Read and Response for April 25th

Teaching Critical Genre Awareness

By: Amy Devitt

“All genre pedagogies appear to share the same larger goal: to give students access to language, structures, and institutions that are important for their individual, academic, and professional development.” (Devitt, 342)

            I thought that this passage was important because it is explaining the overall purpose of genre.  The basic function of genre is to classify according to certain characteristics in order to create a model for future works.  As a reader, when you know what genre the work your reading is, you can gather some expectations based solely because of the specific genre it is.  It allows students to better understand whatever it is they are reading when they know what to expect and prepare their techniques for reading before they actually start.  Genre creates a shared idea about literature for groups of people and creates social structure because they all agree on the characteristics that make up each genre.  However, there are no set in stone characteristics that need to be present to make it a certain genre and there is room for interpretation, but there are definitely characteristics that stick out that allows you to classify literature in certain genres.

Navigating Genres

By: Kerry Dirk

“In other words, Bitzer is saying that when something new happens that requires a response, someone must create that first response. Then when that situation happens again, another person uses the first response as a basis for the second, and eventually everyone who encounters this situation is basing his/her response on the previous ones, resulting in the creation of a new genre.” (Dirk, 252)

            I thought this was a very interesting way to look at genre.  It really makes sense and gives the reader a good idea of how genre started and how it’s developed over time.  It basically means that genre is still evolving with every work that is created and will still evolve in time as works are made in the future.  They give a great example in the text which said that George Washington, being the first person to be president and address the Union, he had complete freedom when he was trying to think of the content on which to cover.  After then, each President based their content on the person before them.  Dirk talks about how genre is more than just something that is used for academics but is a huge part of our everyday lives, while Devitt talked about genre being best used for teaching and learning for students.  I think for me, I think genre is more of an academic things and I never really thought to use genre in anything else but literature.  However, after reading both these articles I can see how genre can be mixed in with certain things in everyday life.  I just never really thought of social action as something that can be classified into a genre.