Cover not available
Part of
Science Communication on the Internet: Old genres meet new genres
Edited by María José Luzón and Carmen Pérez-Llantada
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 308] 2019
► pp. 195–218

Chapter 10
The representation of science and technology in genres of Vatican discourse

Pope Francis’s encyclical Laudato Si’ as a case study

The study presented in this chapter focuses on the discursive representations of science and technology embedded in Laudato Si’, an instance of a traditional print genre in the process of becoming digitalized. The study describes the epistemic discursive activity organized by two genre sets, with Laudato Si’ occupying a place in both. The first genre set, which we have labelled the “science/technology genre set,” has functioned for almost a century as a discursive vehicle supporting an intertextual chain of uptake and recontextualization used in developing an evolving body of institutional knowledge and collective argumentation regarding science and technology, knowledge and argumentation that eventually emerged in Laudato Si’. The second digital genre set, which we refer to as the “launch-day genre set” was employed to rapidly disseminate Laudato Si’ around the world. As well, we characterize Laudato Si’ as an instance of a “hybrid genre,” a genre combining certain affordances of digital communication with valued residual features of an antecedent genre and its traditional print text.

Keywords: papal encyclical, digital genre, genre set, representation, science and technology, recontextualization
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
    • 2.1The genre of the papal encyclical
    • 2.2 Laudato Si’ and the plea for an integral ecology
    • 2.3Pontifical academy of sciences
  • 3.Theoretical perspectives
    • 3.1Rhetoric: A contemporary view
    • 3.2A social conception of genre
      • 3.2.1Digital genres
      • 3.2.2Uptake and recontextualization
    • 3.3Representations of science/technology
  • 4.Method
  • 5.Findings
    • 5.1The representation of science/technology in Laudato Si’ : A genealogy
    • 5.2 Laudato Si’ : The encyclical genre as part of two genre sets
      • 5.2.1The launch-day genre set
      • 5.2.2Internet-posted textual responses to Laudato Si’
      • 5.2.3Laudato Si’: An instance of a hybrid genre
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
  • Appendix: Corpus of analysis
Published online: 4 December 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.308.10sma
References
Aristotle
1960 The Rhetoric of Aristotle. (L. Cooper, trans.). New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.Google Scholar
Austriaco, Nicanor P. G.
2015 “The Relationship between Science and Religion according to ‘Laudato Si’’.” BioLogos. Last accessed June 15, 2019. [URL]
Bauer, Martin W., and George Gaskell
1999 “Towards a Paradigm for Research on Social Representations.” Journal of the Theory of Social Behaviour 29 (2): 163–186. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bazerman, Charles
1994 “Systems of Genres and the Enactment of Social Intentions.” In Genre and the New Rhetoric, ed. by Aviva Freedman, and Peter Medway, 79–101. Bristol, PA: Taylor and Francis.Google Scholar
1988 Shaping Written Knowledge: The Genre and Activity of the Experimental Article in Science. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Bhatia, Vijay K.
2016 “Genre as Interdiscursive Performance in Public Space.” In Genre and the Performance of Publics, ed. by Mary Jo Reiff, and Anis Bawarshi, 25–42. Boulder, CO: Utah State University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Billig, Michael
1988 Arguing and Thinking: A Rhetorical Approach to Social Psychology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Burke, Kenneth
1969 A Rhetoric of Motives. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Crowston, Kevin, and Marie Williams
2000 “Reproduced and Emergent Genres of Communication on the World Wide Web.” Information Society 16 (3): 201–215. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Devitt, Amy
1991 “Intertextuality in Tax Accounting: Generic, Referential, and Functional.” In Textual Dynamics for the Professions: Historical and Contemporary Studies of Writing in Professional Communities, ed. by Charles Bazerman, and James Paradis, 335–57. Madison, WN: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Freadman, Anne
2002 “Uptake.” In The Rhetoric and Ideology of Genre, ed. by Richard Coe, Lorelei Lingard, and Tatiana Teslenko, 39–5. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.Google Scholar
Graham, Scott, and Brandon Whelan
2008 “Mode, Medium, and Genre: A Case Study of Decisions in New-media Design.” Journal of Business and Technical Communication 22 (1): 65–91. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Grim, John
2015 “President’s Corner.” Teilhard Perspective 48 (1): 1–5. Last accessed June 15, 2019. [URL]
Hajer, Marteen
2006 “Doing Discourse Analysis: Coalitions, Practices, Meaning.” In Words Matter in Policy and Planning, ed. by Margo van den Brink, and Tamara Metze, 65–74. Utretch, The Netherlands: Kovvinkliijk Nederlands Aardrijkskundig Genootschap.Google Scholar
Hall, Stuart
1997 Representation: Culture Representation and Signifying Practices. London, UK: Sage.Google Scholar
Herring, Susan
2013 “Discourse in Web 2.0: Familiar, Reconfigured and Emergent.” In Discourse 2.0: Language and New Media, ed. by Deborah Tannen, and Anna Marie Trester, 1–25. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Hesse-Biber, Sharlene, and Patricia Leavy
2008 Handbook of Emergent Methods. New York, NY: Guilford Press.Google Scholar
Hulme, Mike
2009 Why We Disagree about Climate Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jamieson, Kathleen M.
1975 “Antecedent Genre as Rhetorical Constraint.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 61: 406–415. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Linell, Per
1998 “Discourse across Boundaries: On Recontextualizations and the Blending of Voices in Professional Discourse.” Texts 18 (2): 143–157.Google Scholar
Luzón, María-José
2013 “Public Communication of Science in Blogs: Recontextualizing Scientific Discourse for a Diversified Audience.” Written Communication 30 (4): 428–457. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mehlenbacher, Ashley R.
2019 “Registered Reports: Genre Evolution and the Research Article.” Written Communication 36 (1): 38–67. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Miller, Carolyn R.
1984 “Genre as Social Action.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 70: 151–167. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2016 “Genre Innovation: Evolution, Emergence, or Something Else?” The Journal of Media Innovations 3 (2): 4–19. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Moscovici, Serge
1963 “Attitudes and Opinions.” Annual Review of Psychology 14: 231–260. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mosher, Steven
2015 “Do the Pope and I Live on the Same Planet?” New York Post. July 05. Last accessed June 15, 2019. [URL]
Potter, John
1996 Representing Reality: Discourse, Rhetoric and Social Construction. London, UK: Sage. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Smart, Graham
2011 “Argumentation across Web-based Organizational Discourses: The Case of Climate Change.” In Handbook of Communication in Organisations and Professions, ed. by Srikant Sarangi, and Christopher Candlin, 363–386. Berlin, DE: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Smart, Graham, and Matthew Falconer
forthcoming. “The Uptake and Recontextualization of Climate-change Science within ‘Denialist’ Cultural Communities.” In Genres of the Climate Debate ed. by Christel Sunesen, H. Bildsøe, and Sune Auken Berlin, Germany de Gruyter
The Catholic Encyclopaedia
2017 “Encyclicals.” N.p.n. Nashville: HarperCollins.Google Scholar

Appendix: Corpus of analysis

Pope Benedict XVI
2006, November 06. Address to the Pontifical Academy of Science.Google Scholar
2010, October 28. Address to the Pontifical Academy of Science.Google Scholar
2012, November 08. Address to the Pontifical Academy of Science.Google Scholar
Pope Francis
2015 Laudato Si’, on Care for our Common Home. Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor.Google Scholar
Pope John Paul II
1979, November 10. Address to the Pontifical Academy of Science.Google Scholar
1990, October 29. Address to the Pontifical Academy of Science.Google Scholar
1992, October 31. Address to the Pontifical Academy of Science.Google Scholar
Pope Paul VI
1964, October 03. Address to the Pontifical Academy of Science.Google Scholar
1966, April 23. Address to the Pontifical Academy of Science.Google Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 1 other publications

Falconer, Matthew A.
2023. Transforming Data on the Boundaries of Science and Policy: The Council of Canadian Academies’ Rhetorical Repertoire. In Applied Data Science [Studies in Big Data, 125], ► pp. 147 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 23 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.