Thlog #1

This week in class I largely expanded my knowledge on the subject of genres. I have always considered the word “genre” in the sense of its usage in movies, music, and books—comedy, horror, country, rap, romance, non-fiction. However, in both class and Dirk’s text “Navigating Genres” we explored the word genre in a previously unfamiliar context, writing. I had never thought of the State of the Union Address or a thesis statement in this way. It is an interesting note Dirk pointed out that both of the just mentioned genres, as well as all of the many others, have been established in the past and thus hold unique expectations. So, as discussed in the ransom note example, there is a particular (less than friendly) tone that it would likely be written in, as well as the importance of including specific information. I found it funny reading three different ransom notes and thinking to myself something along the lines of “who would ever write this” in the third and extremely friendly example. This is exactly what Dirk was noting that I has a previous idea of how the letter should be written, and when those expectations were not met I was immediately confused.

I also found our in class discussion about country music particularly interesting. When we initially worked to come up with conventions about the particular musical genre. I learned that we were very wrong to begin with, and while there were a few conventions that were seen in the songs we listened to, many of them were nowhere to be found. However, the second time around (when we came up with a new list of conventions) it was much easier to obtain accuracy since we already had an idea of what many country songs had in common. Second try is the charm in this case, I suppose!