Reflection on Genre

Throughout the course of this class, I have acquired an in depth knowledge of what a

genre truly is, not simply a category of something such as music or books, but as anything that

has its own set of rules that are associated with it. For example, there are certain principles and

techniques that are associated with a presidential state of the union address, such as actually

informing the public about the state of the union, and also, that the president is actually the

person performing the speech. These may seem like common sense, but unless you were to

actually think about it, you would never know that the state of the union address is actually its

own genre within the basic genre of speeches. I have come to this understanding of genre

through various projects and assignments, such as project one, where we analyzed the genre of a

previously written paper, also, through in class discussions such as the Writing into The Day

assignments, and also by taking part in tableaux’s.

As I worked on completing the first draft of project one, I struggled to truly understand

the meaning of genre. But as we turned in our first draft and received assessments from our

peers, I could start to compile the information that they supplied me with and form a definition.

And by the time I was starting my second draft, I was able to elaborately analyze the former

writing that I had chosen, which was my senior speech for baseball in high school. And then

once I had turned in the second draft, I received feedback from my instructor, with detailed

analysis of what I had written. This was very helpful in clarifying any small misunderstandings I

had about genre as a whole.

From the first day of class, we jumped right into the definition of genre by analyzing a

text for our “writing into the day”, we were asked what Dirk had defined as genre and began to

acquire a very vague understanding of what genres really were. Besides the actual assignment

itself, it was very helpful and productive to talk about the assignment as a class in cooperation

with my instructor’s views. When we combined everyone’s ideas, we were able to construct a

fairly detailed explanation of what genre was, all from a simple opening assignment on the first

day of class involving an excerpt from Dirk.

And lastly, I have obtained an elaborate definition of genres by taking part in multiple

tableaux’s, which are simply a symbolic interpretation of a topic. In this case it was a symbolic

interpretation of genre, and I decided to depict a stabbing, because when I was a sophomore in

high school, we began to learn about genres while studying Julius Caesar, who was assassinated

by blade. I don’t really know why, but that was the first thing that came to mind when

considering genre. And by forming this connection from years before, I was able to attempt at

solidifying a definition within my mind.

As a whole, all of these activities were pivotal in my now, detailed definition of what

genres are.

Below are the references to the works mentioned in this reflection

Project 1: Draft 1

https://cariglioportfolio.files.wordpress.com/2016/07/project1.docx

Project 1: Draft 2

https://cariglioportfolio.files.wordpress.com/2016/07/project-1-final.pdf

Writing into The Day:

Tableaux One: