Illicit genres

Copenhagen symposium

This symposium focuses on ‘illicit genres’, covering genres that are societally or legally proscribed, such as threats, hate speech, grooming, and types of deception. We bring together experts in genre theory, in forensic linguistics and in practitioner and judicial handling of these different genres.

The approach to genre enveloping this symposium is Rhetorical Genre Studies (RGS), an approach that defines genre as “typified rhetorical actions based in recurrent situations” (Miller 1984: 159). Genres are social constructs, and as such, they are (re)constructed, recognized, understood and named - i.e., taken up - by the users of language and genres.

Illicit genres are different from most other genres in that they do not have a conventional structure that is taught in school or represented in books; in short, they are societally unwelcome, and every distinguishing quality they have derives from this fact. The uptakes of illicit genres have a different character than the uptakes of other genres, namely in the form of sanctions and condemnations by society, law enforcement, and the judicial system. The very possibility of this kind of uptake influences the illicit genres themselves, because oftentimes the people who use them will not openly admit to their use. Instead, the uptake communities are the ones who name and describe the genres. An important uptake community for illicit genres is forensic linguists who contribute to uncovering the linguistic patterns and communicative functions of genre instantiations.

Illicit genres are characterized by a dual addressivity of having both an intended audience (the primary recipient) and an unintended audience (e.g. the legal system). Therefore, they will frequently be communicated secretly, anonymously or indirectly. For similar purposes, their users will sometimes claim other, less offensive genre labels for them (for threats, e.g., ‘this is a warning’) or simply anti-label them (for threats, ‘this is not a threat’).

Please contact tkaroli@hum.ku.dk if you wish to partipate.