Threshold Concept: Genre

All forms of communication are rhetorical. Any time we engage in communication–written or spoken–we are engaging in a rhetorical situation, and each of those situations is unique, complex, and constantly changing. A skilled writer or speaker will always be aware of the rhetorical situation and consciously choose the best available means of persuasion for the situation.

That sounds exhausting, doesn’t it?

Every situation may be unique, but that doesn’t mean that we always have to re-invent the wheel. In fact, there are many situations that are similar to other situations, and by understanding the structures that generally work best for those rhetorical situations, we can be more efficient.

That’s where the idea of genre comes in.

What Is Genre?

Genre comes from the French word for “kind” or “type.” In rhetoric, genre refers to categories of texts.

The definition above focuses mostly on artistic pursuits: literature, music, art. But rhetoric studies have identified certain types of texts or arguments that we find again and again.

Genres are established types of texts that have been named. They are recognizable because they address rhetorical situations that regularly occur. For example, invitations are a genre of writing. So are magazine articles, academic essays, novels, text messages, textbooks, reports, and even literacy narratives.

If a certain type of writing situation happens again and again, then certain types of writing come into existence to respond to that specific situation

Consider the Five-Paragraph Essay

The five-paragraph essay is a form that many high school students learn as the way to write an essay. But there is nothing natural or even official about that essay. Instead, it is a genre of writing, and it came about because of a specific situation that reoccurred again and again that created a repeated need:

• Students needed to write to show mastery of language, especially on standardized tests
• Teachers needed a clear way to help students fulfill the requirements for those tests

Does the five-paragraph essay work in certain situations, like the state tests most K-12 students take each year? Absolutely.

Is it the only kind of essay you can write? Nope. Not even close.

Is it appropriate for college-level work? That depends…on a lot of factors, including the expectations of the professor (audience).

The five-paragraph essay is a genre of writing, specifically a genre of essays.

Why Should I Care About Genre?

Genres are helpful because they help writers by giving a limited area to aim for, which creates a better chance of success. Each writing situation might be unique, but chances are it also fits within one of the types or categories of rhetorical situations that other writers have already addressed and mastered.

It is important to remember that genres are not inflexible rules for writing. Instead, genres should be considered flexible maps. They can guide your choices, but each choice you make should be based on your specific rhetorical situation.

Think about that five-paragraph essay. It should serve as a roadmap to develop an essay, but if you write an essay following it as a very strict, immovable set of rules, your writing will likely feel stilted, stiff, and incomplete. This doesn’t mean your earlier teachers were wrong, though. As you progress through your education, you should be encountering more sophisticated and complex ideas. It only makes sense that your writing would also become more flexible and sophisticated as well.

As you progress through this course, and through your college career, your job is to remain conscious and aware of new writing challenges. How can the genres you already know be applied to new assignments? What are the limitations of what you learned in high school?

Analyzing  Genres

Maybe you were a master of the five-paragraph essay. Maybe you know exactly where the thesis statement should go or how to transition between point #1 and point #2. That knowledge likely served you very well in high school, but you may struggle to adapt it to college writing. After all, how can you use the five-paragraph essay when you’re being asked to write a seven-page essay?

Remember what we already said: genres are flexible roadmaps. They’re frameworks that you can use and manipulate to the needs of your specific rhetorical situation. Genres are guides; they are not Mad Lib forms, where you simply fill in the blank and call it a day.

As you work on the assignments in this course and as you work on new types of writing throughout your academic and professional career, it will be essential for you to be able to analyze and understand new genres. Understanding how to figure out the criteria and general conventions of a genre is an important skill that you can learn far beyond your composition course. For example:

• Your boss asks you to write an instructional memo, but you’ve never written a memo before. What do you do?
• Your sociology professor asks you for a Literature Review. How do you figure out what that is?
• Your biology class asks for a lab report, but you’ve never written one. What steps can you take to figure out the requirements?
• You need to write an argumentative research essay in APA format for this class. How do you know if you’ve met the conventions of that genre?

The best way to learn a new genre is to do some research. You’ll want to look at other texts that identify themselves as the same genre and then look for similarities between those texts. Remember, genres are flexible maps. You might look at ten different literacy narratives, and they might all tell their stories in slightly different ways. But maps are maps. You should be able to identify some general features that they all share.

1. These questions are adapted from Wardle and Downs.