Notes from “Everything is Text” by Dan Melzer
Literacy situations-purpose, persona, genre, audience, medium and context.
- Purpose: the literacy situation will play a role in construction our purposes.
- Audience: for whom the writing is intended. It shapes a composer’s message.( different style and voice)
- Persona: a composer’s persona includes the stances she takes, her tone, the vocabulary she uses, her voice and style- everything that makes up the image she portrays in her text. A composer’s persona is influenced by the previous texts she has read, the audience she’s composing for, and the purpose, medium, and the genre of what she’s composing. A write’s persona is socially constructed.
- Medium: Medium and modes are closely related. If a mode is a channel of communication-oral, visual, digital, print- then a medium is the tool that the composer uses within the channel to deliver his or her message. For example, composers working in a visual mode might use medium such as photographer, paining or billboards. Composer working in a print mode might use mediums such as books, magazines, newsletters or fliers.
- If a mode is a channel of communication-oral, visual, digital, print- then a medium is the tool that the composer uses within the channel to deliver his or her message, then genre is a form of that tool that is appropriate for specific literary situations. For example, within the oral mode of communication, there is a medium of the speech, and within the medium of speech, there are genres such as wedding toasts, political acceptance speeches, graduation speeches, etc. EACH GENRE OF SPEECH IS APPROPRAITE in a specific kind of situation (politically rally, a graduation, a wedding etc.)
- Purpose and audience affect the persona, which is shaped by social contexts.
- Every factor of a literary situation- purpose, persona, genre, audience, medium,- is influenced by social contexts. An audience’s ethnicity, social class, political beliefs, and so forth influence its responses to a text and a composer’s persona is shaped by her personal history and values a t language communities she belongs to.
Notes about Genre from “ A Genre approach to Writing Assignment” by Irene Clark
- To write an effective essay, the student needs to assume an appropriate textual self suitable for the writing tsk, project how that self will impact an intended audience, consider or perhaps fictionalize that audience, and adhere to suitable conventions of subject, approach, organization and style.
- The writing assignment can be considered a genre because it is “ site of social action”
- Genre is typified as a social action that responds to a recurring situation, that is ,” that people use genres to do things in the world ( social action and purpose) and that these ways of acting become typified through occurring under what’s perceived as recurring circumstance ( Devitt 2000).
- Bitzer defines the rhetorical situation as a “complex of persons, events, objects, and relations” presenting an “exigence” or necessity.
- Genre has “ bidirectional relation that holds between a text and its interpretant.
- Rhetorical knowledge is defined as the ability to focus on a purpose, respond to the needs of different audiences, and respond appropriately to different kinds of rhetorical situations.
- Becoming educated means becoming a part of an information-laden world where the notion of truth is problematized and where texts are created by “pulling together bits ad pieces of language to accomplish social and cultural goals and require critical scrutiny and evaluation.
- Writing assignments require students to play a particular disciplinary role and understand the situations the writing assignment intends them to address.
- Writing assignments involve understanding of implicit assumptions.
- A successful response to a writing before they assignment requires students to “ situate and invent themselves before they can assume the position of student writer noting that writing prompts exercise a “ social function:.
- Genre study reveals that both writer and reader are transformed though genre. Writing assignments require the student to “ pretend” to be a thoughtful cultural observer.
- Write’s audience is always a fiction and the generic requirement of writing an assignment is for students to create the right kind of fiction and construct themselves as a credible participant in the ensuring dialogue.
- Writing genre is like an advertisement- the necessity of problematizing a topic, of establishing a context for analysis and interpretation, of formulating a thesis that unifies the text and makes it meaningful, and of supporting the topic with evidence and logic.
- It is crucial to construct a writing persona and fictionalize the audience when responding to a writing assignment.
- Like stage directions in drama, a writing assignment constitutes an invitation, not a set of specific instructions.
- Writing assignments constitute a genre that presumes understanding of implicit assumptions-
- What purpose does the genre serve?
- What are the feature of this genre?
- How do it particular generic features serve its purpose?
- For whom is the genre written?
- What roe must the writer assume in writing the genre?
- Whose interests does this genre serve?
Notes from “Genre and the Invention of the writer: reconsidering the place of Invention in Composition”
- Genre begins with a discussion of beginning “ why and how writers begin to write ins the subject of invention”.
- Before 19th century, invention occurred when the writer “ place” himself within rhetorical topoi.
- With Empiricism, people began to express already –formulated thoughts. The site moved from socially situated rhetoric to within the writer- invention became internal and personal.
- Invention emerges from the writer but the writer is always socially situated.
- The writing process recognizes the writer as agent.
- Writers write within fields that exist prior to themselves. Invention can instead be thought to reside “within a larger sphere of agency that includes not only the writer as agent but also the social and rhetorical conditions, namely, genres, which participate in this agency and in which the writer and writing tasks take place.
- Writing varied according to changing situations.
- In the genre-based classroom, the subject of writing is the writing produced within various genres, while the goal is for the writer to learn to situate herself within different genres and produce writing that fits those genres.
- Students need the ability to “ read” and analyze genres in order to participate within various genres. They need to read and discern the rules for writing within particular genres. They…need to understand the conventions of the genre in which they are working.
- Writes can only purposefully change the genres within which they participate once they have learned how to analyze and determine the rhetorical strategies for writing within the genres.
- Learning to read genres challenge writers to discover differing rhetorical strategies.
- Students need to learn how to adapt as writers, socially and rhetorically. Good writing is dependent and contextual.
- When writers understand good writing to reside in the ability to adapt to changing situations, they gain a new awareness, a new agency.
- To write is to make movements between genres.
- Students who recognize the requirements of writing within various genres can choose to conform to those standards or to resist them.
- Once students have learned how to situate themselves within, transgress, and transform the boundaries of various genres, they have a skill that they will take with them to finish the college education.