This article has a double scope. First, we consider the dynamics
inherent in the emergence of genres. Our view is that genres emerge relative
to two sets of constraints, which we aim to capture in our double feedback loop
model for the dynamics of genres. On the one hand, (text) genres, or text types,
as we will interchangeably call them, emerge as a variation of already existing
text types. On the other hand, genres develop as a response to the negative
constraints or positive affordances of given situations: that is, either the “exigencies”
of the situation or the new resources available in a situation.
Accordingly, Section 1 is mainly devoted to a characterization of situations
and of the dynamic relation between situational constraints/affordances and
genres. Our main claim is that situations and genres stand in a relation of
mutual scaffolding to each other so that the existence of a text type is not
simply caused by the exigencies present in a given situation, but, once emerged,
also feeds back into the situation, further stabilizing or consolidating it: hence,
the use of the term “feedback loop.” Section 2 is a more detailed discussion of
the dynamics of genres with a particular focus on the first feedback loop: the
way genres develop as deviations from existing text types and then stabilize as
text types proper with a normative import. The second scope of this article
consists in developing a typological apparatus consistent with the dynamic
approach to the emergence of genres. This is our parameter theory of genres
presented in Section 3. Here we consider genres as governed by parameters
external to them and intrinsic to the situations they are dynamically related to.
Genres should thus be understood not simply in terms of inherent textual or
formal traits, but also relative to a certain set of situational parameters and
relative to the degree to which they are governed by them.