Journal 4

From reading the three texts by Wysocki, Miller & Shepherd, and Devitt I can conclude that the role of genre can be completely different to everyone.  Wysocki associates genre with visual texts by finding the visual elements, figuring out how they are designed to relate to each other, and how they connect with different audiences and texts.  Miller and Shepherd define genre as the way that blogs have emerged, or the “kairos” and the features that blogs do have, such as form, permalinks, dates and time etc. and what should replace the features, like the journal and anthology for example. Personally, I think that Devitt has the most interesting role of genre. Devitt writes that genre is how we act or what we as humans do in particular situations. She states that genre is something big made of smaller parts and exists in both the natural and human world because they are categories that our brain has categorized on our own. According to Devitt, genres can either be personal experiences or personal perspectives.

Genre factors into the decisions we make when we compose our own texts because whether we are creating a blog or a visual text we are constantly thinking of or creating genre. If it’s a visual text, the writer is thinking of how to create a genre that will be aesthetically pleasing to the audience. They are focusing on the elements, figuring out the text and design relate to each other, and the reaction of the audience to the text. If composing a blog, the writer is using genre to decide what type of blog they are going to make, whether it’s going to be a blog that offers links to information, or a blog that gives the writer the freedom to self express. The writer will also think about key features such as form, and permalinks and whether or not there is a representation of the writer.

Genre is related to audience and purpose because you are creating genre in text for your audience. According to Miller and Shepherd, blogs should replace their features with the commonplace book, the wonderkrammer, a journal, and an anthology in order to produce a recurrent rhetorical move, or to have purpose for the audience. The genre choice affects circulation through the audience. The audiences reaction to the text will affect the way the text circulates whether its through print, a magazine, or a blog.