Module 2

Module 2: Community Genre Analysis

In module 1, you must have decided on one of your communities and one of the social issues that you want to work with or study. But do you think your study will be the first of its kind? Of course not. Are there any resources or sources of information about the community or agency? Have some other scholars already researched your topic, issue, community, or agency? Probably, yes. Do they exist as research papers, YouTube videos, websites, social media posts, or any other? Perhaps, they exist. Do they exist as visuals, audio, multimodal, digital multimodal, written, oral, etc.? Perhaps, yes. Research always begins with what already exists. In asking all these questions, my purpose is to make you familiar with genres and genre conventions that we did in RWS 1301, module 3.

In literature, some genres are novels, poems, and short stories. In music, some genres include country, jazz, blues, hip hop or rock. In this RWS class, genre refers more to rhetorical forms such as articles, books, fliers, videos, emails, blogs, or comics. The genre an author uses dictates a great deal of what the author can or cannot do when they write. (p. 305)

Hence, community genre analysis, in this module, means a rhetorical analysis of two distinct genres that already exist on your community, topic, and agency:

Students will identify two distinct texts in different genres (written, visual, and/or oral) created by their organization or related to their selected issue. Students will write an explanatory genre analysis of the two texts and how they operate rhetorically. Students will engage in peer review activities during the writing process. (p. 305)

Thus, again, the rhetorical situation comes into play when you conduct research. As an RWS student, you are highly encouraged to think of rhetorical situations of research: “this module focuses on strategies such as target audience of a communication, the rhetorical situation from which the issue and organization come, and the use of various writing strategies” (p. 305).

Now, the question is how to conduct genre analysis, then?  UTEP FYCH has clear instructions about it:

Once you become comfortable identifying genres, your major purpose for this module is to analyze and consider the ways in which your chosen organization or agency reaches its target audience(s). Organizations often rely on the support of other institutions, businesses and citizens like you who receive emails, links to websites, or maybe letters with return address labels. This group of recipients constitutes an important audience because this audience helps to support the mission and goals of the organization. Other audiences that organizations reach are community members in need of support. This audience may not use email if they do not have access to the internet, for example; they must be reached other ways.” (p. 306).

It means the genre analysis revolves around an analysis of the audience. However, audience entails all other components of effective communication. They are motive or purpose, message, ethos, pathos, logos, structure, delivery, form, content, diction or word choice, etc. All these elements enhance each other and help the communicator (community, agency, researchers, etc.) to pass the message across effectively, producing an intended result. Hence, community genre analysis means an analysis of all these elements.

1. What is a genre? What are genres?
2. What are genre conventions? Think of at least three examples.
3. What is a genre analysis? What are its components?
4. Why do we need to understand genre and genre analysis?
5. How can you transfer the knowledge of genre and genre analysis in other disciplines or in the future?

Literary Genres

Film and Poetry: Sub-genres

Genres and Genre Analysis in RWS 1302