Contemporary genre theory contends that genres are flexible, dynamic, and deeply embedded within the institutional cultures that created them. In this examination of the learning history, an emerging genre of organizational research writing, genre theory is used to examine the ways in which the learning history serves the rhetorical aims of the writer. Understanding the social image, rhetorical dynamics, and formal features of this genre will help organizational writers and researchers use learning histories within a qualitative research methodology. Furthermore, this research serves to demonstrate that genre analysis itself can be a rigorous research methodology.
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