The Power and Politics of Genre

Generic knowledge plays an important role in the packing and unpacking of texts used in a wide‐ranging institutionalized socio‐rhetorical context. If, on the one hand, it imposes constraints on an uninitiated genre to conform to the conventions and rhetorical expectations of the relevant professional community, on the other hand, it allows an experienced and established writer of the genre to exploit conventions to create new forms to suit specific contexts. Unfortunately, however, this privilege to exploit generic conventions to create new forms becomes available only to those few who enjoy a certain degree of visibility in the relevant professional community; for a wide majority of others, it is more of a matter of apprenticeship in accommodating the expectations of disciplinary cultures. This paper reviews current research to investigate the way the power and the politics of genre is often exploited by the so‐called established membership of disciplinary communities to keep outsiders at a safe distance.