After processing some of the material discussing genre theory, I would describe a genre as a category of composition that is descriptive of its production methods, common attributes, and communicative purpose.
When considering how we are bound by the rules of the genre, I recall an anecdote from my childhood education. I suspect that I was in the second grade when I had this enlightening experience. There was a newspaper in my hometown, The Ocala Star Banner, and they would ask the city’s elementary schools to have students write letters in response to prompts from the character Matt Manatee (yes, this was in Florida, home to the manatees). I had high hopes that Matt Manatee would select my letter to be published in the newspaper so I would pour my little heart out in my responses. However, time after time, my letters weren’t being featured! This is when I began to realize that many of the letters being selected were painfully brief, and only a small minority were lengthy, more thoughtful replies. After making this determination, I made sure to only write a single sentence reply the next time around. To my delight, my plan worked and this curt reply was chosen and printed in the next issue featuring Matt Manatee! While this kind of scenario is a much simply one than we typically consider when evaluating the use of genre theory in bridging from academic to workplace writing, I feel it contains valuable and relevant lessons, lessons of which the article by Jo-Anne Andre and Barbara Schneider from the University of Calgary reminded me:
- The writing process, even when done in solitude, is strongly influenced by social variables and dynamics
My understanding of the genre was impacted after assessing what my peers were doing and what kind of approach was being rewarded.
The Dirk article explains how social context influences writing composition (43).
2. In order to be effective writers, we must consider and weigh the needs of our audiences
While I wanted to be totally expressive in writing my letter to the friendly manatee, I also had to consider the needs of the publisher/editor (who conversely was aiming to meet the needs of the newspaper’s readers).
The Dirk article shared how one student (“Lynne”) “saw her writing improve dramatically once she better understood her audience” and the “reader’s purpose” (48).
Side note: The prompt I responded to when my response was finally chosen was about the Earth Day and how we would observe it. Inherently, I understood that the newspaper wanted to promote a public agenda in promotion of environmental consciousness, so I told them what they wanted to hear. I fabricated a story about how my family would make sure to recycle, or plant a tree, or something like that. (I’m not bashing these efforts, I’m just saying that, at 8 years old, I was not making any legitimate plans for Earth Day). This is a good example of how “genre is a marketing tool”, which is a quote by Mark Z. Danielewski, author of House of Leaves, which I uncovered in my research for the first discussion of genre in week 3 (coming soon!)
While I follow and agree that how we use the genre has the potential to change it in some way, I struggle to imagine how this would unfold in practice. Can you think of some examples of how genres change over time? When I ask this question, a strange example comes to mind. The connection is hard to describe, but I’ll give it my best attempt.
In the past couple years, I noticed I was seeing a lot of video content (on YouTube) featuring Tier Lists. This is something that I had never encountered before this trend emerged, but now it is a part of my cultural and visual lexicon. I looked this trend up to learn more about it so that I’d be able to characterize it as a potential genre more clearly. While I didn’t find any deeper analysis of how this grew to such popularity, I learned that this form originated from the gaming community (which explains why it was lost on me at first!). From an objective point of view, I would describe a Tier List as a method for visualizing subjective rankings of a particular group of things. Now though, given the wide range of genres of video content online, Tier Lists add an interesting dimension to the reviews and commentary genre. It seems as if the draw of this content is more about sharing insight into the creator’s personal preferences, humor, and opinions and encouraging debate.
I can see how it is an example of how continued use leads to changing conventions because of its potential to evolve to a high degree with perpetuation by other creators and generation of feedback within the gaming and streaming discourse communities. Creators of the lists will name each tier as they see fit and have fun with it, and some choices became conventional as more creators adopted certain language and procedures, such as naming the topmost tier the “God tier”. The process of building the Tier List and the language assigned to the categories are often ironic, and I would almost say they are self-parodies. There is a lot to investigate and unpack before I can fully recognize how the concept of the Tier List fits into our discussion of genre theory, but it sparks my curiosity! If you’ve heard of this kind of Tier List content, would you assign it’s use to a genre of some kind?
Thank you for reading!