13 Public Genres

Overview

In this chapter, you will start to identify genres in public communication, shared cultural narratives, and professional workplace communication. You’ll learn to recognize and analyze the shared characteristics of these genres and the rhetorical situations that call them forth.

Recognizing Public Communication Genres

If you’re a registered voter in the United States, you are probably used to getting political ads around election time. Candidates attempt to rally support by sending out mass communications to people who are signed up for various mailing lists or who have donated to certain causes. These messages are often sent via email or text message, and they tend to look like the following examples:

Figure 13.1. A compilation of screenshots of text messages sent by the Joe Biden campaign to Jennifer Stromer-Galley, a professor at Syracuse University (Biden_Harris_Texts_(Accessible Word doc) [New Tab])

Figure 13.2. A compilation of screenshots of text messages from various political campaigns (Political_Texts_Composite_(Accessible Word doc) [New Tab])

Figure 13.3. A compilation of screenshots of text messages sent by President Trump’s campaign to Jennifer Stromer-Galley, a professor at Syracuse University (Trump_Campaign_Texts_(Accessible Word doc) [New Tab])

Do these messages look familiar?

Even though they were sent to promote two very different candidates, these messages share many similarities that signal that they belong to a particular genre of communication. Let’s review the four S’s of genre to analyze how these messages work.

• Situation: These messages are from a candidate or campaign (writer) to registered voters (audience), alerting them to the upcoming election (exigence).
• Substance: Each message provides a brief update on a campaign’s progress or challenges it is facing.
• Style: The messages are intended to give the impression that Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, or Donald Trump, Jr., is directly messaging you; they often address the audience by name and use language like “us” and “we” to create a sense of identification, while also maintaining a tone of urgency.
• Social action: The goal of these messages is to rally support, usually in the form of donations.

This genre of political communication has become so ubiquitous over the last few years that it’s given rise to parodies:

Figure 13.4. From social media site X (formerly Twitter) (Pelosi_Parody_Text_(Accessible Word doc) [New Tab])

How does this joke text message use the conventions of the political fundraising text message genre?

Narrative Genres

In “What Is Genre?” [Chapter 15], we discussed some of the recurring features of movies such as Black Panther or Wonder Woman that signal to the audience that you are watching a superhero movie: similar character roles, plot structures, and formal elements such as how the films look or sound. These elements can also be used to recognize other narrative or artistic genres, including movies, television, novels, music, and video games. In turn, this enables us to distinguish one genre from another (e.g., classifying a TV series as “true crime” vs. “horror”), talk about how an artifact utilizes or breaks the conventions of the genre (e.g., is Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter a country music album?), or even identify new genres that are starting to become popular (e.g., what is “dark academia” or “cozy fantasy,” anyway?).

But the study of genre isn’t just confined to art or fictional narratives; we can also think about how real-life figures and events are presented to us. Walter Fisher, a scholar and professor of communication, claimed that human beings are homo narrans — that what makes us unique from other animals is our capacity to tell stories and understand our experiences through narrative. Stories are used as points of reference all the time: if we say that a celebrity has been a real ugly duckling, we know that the celebrity might have started off unappreciated or disregarded, but is now undeniably popular. These narratives are shared cultural points of reference that can orient our understanding of the people or events involved.

Digital Genres

We already know that the media we use influence how we communicate (see “Media Matters: Oral, Print, and Digital Rhetorics” [Chapter 6] and “Understanding the Five Modes of Multimodality” [Chapter 7] to review). The rise of digital media and the Internet has created new opportunities for communication. For example, in a traditional classroom environment, you’d probably raise your hand to contribute to a discussion; in an online class that’s held over Zoom, however, it can often be more effective to write your question or comment in the chat.

Medium and genre are not the same thing, however: media are channels of communication, whereas genres are specific, recurring types of communication. However, these boundaries start to blur when we talk about online spaces, such as social media: the style and substance of an Instagram post (usually image- or video-based) are clearly different from those of a LinkedIn post (primarily text-based). So, within the category of “social media posts,” Instagram and LinkedIn might each constitute their own genre of communication. However, if we focus on a particular platform, we can distinguish between genres of posts (e.g., “Get Ready With Me” videos, explainer slides, or selfies).

New platforms and technologies give rise to new ways of communicating, and our ability to respond to recurrent rhetorical situations in similar ways creates digital genres of communication. Take the genre of true crime podcasts, for example. While people have long reported on violent crime through traditional print and television news media, the 2014 podcast Serial marked a major change in how true crime stories are told.

Podcasts are an ideal format for audio storytelling because they can be so immersive; as we listen to the narrators or people featured on these podcasts, we start to feel like we really know them, as opposed to learning about a crime on television or in a book. Further, the serialized structure of podcasts allows the story to be told across multiple episodes, encouraging the listener to keep coming back for more. Serial took advantage of these features of the podcasting medium, while also highlighting larger issues behind the case it covered, such as how the race and religion of the defendant in a murder trial affected his treatment by the criminal justice system.

Following the success of Serial, many more true crime podcasts have been created and are widely listened to. These podcasts don’t just address topics similar to those covered in Serial; they also take a similar approach by focusing on those who are accused (such as the podcast Criminal) and a similar tone to Serial’s host, Sarah Koenig (even in the case of comedy true crime podcasts such as Who Shat On the Floor At My Wedding?). Some even take a more irreverent approach as a way of distinguishing themselves from Serial (such as the comedy true crime podcast My Favorite Murder).

Because the Internet and social media are so strongly driven by algorithms and user trends, new genres of digital communication come into being or fall out of favor all the time.

Professional Communication Genres

Communication is an essential skill in the professional world, whether you’re working with colleagues, your boss, or clients. These situations also recur, which creates the need for standardized professional communication genres. Below are some resources on common types of business writing, including their purpose, structure, and advice for crafting effective communication.

• Emails [Website]
• Memos and letters [Website]
• Proposals [Website]

Further Reading and Resources

• “Navigating Genres” [Website]
• “Last to Be Written, First to Be Read: Writing Memos, Abstracts and Executive Summaries” [Website]
• “Make Your ‘Move’: Writing in Genres” [Website]

Works Cited

ABC7. “Video: ‘My Behavior was unacceptable.’ Will Smith addresses Oscars slap, apologizes to Chris Rock.” YouTube, 29 July 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XyNqHalkMw.

Ballinger, Colleen. “hi.” YouTube, 28 June 2023, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceKMnyMYIMo.

Bareket, Orly; Kahalon, Rotem; Shnabel, Nurit; Glick, Peter. “The Madonna-Whore Dichotomy: Men Who Perceive Women’s Nurturance and Sexuality as Mutually Exclusive Endorse Patriarchy and Show Lower Relationship Satisfaction”. Sex Roles. vol. 79, Feb. 2018, pp. 519–532

Dirk, Kerry. “Navigating Genres.” Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing, Volume 1, edited by Charley Lowe and Pavel Zemliansky, Parlor Press, 2010, parlormultimedia.com/writingspaces/past-volumes/navigating-genres/. Accessed 22 July 2025.

Fisher, Walter. “Narration as a human communication paradigm: The case of public moral argument.” Communication Monographs, vol. 51, no. 1, 1984, pp. 347-367.

Ilyasova, K. Alex. “Last to Be Written, First to Be Read: Writing Memos, Abstracts and Executive Summaries.” Technical Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing, Volume 6, edited by Kirk St.Amant and Pavel Zemliansky, Parlor Press, 2024, parlormultimedia.com/writingspaces/past-volumes/last-to-be-written-first-to-be-read-writing-memos-abstracts-and-executive-summaries/. Accessed 22 July 2025.

Jacobson, Brad, et al. “Make Your ‘Move’: Writing in Genres.” Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing, Volume 4, edited by Dana Driscoll et al., Parlor Press, 2022, parlormultimedia.com/writingspaces/make-your-move-writing-in-genres/. Accessed 22 July 2025.

Paul, Logan. “So Sorry.” YouTube, 2 Jan. 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwZT7T-TXT0.

The Independent. “Drew Barrymore slammed for now-deleted apology video” YouTube, 16 Sept., 2023, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfpr0CLBGTA.

Attributions

This chapter was written and remixed by Phil Choong.