Mutual Constitution of Genre and Knowledge: The case of genre resistance in the French diplomatic occupational community
研究了法国外交官如何通过知识碎片化、重复和枯竭等方式，抵制组织对电报体裁的修改，以维护精英职业共同体的自主性和保密性。
In this paper, we study the relationship between genre and knowledge in the dynamics of occupational resistance to genre change. Using critical genre analysis, we investigate the response of French diplomats to the introduction of modifications in a key institutionalized communicative practice, the diplomatic telegram. As the organization modified genre rules for knowledge distribution, the perceived loss of control over audience and purpose threatened the elite occupational community values of autonomy and secrecy. In response, diplomats subverted the new organizational communicative practices by invalidating its content through knowledge fragmentation, repetition and depletion. At the same time, they enhanced the content of the hybrid new genre of the ‘political email’, through knowledge integration, differentiation and amplification. Our work contributes to critical genre analysis by revealing the political dimension of organizational genre change for elite occupational communities. Also, in examining the relationship between genre and knowledge, we identified genre resistance mechanisms that (de)authorized communicative practices by (in)validating knowledge. Our work suggests that genre resistance is an essential tool for elite occupational communities, whose power depends on control over esoteric knowledge.