Tuesday, September 6, 2016

Blog #2 Devitt

Writing genres is something that I personally have not given much thought to as I am always assigned a specific genre when writing. Devitt delves deep into the idea of different genres and how they are used. In school and at work, I am often tasked with writing in a particular format over and over again as Devitt points out in the second paragraph, "that writing instruction can encourage accommodation and assimilation" (Devitt, 2004). There I am automatically putting in an in-text citation. Devitt makes a point that teachers present certain genres as the only means of writing, greatly reducing room for creativity. The majority of the papers I write for school are format as that is the standard due to the fact that it is professional and gets straight to the point of the paper and is black and white.

Devitt pleads that having genre awareness is quintessential in your writing abilities. Genre awareness aids students to think critically and choosing a certain genre to present material can greatly affect the overall tone of the paper being presented. Genre awareness and rhetorical analysis would help me in that presenting my material in the appropriate format as well as exploring genres I do not use frequently to adapt to a different style of writing that will in turn improve upon my overall writing skills.

When Devitt makes her claim that when a writer takes up a genre, they take up that genre's ideology, Devitt is eluding to the fact that each genre has certain specific characteristics that make them be identified as a certain genre. The reader is able to critically understand the paper more due to the characteristics and ideas that are evoked when a genre is introduced. The genre ideology is able to have its own ideology because there is a plethora of different genres which in turn create a large quantity of vastly different ideas.

Devitt mentions existing power structures and dynamics as she again eludes to what I had succumbed to in the beginning of this blog. She fears that if students are not educated on the various genres, they will assimilate to the same essay genre as I had started this blog with. Devitts' thoughts that genres are a source of power in a paper stem from the fact that the genre you choose to write your paper in could be vastly different and have different tone and possibly appear as a different paper all together depending on the genre you choose to write in.

After reading Devitt's chapter, I will now be more aware of the literature and papers I read as well as reflect upon my own writing style and attempt to explore the various genres that are at my disposal

Fellow Blogger,

Kina Bramlette

Posted by at

1 comment:

  1. erinflewelling.revealedSeptember 6, 2016 at 8:08 PM

    Hi Kina,

    I liked how you brought up how big of a deal audience and genre is when writing. I have never given much thought to it but when I read Devitt's challenge to have her students write on the same topic but change the audience it really struck me how drastically their papers would change. It is so amazing how communication can be so different based on the context of the situation. It takes a lot of skill and practice to be able to easily maneuver around one genre to the next and that's why I think Devitt informs us that it is so important to learn about different genres as opposed to being stuck with the same old mundane five-paragraph essay. To learn to communicate effectively we need to be familiar with all types of communication, because there isn't just one way to get a message across. And that is a beautiful thing.

    --Meghann Vallecillo

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)