COM 1010: Composition and Critical Thinking I

What do we mean by genre? This means a type of writing, i.e., an essay, a poem, a recipe, an email, a tweet. These are all different types (or categories) of writing, and each one has its own format, type of words, tone, and so on. Analyzing a type of writing (or genre) is considered a genre analysis project. A genre analysis grants students the means to think critically about how a particular form of communication functions as well as a means to evaluate it.

Every genre (type of writing/writing style) has a set of conventions that allow that particular genre to be unique. These conventions include the following components:

• Tone: tone of voice, i.e. serious, humorous, scholarly, informal.
• Diction: word usage - formal or informal, i.e. “disoriented” (formal) versus “spaced out” (informal or colloquial).
• Content: what is being discussed/demonstrated in the piece? What information is included or needs to be included?
• Style / Format (the way it looks):long or short sentences? Bulleted list? Paragraphs? Short-hand? Abbreviations? Does punctuation and grammar matter? How detailed do you need to be? Single-spaced or double-spaced? Can pictures / should pictures be included? How long does it need to be / should be? What kind of organizational requirements are there?
• Expected Medium of Genre: where does the genre appear? Where is it created? i.e. can be it be online (digital) or does it need to be in print (computer paper, magazine, etc)? Where does this genre occur? i.e. flyers (mostly) occur in the hallways of our school, and letters of recommendation (mostly) occur in professors’ offices.
• Audience:What audience is this piece of writing trying to reach?
  • Genre creates an expectation in the minds of its audience and may fail or succeed depending on if that expectation is met or not.
  • Many genres have built-in audiences and corresponding publications that support them, such as magazines and websites.
  • The goal of the piece that is written, i.e. a newspaper entry is meant to inform and/or persuade, and a movie script is meant to entertain.
  • Basically, each genre has a specific task or a specific goal that it is created to attain.