Did Bitzer Draw?

Did Lloyd Bitzer ever draw his situational model? Or are all of the
visually rendered triangles drawn from his textual account?

If he didn’t draw it (I can’t find evidence that he did), are responses to
the model’s viability fueled instead by its proliferation as an abstraction
pulled (like a rabbit from a hat) out of Bitzer’s textual account? How did the
textual model evolve into a disciplinary fixture, a visual commonplace?
How was it translated from text to geometric figure? Should we enjoy free license
to convert anything with three points into a triangle?

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Genre Theory II

For yesterday’s genre theory session we looked at the first chapter from Amy
Devitt’s book,

Writing Genres
, and the first and third chapters from Paul Prior’s book,


Writing/Disciplinarity
(both of which have searchable copy at
Google Print). 
Devitt gracefully works genre into an interactive model between individuals (at
a basic level); social structures, genre, and groups (at an intermediary level)
and context of culture, context of genre and context of situation (at an
ultimate level).  It’s meant to simplify a complex set of relationships, I
think, and as a model it does well to give a graphic alternative to some fairly
heady stuff.  But I’m still a bit murky on the role genre plays in scaling
between the lived, everyday activity (often communicative, often recurrent–as
in, not another grocery list) and the higher/broader orders.  Genre,
given to patterns of activity, would ask of us to point to evidence of the
relationship between the broader abstract levels and the more ornate,
idiosyncratic actions of individuals.  Forgive me though; I’m the one who’s
murky (shall I explain in a supplem-entry?).  Better to read Devitt
first-hand than to take this as a solid handle on her project.

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