Once genre acquires a telos, pedagogy becomes unavoidable. If texts are understood as moving toward an endpoint, then teaching must explain how to get there. Genre theory, having become directional, now requires an instructional interface.
This post shows how the concept of staging emerges as that interface — and how, in doing so, genre theory crosses a decisive threshold from description into pedagogy.
1. From explanation to instruction
A teleological genre model cannot remain analytical. If genres are programmes rather than patterns, then their internal organisation must be made explicit and transmissible.
The question pedagogy must answer becomes:
What steps must a learner follow to produce a successful text?
Staging supplies the answer by translating genre’s telos into a teachable sequence.
2. What staging claims to do
Staging is presented as a neutral descriptive move:
genres are said to unfold in stages,
each stage has a recognisable function,
and together they realise the genre’s purpose.
But this neutrality is illusory. Stages do not merely describe texts; they anticipate them.
Once taught, stages become targets rather than observations.
3. Temporal sequence becomes obligation
Texts do unfold over time. But staging transforms temporal order into structural necessity.
What was once a loose pattern of meaning-making is re-coded as:
a fixed sequence,
with obligatory elements,
whose absence counts as failure.
The learner is no longer construing meaning; they are navigating a prescribed path.
4. The collapse of instantiation into procedure
At this point, instantiation is no longer a perspectival cut. It becomes a procedure.
Instead of asking:
What meanings are being construed here?
students are trained to ask:
Which stage am I in?
Which stage comes next?
The system–instance relation is replaced by a workflow.
5. Teaching as genre management
Staging reframes the teacher’s role. The teacher is no longer primarily:
an interpreter of meaning,
or a guide to semiotic resources.
They become:
a manager of progress through stages,
a diagnostician of missing components,
and a regulator of sequence.
Pedagogical success is measured by compliance with the genre path.
6. Why staging feels empowering
Staging often presents itself as student-centred and enabling. It promises:
clarity,
access,
and transparency.
And at a certain level, it delivers these.
But what it offers is not agency over meaning; it is predictability of outcome. Students are empowered to succeed by aligning themselves with a pre-defined structure.
7. The quiet normative shift
Once staging is institutionalised, norms follow automatically:
good texts complete stages,
strong writers move smoothly between them,
weak writers get stuck or skip steps.
Evaluation no longer asks whether meanings are effective. It asks whether the route has been followed.
8. Looking ahead
Staging does not remain confined to teaching. Once stages exist, they demand measurement.
The next post traces how staging crystallises in assessment rubrics — where genre’s telos becomes quantified, and compliance becomes gradable.
That is where we turn next.
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