Propen, A. D., & Lay Schuster, M. (2010). Understanding genre through the lens of advocacy: The rhetorical work of the victim impact statement. Written Communication, 27(1), 3-35.
OK. This is an original research article about the victim impact statement (VIS), which is a relatively new genre with a kind of colored history. It wasn't included in the courtroom at all, but then that led to silencing of the victims, which was problematic. Makes sense. Victims deserve a voice. But at the same time, judges and the judicial system don't want the statement to influence the outcome. Sounds weird putting it like that. Then why is it included in the first place? merely to give the victim a voice? what is the impact of the impact statement? I don't actually know if it's not supposed to influence the outcome. But it does sound like there is a victim advocate, and that this advocate helps the victim shape what s/he's going to say. It seems like the victim can't just say whatever s/he wants. Which makes sense. They, the judges, don't want this to turn into a vigilante justice situation. The thing that's interesting to me is, the genre is at the intersection of double bind, or is meant to assuage the presence of a double bind. It's unjust to include the victim's voice, but it's also unjust to exclude it. So this is a very delicate rhetorical situation. The word delicate even gets used.
The term values comes up a few times. Genre change is a key phrase. Genre change isn't thought of in terms of influence but rather in terms of acceptance. And it seems like that's what this paper is, it's a qualitative study of judges and victim advocates, I think. P & S are going to ask them about their perceptions of the VIS, which I think cashes out as a relative acceptance. The word dissonance gets used. Bridge is a keyword. The genre is a bridge. But a bridge to what?
As a genre, the VIS not only represents individual action but also creates a bridge between public policy (by public policy, in this case, we mean the imposition of the VIS upon the legal system in response to the victim rights movement) and internal institutional activity systems such as those of the sentencing hearing that happens within the courtroom.
Again genre change is a key phrase. Look how much space it gets.
Although the notion of “change” could then be defined either by the out- come of the sentencing hearing or through possible feelings of catharsis on the part of the victim, it also can be measured by the acceptance of the resisted genre within the system of genres or the courtroom setting in which the genres interact. In this way, genre change can happen at the level of an individual genre instantiation in an individual context, while functioning within a larger collective or community. As a genre, the VIS not only represents individual action but also creates a bridge between public policy (by public policy, in this case, we mean the imposition of the VIS upon the legal system in response to the victim rights movement) and internal institutional activity systems such as those of the sentencing hearing that happens within the courtroom. Knievel (2008) noted that to refocus an internal genre as one of public policy could serve as a catalyst for dialogue between the public and the internal activity system, thereby influencing the intentions and relationships of these groups. Relative to our study, these sorts of dialogues are most related to judges’ and advocates’ perceptions of the role of the VIS.
In this article then, we identify genre change more in terms of judges’ rela- tive acceptance of the VIS within the sentencing hearing rather than influencing
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the sentence per se. As both judges and advocates describe, the genre must contain a delicate balance of features or qualities such that its reading is con- sidered acceptable to the court. We describe the dissonance judges’ experience with the VIS and the ways in which they are perhaps more inclined to at least accept its presence in hearings if it contains the specific features that they value—features that we are able to describe based on our interviews and obser- vations. We explore what advice advocates give to victims in writing a VIS and the outcomes that advocates perceive the VIS can accomplish. Finally, by understanding the VIS as an important genre within an activity system, we find the VIS, through the applied knowledge and understanding of the victim advocates, has come to be viewed as a credible and oftentimes persuasive rhetorical genre within courtroom proceedings.
Devitt gets used, relied on.
Again, the VIS is a genre relatively new to the legal system, but as Devitt (2004) stated, such new genres could “fulfill new functions in changing situations arising from changing cultures, at times to fill widening gaps in existing genre repertoires” (p. 93), and this change could come about through “individual actions” that “must compound to create collective change” (p. 134). But how might the collective action of these victims in giving VISs lead to differences in the climate and culture of the courtroom? It is very difficult to measure precisely such dif- ferences, but perceived change, among the judges and victim advocates, is possible to capture. And, how have those advocates, who prepare victims and accompany them into the courtroom, had a hand in paving the way for the rhetorical work that this new genre can do?
OK, interesting, this gets back to the new version of the pitch deck article. I just sent this to Spinuzzi.
Rereading this Propen & Schuster again, but more carefully this time. It sounds like it's pretty much exactly what we're trying to do now with this new version of the genre paper.
Again, the VIS is a genre relatively new to the legal system, but as Devitt (2004) stated, such new genres could “fulfill new functions in changing situations arising from changing cultures, at times to fill widening gaps in existing genre repertoires” (p. 93), and this change could come about through “individual actions” that “must compound to create collective change” (p. 134). But how might the collective action of these victims in giving VISs lead to differences in the climate and culture of the courtroom? It is very difficult to measure precisely such dif- ferences, but perceived change, among the judges and victim advocates, is possible to capture. And, how have those advocates, who prepare victims and accompany them into the courtroom, had a hand in paving the way for the rhetorical work that this new genre can do?
I.e., we can't measure the change to the pitch deck exactly. We have no way to. But we can measure the perceived change through people whom it has impacted, its users, those who rely on it to get their jobs done.
Note the terms climate and culture too. Maybe the outcome is a changed climate and culture.
I thought this was an important quote:
In the case of the VIS, the relationship between the individual and the group is part of what defines the genre; the victim advocate is able to blunt the edges of this potentially dichotomous relationship by working both with the victim and within the legal system. Based on the perceptions of the advo- cates we interviewed, the VIS functions as a tool that may allow the victim to feel heard or acknowledged while also allowing the advocate to push for change on a systemic level.
Gets to the activity theory edge too. The genre mediates, but there are also mediators.
Never heard of this guy but he keeps coming up
Knievel, M. S. (2008). Rupturing context, resituating genre: A study of use-of-force policy in the wake of a controversial shooting. Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 22, 330-363.
We understand genres as reflecting the ideology or values of particular dis- course communities or as playing a normalizing role as they reflect through discursive acts a community’s values or ideologies (Knievel, 2008).
To answer these questions, we focus on the VIS functions as a rhetorical genre that may help accomplish particular activities related to victim advocacy or the social/political function of the genre. Such activities may be related to the changing relationships between individuals and groups and the ways in which particular groups or audiences come to understand or accept the functioning of the genre. Because the VIS is a relatively new genre within the legal arena,
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we feel that any understanding of genre with which we align ourselves or that we build upon must consider the possibility for change, growth, and even rupture. Berkenkotter and Huckin (1995), for example, noted that genres may simultaneously stabilize and disrupt the communities in which they function. Knievel (2008) too has noted that genres might serve to reflect and sustain the ideologies of the contexts in which they exist, while also allowing room for expansion or growth. Social and political contexts are also subject to change and subsequently genres may reflect and/or sustain those changes. The legis- lated right to give a VIS, for example, constitutes a policy change imposed upon an activity system given a political climate. In this way, we understand genre as aligned also with activity theory.
Ok interesting. Maybe this is like a Jeff Rice, Catherine Knight Steele kind of thing, where what is empowering is also disempowering. What seems like it's super oppressive and purely ideological is actually liberatory. Or could be? This is Jason Read riffing off of
This maybe the ideological function of individual difference, the role it plays according to the first order of knowledge, but the very existence of such differences attest to something else. The fact that some work situations are sites of solidarity, that some individuals strive for something other than consumer goods, or self-realization through entrepreneurship, that the metastable means that the former is always something more than the reproduction of the latter. Chantal Jaquet has turned her attention to this metastable dimension of reproduction, by examining non-reproduction, the points where individuals deviate from their place in the relations of production. As Jaquet argues these individual differences are not the product of some irreducible remainder of the individual in the face of social pressures, but of the complexity and metastability of these very social forces. Jaquet proposes to see individual differences, especially those differences of what she terms “non-reproduction” as the effects of the multiple and overlapping individuations, or affective compositions, within any existing social relation. The different affective orientations of the present, the fear that compels people to work, the pleasures of consumer society, and the drive of self-realization of neoliberal society, not only overlap, but do so in fundamentally conflictual and contradictory manners. These tensions sometimes function as the necessary condition of the reproduction of the system, keeping every worker caught between fear of unemployment, desire for consumer goods, and hope of some better career or dream job. The combined and uneven affective composition can produce an ambivalent but persistent reproduction. It can also be the metastable condition of non-reproduction. Every affective condition of reproduction is also a condition of non-reproduction. The fears of destitution and poverty that drive one to work can also lead one to seek a living outside of the commodity form—dropping off the grid; the pleasures of consumer society can drive one to refuse work rather than keep one working; and lastly, the imperatives of self-realization through work might just be the most unstable of all. The ideal of self realization through work, of “love what you do” sets a high bar for affective motivation and orientation that can backfire as much as it compels work. There are as many non-reproductive individuations as there are reproductive ones.
Not exactly, but kind of.
OK, so it's not as though the VIS has no possibility for impact whatsoever.
A victim might choose to work instead with a community advocate, who represents a nonprofit organization often connected to domestic violence abuse education, support, and shelter. In either case, the victim will be inter- viewed by the police and the County Attorney and, if the case is brought to trial, the victim may testify and be cross-examined in open court. Over 90% of all cases, however, are settled by plea negotiation and before the judge accepts such a negotiation, he or she relies on a presentencing report for a full picture of the facts of the crime, the perpetrator’s criminal history and ame- nability to rehabilitation, and the victim’s experiences and responses. In the Fourth District, for example, investigation probation officers from the Adult
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Field Services Division of the Department of Community Correction gather information “from client interviews, family contacts, employers, victims and criminal records and prepare a report for the Court to assist in sentencing deci- sions” (Department of Community Correction, 2005). In the presentencing report, the victim’s words are reported and interpreted by the probation officer and the judge balances the presentencing investigation and recom- mendations with the state-mandated sentencing guidelines, which specify according to the degree of the crime and the criminal history of the perpetra- tors what range of disposition (prison, probation, or both) and duration should be imposed to maintain objectivity and uniformity in sentencing. If a victim chooses, she can offer a VIS before the sentencing hearing and/or speak at the hearing, without cross-examination or interruption, in her own voice and directly to the judge. The VIS becomes part of the court transcript, the official record of the case. If the victim introduces new facts into the case, however, the attorneys are likely to object and start the process over; if the victim speaks directly to the defendant in a VIS, the judge will admonish her to direct her comments to the bench. Although no other formal guidelines exist for how judges must respond to a VIS, judges usually decide whether to delay the imposition of sentencing to consider the victim’s requests, incorporate these requests immediately into sentencing, reject the plea negotiation and require that the attorneys respond to the VIS in a new agreement, or simply listen to the victim and impose an agreed-upon sentence.
It's just interesting that they make the victim look away when reading the VIS, that s/he can't look her aggravator? persecutor? attacker? in the eye.
But in any case, the genre or activity has the possibility to change the outcome, but not necessarily in an obvious way. The data is just taken into consideration (even though it's technically irrelevant [8]), but it is something to take into consideration.
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OK, so this was a three year study. They interviewed both judges and advocates, while also collecting documents and conducting observations, so this was a Spinuzzi-esque study. They were aided by a non-profit, it seems, WATCH, who collected the sensitive documents for them, with the sensitive information redacted. 10 sensitive documents, 8 non-sensitive models and heuristics, which P & S found on their own. They coded them together, kind of like the diachronic pitch deck database. It seems like P & S each coded them documents independently, then they merged and consolidated the codes, then recoded the whole thing with the consolidated and merged codes, thus enacting the Smagorinsky inter-rater reliability workaround.
I was a little confused about this.
We followed the same procedure of merged coding with the sample VISs and then merged and recoded all three data sets: the samples, models, and heuristics. Often the sample VISs departed from the models or heuristics, and so they greatly expanded our categories and subcategories and represented how an individual might personalize a VIS. The models and heuristics, for example, illustrated or recommended the epistolary form to organize VISs, but several of our samples used diary or journal entry organization to trace the victims’ activities since the crime to the present. But again, in this qualita-tive and interpretive study, we created this list of features not to quantify our results, to analyze all categories that emerged, or even identify commonali-ties among sources but to provide the most comprehensive foundation for understanding the broader context of the judicial reactions to VISs, the work of advocates in helping victims prepare and present VISs, and the perceived possibilities that the VIS would bring change to the legal system.
So...are P & S just explaining how they got a foothold on the data? or rather, are they just trying to attune themselves so that they are able to share the same ideas about the data? like they're trying to get on the same page? because it seems like to me the idea would be to develop codes and then those codes would be used later in the analysis, thus enacting the whole Chekhov thing you were talking about--why would you generate codes and leave them unused?
It is kind of interesting that P & S didn't bring in any starter codes. They just jumped right into open coding. But they also say that they weren't doing a genre analysis per se, rather, a genre analysis was just one particular article to emerge from the data/coding.
I'm also getting the sense that this was unbounded coding, as it were; it's not like there were document codes, which are separate from interview codes and observation codes, etc. It was just one big ol' context.
All in all, P & S were basically looking for rhetoric:
we allowed topics to emerge that captured a sense of how the advocates had a hand in paving the way for the rhetorical work that the VIS might do (15)
Although we were interested in what advocacy groups felt were features that made a VIS persuasive, we also wanted to capture the perceptions of judges who have no formal guidance on how to respond to VISs but are required by statute to hear them before imposing a sentence. And we wanted some sense of what the judges felt made a VIS memorable or persuasive. (12)
we collected from eight printed or electronic sources various model VISs and heuristics designed to help generate persuasive VISs.
Also a big part of this is advocacy work, namely, how can we make these impact statements such that they can be more persuasive and thus have a bigger impact? Kind of an Engestrom, let's make big changes sort of thing. But here, they're not changing the genre so much as making the implicit explicit in order to make things easier for novices, with the ultimate goal of changing the system. Very Swales. Applied linguistics.
On a kind of different note, it's interesting to think that this study is trying to describe how an organism tries to incorporate something dangerous and foreign to it, yet something that is totally necessary for it. It's deconstructive. We're looking at the membrane, or rather, how the impossible yet necessary is folded into a system.
The study presented here is part of a larger project in coopera-tion with WATCH, which also involved a study of the emotional expressions accepted by judges in VISs and their courtrooms in general (Schuster & Propen, in press) and a study of the challenges of making scholarly work advocacy work (Propen & Schuster, 2008). (11)
§
Back. Haven't been back to this annotation in a few weeks maybe?
I was thinking again about Boltanski. Like, when P & S say this,
The legislated right to give a VIS then becomes, to use the definition offered by Birkland (1998), a “focusing event,” or a nonpolitically neutral event that can “serve as important opportunities for politically disadvantaged groups to champion messages that have been effectively suppressed by dominant groups and advocacy coalitions” (p. 54). Again, the VIS is a genre relatively new to the legal system, but as Devitt (2004) stated, such new genres could “fulfill new functions in changing situations arising from changing cultures, at times to fill widening gaps in existing genre repertoires” (p. 93), and this change could come about through “individual actions” that “must compound to create collective change” (p. 134). But how might the collective action of these victims in giving VISs lead to differences in the climate and culture of the courtroom? It is very difficult to measure precisely such dif- ferences, but perceived change, among the judges and victim advocates, is possible to capture. And, how have those advocates, who prepare victims and accompany them into the courtroom, had a hand in paving the way for the rhetorical work that this new genre can do?
Here, I think that maybe P & S are trying to champion people, laypeople even, the ability to speak to power and change it and converse with it. Kind of like in Dryer (2008), how, if we take students seriously, then we can learn about our own practices: students can unlock an aspect of our own practice. Something like that. Like the Derrida article--"The University in the Eyes of Its Pupils."
Nonpolitically neutral, as in NOT politically neutral, biased. What did PRM have to say about bias? bias in the sense of ... well this is from Wikipedia:
The bias grain of a piece of woven fabric, usually referred to simply as "the bias", is any grain that falls between the straight and cross grains. When the grain is at 45 degrees to its warp and weft threads it is referred to as "true bias." Every piece of woven fabric has two biases, perpendicular to each other. A garment made of woven fabric is said to be "cut on the bias" when the fabric's warp and weft threads are on one of the bias grains.
Woven fabric is more elastic as well as more fluid in the bias direction, compared to the straight and cross grains. This property facilitates garments and garment details that require extra elasticity, drapability or flexibility, such as bias-cut skirts and dresses, neckties, piping trims and decorations, bound seams, etc.
The "bias-cut" is a technique used by designers for cutting clothing to utilize the greater stretch in the bias or diagonal direction of the fabric, thereby causing it to accentuate body lines and curves and drape softly. For example, a full-skirted dress cut on the bias will hang more gracefully or a narrow dress will cling to the figure. Bias-cut garments were an important feature of the designs of Madeleine Vionnet in 1920s and 1930s[2] and bias-cut styles are revived periodically.[3] Before her time, bias cut was rare in women's clothing and outré in garments for men, to the extent that the specially-designed clothing of the dandy and celebrity chef Alexis Soyer were remarked on by George Augustus Sala, on meeting Soyer in the Hungerford Market:
In the Middle Ages, before the development of knitting, hose were cut on the bias in order to make them fit better. The old spelling was byas, or (less common) byess. [5]
And then relate this to the text or textuality. And look at this. "Woven fabric is more elastic as well as more fluid in the bias direction, compared to the straight and cross grains. This property facilitates garments and garment details that require extra elasticity, drapability or flexibility, such as bias-cut skirts and dresses, neckties, piping trims and decorations, bound seams, etc." So the bias adds flexibility. Without the bias, it's a rigid objectivity, a closed system.
Ok.
Activity theory may be understood as need-based and as taking place within a system in which groups of workers make use of tools or artifacts to work toward a particular goal or outcome (Spinuzzi, 1996). Moreover, these tools or artifacts do not merely help make connections between groups and the objects with which these groups might work (Spinuzzi, 2003). Rather, such artifacts, through their acts of mediation, qualitatively change the types of activities in which subjects engage (Spinuzzi, 2003). We understand the VIS to be a mediating artifact that then accomplishes meaningful advocacy work through the combined activities and interpretations of victim advocates, victims, and the court system.
So it's not merely making a connection possible that would otherwise not be possible; it's qualitatively changing the connection in the process--again think of the wizard game. Or therapy.
As Spinuzzi’s view of activity theory helps describe, artifacts such as the VIS contain “the traces of an ongoing activity, represent problem solving in that activity, and thus tend to stabilize the activ- ity in which they are used” (p. 39). As we will show, VISs trace ongoing activity through the narrative account they create of the crime that has taken place—an account that helps give the victim a voice in the court proceedings; VISs represent problem solving through the inclusion of content that advo- cates know to be persuasive to judges and that advocates also subjectively understand as helping victims to feel acknowledged and heard; finally, through their successful inclusion of persuasive strategies, we demonstrate that VISs have become more readily accepted by judges in sentencing hearings, thus stabilizing the idea that the VIS is a valuable genre within courtroom pro- ceedings. As Spinuzzi (2003) also noted, genres were sometimes referred to as “tools-in-use,” or understood as mediating certain activities. Thus, a genre is far more than an isolated artifact; rather, genres such as the VIS are products of specific cultural and historical contexts and activities and thus serve to reflect, perpetuate, and sustain those activities. In this way, we understand the VIS not only as a mediating artifact but ultimately as a rhe- torical genre that functions within the court system.
Problem solving. You could use this in the annotation. You could say that this article helps because it directs you to think of documents as being problem solving devices.
But then there's this other role of the advocate, that you haven't really touched on thus far. The advocate helps shape the VIS, thus enabling a conversation to take place. S/he helps the victim to be heard while at the same time trying to change the system in place. Like a therapist. It's mediation in the technical sense, or actually in the mundane sense.
You were trying to think of this the other day. "Knievel (2008) noted that genre change could happen at the level of an individual instantiation of a genre in a specific context. " Only you were trying to think of it in the context of Lilly Campbell.
Interesting.
Knievel (2008) noted that genre change could happen at the level of an individual instantiation of a genre in a specific context. In the case of the VIS, we will suggest that victim advocates often see their job as helping to give a voice to individual victims through the instantiation and function of that genre in that moment. Victim advocates also work to shep- herd through a genre imposed upon a system that initially resists the social/ political function of that genre. The VIS is, in a sense, a legal product that both delineates and meets the needs of several communities (Devitt, 1991). On one hand, it is a highly personal and individualized document; on the other hand, however, it is through continued production of the VIS that victim advocates are able not only to reinforce the authority of the genre but also to define their own membership within the community as well as encourage interactions across groups.
This is a very Walsh like sentiment. The genre is imposed, yet it could also function to subvert the functioning of the system if turned or troped in a certain way.
But also like the Popham thing. It does the work of or rather for several different communities at the same time. This could maybe be another angle for your annotation. First of all, is there a document like this? That would be great. Maybe you could do it with the SPAC? It's not a spac, but the investment instrument thing. But like maybe the angel network itself does the work--the work? maybe just work?--for several different communities, for several different purposes.
Tool. Control f tool.
Earlier, you were talking? thinking about the double bind. It's unjust to include these voices, it's unjust to exclude them. This is a problem. See a couple of paragraphs up.
"the victim advocate is able to blunt the edges of this potentially dichotomous relationship by working both with the victim and within the legal system." Note: the victim advocate, not the VIS.
"Although the notion of “change” could then be defined either by the out- come of the sentencing hearing or through possible feelings of catharsis on the part of the victim, it also can be measured by the acceptance of the resisted genre within the system of genres or the courtroom setting in which the genres interact. In this way, genre change can happen at the level of an individual genre instantiation in an individual context, while functioning within a larger collective or community." Could be useful.
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