Genre Analysis

Read pages 634-636 (attached) then answer following questions:

1. Think of two different genres in which you have written, including one you write on a computer. For each genre, answer the following:
   • What is the genre?
   • How do you think you learned to write in this genre? Have you read examples of those genres written by other people? If so, how do you think that influenced your writing of them? If not, how do you think you learned to write a genre without reading it?
   • Is this a genre you write in regularly, semi-regularly, or not often?
   • How confident do you feel when writing in this genre? Do you think that your confidence with this genre is related to how you learned it and/or how often you write in it?
   • 2. On page 645, the text states, “The first step in doing  genre analysis involves collecting samples of that genre.” For this part of the discussion, choose one of the genres you wrote about in question 1 above. Look online to find 3 examples of that genre. (If the genres you wrote about in question 1 are not easily found online or if you’d prefer to analyze a different genre, you may choose another genre from this list: obituary, advice column, restaurant review, or Wikipedia entry.)
   • Once you’ve found 3 examples of your selected genre, use these examples to help you answer the following questions:
     • Who uses this genre?
     • What does this genre try to do, accomplish, and/or communicate?
     • Where is this genre used?
     • When is it used?
   • Now, use the 3 examples to discuss the rhetorical and linguistic patterns of the genre. For an example of this, see pages 645-647. To do this, you will need to look closely at each of your examples, trying to identify any recurrent features that the examples of the genre share. As you look closely at your 3 examples, comment on the following:
     • What do you notice about the content (the topics, themes, main focus)?
     • What do you notice about how the genre uses the rhetorical appeals of logos, ethos, and/or pathos? (See page 648 for descriptions of each rhetorical appeal.)
     • What do you notice about how the genre is organized? How do writers seem to begin the genre? How does the genre seem to end/conclude? Does the genre include parts/sub-parts throughout? If so, what do you notice about the purpose of these parts and/or how they are organized within the genre?
     • What do you notice about the visual aspects of the genre? Here, you might discuss the format, the layout, use of visuals/images, and the appearance.
     • What do you notice about sentence style, tone, and word choice? Here, you might comment on the level of formality; the writer’s tone (Calm? Excited? Angry? Rational? Something else?); if the writer uses past, present, and/or future tense; and any particular words, phrases, and/or abbreviations that seem significant to this genre.