Journal 4

When creating or reading texts, genre plays a big role in conveying meaning and expression. In regards to creation, an author must think of how an audience will view their text. When creating a text, one must consider the intended audience and how they will view the text. The text must be fitting and appealing to the audience, and thus the author must consider genre and medium. For example, when creating a children’s book, an author wouldn’t make a lengthy chapter book with large words and no pictures. Instead, the author would more likely follow the conventions of the children’s book genre and include many pictures, short words, and few sentences on each page. Additionally, when we decide to read a text, genre also plays an important role in our decision. If you were in a bad mood and looking for a light hearted comedy to read, you wouldn’t pick up a book of Edgar Allen Poe poems the decision to read a certain text often relies on what kind of genre it is. Audiences base their perceptions of a certain genre on past experiences they have with other texts of a similar or same genre and decide whether or not to read the text. Thus from this cycle, each genre becomes associated with certain conventions with authors then use to verify that they are composing a certain kind of text within those mediums. Our experiences influence our decisions both when we compose in order to meet conventions and shape the text towards the audience the author wants to read it. Audience, purpose, and other genres all shape how a genre comes to be defined. The audience and purpose begin with what the author wants but the audience itself may not be intended and that audience can come to determine a different purpose than the author. Genre itself is used to put compositions in relation with each other, finding similarities and differences across categories. Genres that are intertextually relates rely on support from the audience of the first text to read the second text. Genre choice impacts that audience that reads a text and thus the way and means by which the text is circulated and distributed is affected.