My Understanding of Genre

After reading these articles, I would define genre as an action performed with a specific context. It becomes sort of a way of categorizing things based upon noting the similarities in purpose and style and form in different pieces of writing. Dirk notes that genre thus builds upon a response to a given situation, then develops as others are put to that same task: "Once we recognize a recurring situation, a situation that we or others have responded to in the past, our response to that situation can be guided by past responses." (252). If we think about this fact, then it seems as though genre is less of a "fill-in-the-blanks" type process that Devitt and Dirk want to stay away from, but rather the kind of personal reshaping of something that we have examined closely that both articles seem to encourage.

It was interesting to read the articles in the order that I did, with Devitt first then Dirk, because it was easier for me to see the ways in which Dirk modified Devitt's information for a college aged kid. Devitt's article is written for the potential teacher of genres, and she lays down a basis for pedagogy that makes a lot of sense. Of her strategy, she says, "I suggest that critical genre awareness, rather than multiple genres of engagement, can help students maintain a critical stance and their own agency in the face of disciplinary discourses, academic writing, and other realms of literacy." (337). Her critical awareness pedagogy has three parts: teaching the genre as a "thing," teaching it as a "process," and critiquing genres in general so that students know where to make change. Devitt's approach seemed quite solid to me because it addresses both the needs of the teacher to try to make students familiar with different genres, but also the need to the student to resist and change those genres as they critique and then try a hand at them.

After working through an article with a more intense register that wasn't aimed at me, it was refreshing to breeze through Dirk's article- one aimed at me. I think Dirk's article work because it was so meta aware. Dirk used a lot of rhetoric aimed at making a college student feel interested and welcomed when reading his article, but he also admitted that he was doing this. This was a smart move because he was being honest, not talking down to us. Plus, his illustration of his awareness of how he should approach us as an audience served to illustrate how we approach new genres: by looking at what has been done before, saving what works, getting rid of what doesn't. What better way is there to teach us about modifying genres than to do so (and discuss the process) in writing an article that modifies the genre it writes in? I thought this article was very clever, smart, and informative.