English 121: Guide: What you need for class

GENERAL DEFINITION

Genres are products of classifications. Looking up the definition of the term, you will read that it is a category of something based on its characteristics, so genre is a type or kind of something because it engenders some particular qualities. The concept is familiar to us because we use it to group items into categories. For example, we are drawn to specific genres of movies, such as horror, drama, or specific genres of music, such as rock, EDM, country. Because genres come in identifiable patterns and with particular surface characteristics, we easily recognize these categories around us. But that is only one way to see genre, and for the purpose of this class, we will call this type of genre, the Old Genre. But the genre recognized by rhetoricians will be the subject of our study, and we will refer to that genre as the New Genre.

Genre in Rhetoric – New Genre

Genre is a crucial concept in rhetoric because it allows us to group communication into categories, such as syllabi, shopping lists, recipes, research proposals, tweets, all of which are different from one another, but not only in their surface characteristics (length, document layout, language), but also, if not most importantly, in their use. By learning how, when, why these genres are used, we become more aware of the differences between various genres and therefore more effective in using them.

RELEVANT POINTS ABOUT GENRE

1. Genre is inextricably connected to the community.

As we learned in the previous module, communities use language to accomplish goals and to strengthen the bonds between the members who communicate on regular basis, sometimes in response to similar, if not the same, situations, over and over. So genre is always a response to a recurring situation, such as a grocery list is when we head out to shop, and when others are faced with the same situation, they rely on the genre already in place, a genre that has guided others in the past in accomplishing their goals.

2. Genre provides clues to others’ thinking within the same culture.

Our thinking is socially influenced because we are accustomed to seeing how the members of our own society act and respond to specific situations, reinforcing our own understanding of how to think and act in those situations. This, in turn, makes us more effective communicators within our social group; however, that communication does not carry over to different cultures, societies, the thinking of which and the responses to even the same situations may not be as we know them within our own culture. For example, while in our culture, an American student at a university is strongly encouraged by professors to think critically and for himself, a Chinese university student may be strongly discouraged to think for himself and to challenge the norms in any way. Both students find themselves in the same situation, but their response is socially dictated.

3. Genre is both fixed and fluid.

Although genre is stable and fixed at any given moment, it does undergo changes as we adapt to new technologies, new challenges, new goals. Our understanding of genre is that it provides a set and widely accepted format to the way we choose to communicate, and that is why it is possible to adopt any genre and use it to communicate effectively. At the same time, if we do not recognize that genre does undergo changes, we will become limited in the effectiveness of our communication.

4. Understanding one genre helps in understanding others.

The more we communicate in specific genres, the more we are able to communicate in others because the knowledge of one genre can be helpful in our understanding of the principles, forms, strategies utilized by other genres. Additionally, even when the rhetorical situation changes, some qualities of the same genre remain the same, so even if you had never written a research paper in a Psychology class but are versed in writing research papers in English classes, you will know that the documentation style, the citations, the format of your writing will be different; however, you will already know how important it is to support your points with reliable sources, to avoid plagiarism, just because that part of your knowledge about the genre is already with you.