SUMMARY:
In chapter 2 of our class textbook, Bedford Book of Genres, Genres are looked over more in depth, revealing the concepts of a genre and its purpose. As highlighted in this chapter, a genre is how a speaker or composer chooses to socially respond to a rhetorical situation. Oversimplified, a genre is a “category” or “type”. In this chapter it reveals that a genre represents a wide array of possibilities and a message can be shared in more ways than one. The conventional and traditional five paragraph essay or term paper is just scratching the surface of the possibilities of a genre—there are memoirs, emails, journals, diaries, blogs, digital composing, songs, poems, videos, documentaries, flyers, etc. The conventions of a genre include the style, design, and sources used to make up that genre. The beauty within a genre is that each one fits the composer’s personal voice to get their message out and it is dynamic; changing over time as people and their needs change overtime.
In this chapter I began to understand genres better as its purpose soon become very clear to me. Genres are a huge part of this course and as I read this chapter it reminded a lot of the dynamic of our class. Over the course of these past few weeks taking this subject, I have been open to analyzing the different types of texts, far from that of the traditional. We have analyzed videos, flags, and even podcasts. While reading this chapter it became clearer to me that the manner in which the composer or speaker presents their message is purposeful as their personal voice and societal response to any rhetorical question is represented by their piece, through their genre. It took me a while to understand that and this chapter made it clear that a genre is what makes a speaker’s work meaningful and more attractive to audiences that they are trying to reach.
Seeing as in high school we were only mostly exposed to the traditional genre of research papers and five-paragraph essays, it has become difficult to see the message and purpose of subjective pieces that are found in our everyday lives and it has been even more difficult to write one. However, as I look back, a lot of the assignments that we do in class are works that improves our subjectivity and helps us find our voice as a writer and not sound like a mechanic robot. From our blogs, our presentations of non-traditional texts, and our projects; I realize now that I have been exposed to different types of genres and it has tremendously helped me find not only my voice but it has helped me branch out to different types of styles and designs in my pieces. Before reading this chapter I had not noticed that we had been branching out to writing in new genres. As I read this chapter, the author pointed out some conventions of genres that I noticed we do in our work. Style, design, and sources make up a genre and if we look closely, we have incorporated each element into our blogs and even our presentations. The manner in which we write, our tone in our blogs, our use of pronouns, and personal voice is all the style in which we write. For design, in our blogs we have designed our websites to our tastes, whether it is the aesthetic or the use of headings, illustrations, formatting, etc. In many of our blogs we rely on sources such as other author’s works as we have analyzed them to further improve our styles by identifying with the styles we have seen in each source.
Definitely this chapter has informed me more about the different types of genres and it has opened me to accept the different types of styles and embrace each of their uniqueness and purpose.