Chapter Description

In this chapter, I introduce students to genres as rhetorical responses to reoccurring or similar situations. After defining genre in the context of rhetoric and composition scholarship, I use examples from popular culture, discussion from contemporary scholars, and personal experience to show students how genre awareness requires a rhetorical way of looking at writing. This chapter is meant not to teach students how to write in any one particular genre; rather, it is meant to help students start to see their own writing endeavors as texts that function within the context of genres.

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Genre Analysis Definitions

• Genre Conventions: The formal and informal guidelines that define what is considered to be correct and appropriate, or incorrect and inappropriate, in a particular type/kind of writing.