Ceci's English 1001 Portfolio

What is genre? A genre is something that describes the theme of what a story or piece of writing will be about. For example, a story of a detective searching for a missing boy and trying to figure out what happened to him would be defined as a mystery.

Throughout my past experiences of reading and writing, I have come to the conclusion that a genre is something that gives a theme to writing. It’s something that creates a setting and a mood for a piece of writing.

_________________________________________________________

In Charles Bazerman’s “Speech Acts, Genres, and Activity Systems: How Texts Organize Activity and People” he describes genre as “recognizable, self-reinforcing forms of communication”.

My definition and Bazerman’s definition relate in some ways. His is more straightforward and to the point whereas mine kind of drags on. However, they’re both on the same track. Genre is something that communicates a theme for a story or piece of writing.

Bazerman’s definition seems to lean more towards communication and ways to communicate through writing, whereas other definitions I’ve seen say that genre is a way of characterizing writing.

This author slightly diverges from my own in the way that he seems to lean more towards forms of communication when to comes to genre rather than just characterizing a form of writing.

How does the writing process differ between sci-fi and horror stories?

When writing, how do writers put together their ideas? When thinking What is the thought process that brings these ideas to life?

Take a second to think of a fictional show or book. Where do you think the idea for those characters and places come from? What do you think the writers were thinking of when they wrote down these abstract ideas? How do you think that the writers put together their ideas to produce their final outcome?

I plan on answering all of this. What really happens to bring these ideas out there?

What does it mean to possess knowledge? Does it mean you know a lot of random facts? Or does it mean to know a lot about many things?

To say someone has knowledge about a certain topic is to say that they understand and can truly grasp the idea of that said topic.

I think that Hyland gives a good idea of what knowledge is. He tells us about where ideas come from, many being “eureka moments” when you finally have an idea come to light.

I think that knowledge is something that we as humans are always capable of getting more of. There is an infinite amount of knowledge out in the world and we just have yet to discover it all.

I haven’t really narrowed my question down yet. Right now, it’s a very broad question of “Where do ideas come from?”. I want to know where ideas for fictional characters and places come from and how writers come up with these things. It’s very interesting to me.

I belong to a discourse community within my school. UCBA is a community of students who all share a goal of graduating in the future, whether it be within the next year or within the next ten years.

This community meets all six characteristics that Swales describes.

1: “A discourse community has a broadly agreed set of common public goals.”
We all together have a goal to graduate at some point in the future.

2: “A discourse community has mechanisms of intercommunication among its members.”
We communicate through talking and emailing, as well as texting and talking on the phone.

3: “A discourse community uses its participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information and feedback.”
We can help each other with our studies and we provide each other with information on better studying techniques.

4: “A discourse community utilizes and hence possesses one or more genres in the communicative furtherance of its aims.”
We have a genre of anticipation and goal-seeking.

5: “In addition to owning genres, a discourse community has acquired some specific lexis.”

6: “A discourse community has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discoursal expertise.”
We all understand each other’s goal of graduating and moving on wiht our lives.

Rhetorical situation, Genre, Audience. What do they all have in common? What makes them so important to writing? We go through each day using these whether we know it or not.

In Lloyd Bitzer’s “The Rhetorical Situation” we will learn more about rhetorical situation and what it actually means. We’re going to learn more about genre through Charles Bazerman’s “Speech Acts, Genres, and Activity Systems: How Texts Organize Activity and People.”

A rhetorical situation is the way a person persuades, informs, entertains, or educates an audience. It’s the setting of which you are trying to give your audience. When speaking, or writing, a person will generally try to pull you in and make you want to listen or read what they are trying to tell you.

Audience and rhetorical situation go together due to the fact that every rhetorical situation has to have an audience, or else its not a rhetorical situation. Lloyd Bitzer tells us “In any rhetorical situation there will be at least one controlling exigence which functions as the organizing principle: it specifies the audience to be addressed and the change to be
effected.”

Your audience is who you speak to. It is who you intend your story or writing to speak to. It’s who you want to understand what you’re saying. In definition, an audience is “the assembled spectators or listeners at a public event.” Just a group of people listening or watching something. For example, in Billy Collins’ commencement speech, his audience is a group of graduating students and their staff.

Genre is the type or writing or speaking a person is doing. It is a set up for what you are going to read about. If I were to tell you that the genre of a story is a mystery, you would then expect it to be about a murder or a crime that was committed and the main character(s) are trying to figure out how it happened or who did it. Charles Bazerman tells us that “Genres are only the types individuals recognize as being used by themselves and others. Genres are what we believe they are.”

A genre can be something we make a story to be. It can be something we come up with in order to give a piece of writing some emotion or feel.

Audience, genre, and rhetorical situation go together in many ways. An audience and a genre are needed for a rhetorical situation to occur. An audience is always needed for a story to even be told, whether that audience be people all over the world reading a book written by a famous author, or a group of friends hearing you talk about your day. Genre fits in with every day life, it can be a mood set for a situation or it could be a description of you day.

We can take these ideas of audience, genre, and rhetorical situation and apply them in our writing and our speaking. We can use genre to set the emotional scene of things, audience to figure out who exactly we want to be speaking to, and rhetorical situation to persuade and connect with our audience. We can change the way we speak and write by digging deeper into these terms.

Rhetorical situation, Genre, Audience. What do they all have in common? What makes them so important to writing? We go through each day using these whether we know it or not.

A rhetorical situation is the way a person persuades, informs, entertains, or educates an audience. It’s the setting of which you are trying to give your audience. When speaking, or writing, a person will generally try to pull you in and make you want to listen or read what they are trying to tell you.

Genre is the type or writing or speaking a person is doing. It is a set up for what you are going to read about. If I were to tell you that the genre of a story is a mystery, you would then expect it to be about a murder or a crime that was committed and the main character(s) are trying to figure out how it happened or who did it.

Your audience is who you speak to. It is who you intend your story or writing to speak to. It’s who you want to understand what you’re saying.

What is an audience? Is it a room filled with people watching a play or movie? Is it your three friends listening to you tell them about your day? To me, an audience is anyone who listens to or watches a story happen. Your audience, when it comes to writing, should be whoever you intend your writing to reflect on. It should be whoever you want your story to speak to.

In Anzaldua’s “How To Tame a Wild Tongue” I can understand how she is trying to speak to people of her background and culture through the way she speaks and addresses her audience.

After reading these texts, my view of audience has become more clear. I’ve learned to understand how people can speak to different groups and types of people at once and my understanding of audience increased.

What is a rhetorical situation? How is it defined? What makes a rhetorical situation? In Lloyd Bitzer’s The Rhetorical Situation he tells us, when asking what a rhetorical situation is, “I want to know the nature of those contexts in which speakers or writers create rhetorical discourse.”

If a person were to search “rhetorical situation” online, they would come up with the definition, which is, “The rhetorical situation is the circumstance of an event that consists of an issue, an audience, and a set of constraints.” Now, to me, that isn’t the easier to understand. So, I would say in my own words that a rhetorical situation is the way you persuade, inform, entertain, or educate your audience. It is the setting of which you are trying to give your audience.

If I were to think of a rhetorical situation that I know about, I would have to say the first thing that comes to mind is Greta Thunberg. She persuaded her audience to do something about climate control and gave them a call to action. She wanted to persuade us all to open our eyes to what is really happening in the world. She wanted to get into people’s heads in order for them to change their ways.

A rhetorical situation occurs any time an issue needs to be resolved. Whether it be something as small as the bathroom being too dirty at the store or something as big as the wildfires in Australia. An audience can be persuaded to do something about the issue rather than sit around and let it be.

Works Cited:

Purdue Writing Lab. “Rhetorical Situations // Purdue Writing Lab.” Purdue Writing Lab. Accessed January 27, 2020. https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/academic_writing/rhetorical_situation/index.html.

Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1994. Bitzer, Lloyd F. "The Rhetorical Situation." Philosophy and Rhetoric 1, 1 (1968): 1-14. 27 January 2020

What is writing? Writing is something we all do at least once in our lives. It is a way to express your thoughts in words, without actually speaking. For me, writing is much easier than speaking because I can think more about what I want to say and how I want to explain what I’m saying rather than, with speaking, I feel like I can’t always get out what I want to say. Successful writing is a way if writing that speaks to people. A form of writing that makes the audience see what a person is trying to show them through their words.

Personally, I feel that I am a decent writer. Not the best, but certainly not a terrible writer. I see myself as someone who can give good descriptions and can speak to people through my words, but still with room to improve.

After reading Billy Collins’ speech “Slowing Down” I learned that writing is a way of interpretation of our thoughts and feelings. It’s a way to explain things in different ways and to show a better picture of things.

According to my definition of “successful writing” this text meets that criteria. It paints a picture of what the speaker is trying to explain and it emotionally connects to the people reading it.

I would like to revise my list of key terms, seeing as I could only think of three; descriptive, image creating, and interesting. I would add words such as emotional, creative, conversational, and articulate.

Writing is more than what I thought it was.

Billy Collins (appointed United States Poet Laureate on June 21, 2001)
Choate Rosemary Commencement Address, June 3,2001 
January 19 2020

I’m writing a post.

This is an example post, originally published as part of Blogging University. Enroll in one of our ten programs, and start your blog right.

You’re going to publish a post today. Don’t worry about how your blog looks. Don’t worry if you haven’t given it a name yet, or you’re feeling overwhelmed. Just click the “New Post” button, and tell us why you’re here.

Why do this?

• Because it gives new readers context. What are you about? Why should they read your blog?
• Because it will help you focus you own ideas about your blog and what you’d like to do with it.

The post can be short or long, a personal intro to your life or a bloggy mission statement, a manifesto for the future or a simple outline of your the types of things you hope to publish.

To help you get started, here are a few questions:

• Why are you blogging publicly, rather than keeping a personal journal?
• What topics do you think you’ll write about?
• Who would you love to connect with via your blog?
• If you blog successfully throughout the next year, what would you hope to have accomplished?

You’re not locked into any of this; one of the wonderful things about blogs is how they constantly evolve as we learn, grow, and interact with one another — but it’s good to know where and why you started, and articulating your goals may just give you a few other post ideas.

Can’t think how to get started? Just write the first thing that pops into your head. Anne Lamott, author of a book on writing we love, says that you need to give yourself permission to write a “crappy first draft”. Anne makes a great point — just start writing, and worry about editing it later.

When you’re ready to publish, give your post three to five tags that describe your blog’s focus — writing, photography, fiction, parenting, food, cars, movies, sports, whatever. These tags will help others who care about your topics find you in the Reader. Make sure one of the tags is “zerotohero,” so other new bloggers can find you, too.