that historical genre analysis plays an important role in the rhetoric of medicine and health, shedding light on the performative power of medical certification, an act essential to the practice of psychiatry.

In this article, I describe four interrelated analytical concepts useful for studying the discursive practices of professional writers: intertextuality, interdiscursivity, genre systems, and recontextualization. Drawing on structuration theory and neo-Vygotskyan activity theory to provide a framework for the above concepts, I present three theoretical assumptions: (a) genre systems play an intermediate role between institutional structural properties and individual communicative action, (b) a central means for identifying texts in a genre system is their intertextual activity, and (c) the concept of “genre systems” enables the analyst to foreground the discursively salient components of human activity systems. An elaboration of each of these assumptions is followed by an illustration of genre systems at work in one psychotherapist's session notes and the process I call rhetorical recontextualization.

Contents: Preface. Rethinking Genre from a Sociocognitive Perspective. News Value in Scientific Journal Articles. You Are What You Cite: Novelty and Intertextuality in a Biologist's Experimental Article. Sites of Contention, Sites of Negotiation: Textual Dynamics of Peer Review in the Construction of Scientific Knowledge. Evolution of a Scholarly Forum: Reader, 1977-1988. Gatekeeping at an Academic Convention. Conventions, Conversations, and the Writer: An Apprenticeship Tale of a Doctoral Student, with John M. Ackerman. J.M. AckermanPostscript: The Assimilation and Tactics of Nate. Suffer the Little Children: Learning the Curriculum Genres of School and University. Appendices.

The idea for this symposium began when Sheryl Fontaine and Susan Hunter told Rick Gebhardt about two studies they had made of manuscript reviewing practices in composition studies--one surveying experiences and perceptions of authors and one dealing with journal referees. The subject of peer reviewing seemed an important one for a field working, as ours is, to definie its scholarly identity. Rick sensed that his efforts to bring blind refereeing to composition's oldest journal might prove useful in exploring the subject and, for addtional views, he contacted several of CCC's consulting readers. Carol Berkenkotter, who had been studying peer reviewing in the sciences, agreed to attempt a brief theoretical perspective. Phillip Arrington decided to explore the subject personally, from his experiences both as author and referee. And Doug Hesse chose to use personal experience, chaos theory, and MLA panels to discuss referees' reports as scholarship.

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This article argues for an activity-based theory of genre knowledge. Drawing on empirical findings from case study research emphasizing “insider knowledge” and on structuration theory, activity theory, and rhetorical studies, the authors propose five general principles for genre theory: (a) Genres are dynamic forms that mediate between the unique features of individual contexts and the features that recur across contexts; (b) genre knowledge is embedded in communicative activities of daily and professional life and is thus a form of “situated cognition”; (c) genre knowledge embraces both form and content, including a sense of rhetorical appropriateness; (d) the use of genres simultaneously constitutes and reproduces social structures; and (e) genre conventions signal a discourse community's norms, epistemology, ideology, and social ontology.

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