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last.updated 1.6.06

 

Genre Analysis

Purpose

To understand how genres work within a specific context, you will do a genre analysis on a specific type of document produced within this context. From the documents that you study you will establish a hypothesis about the expectations for these documents and explain how these expectations correspond with what you know about the context that informed the production of these documents.

To better understand your own ability to compose this type of document within this context, you will compare a document that you have produced to what you have learned from your analysis.

Instructions

Choose a genre commonly produced by writers in the context that you have studied (e.g., memos, web pages, scholarly articles). Choose a type of document that you can get at least three samples of.

Epistemological Process

Once you have determined the type of document that you want to study, you will collect three samples of this document from the context. You can find these documents by...

  • using documents produced at your workplace, if applicable
  • downloading sample documents that the institution places on the web
  • requesting sample documents

Do not take or use any documents that are not publicly accessible without the appropriate permission. If you are having problems getting documents, consult the instructor.

You will also want to find a document that you have written that is most similar to the document you are analyzing. This can be a document that you have written for a professional context, or a document that you have written for a class. Again, make sure that you have permission to use this document if it belongs to an institution.

Use our discussions about genre and discourse communities to design a methodology for analyzing these texts. Once you have established this methodology, determine what patterns exist between these texts. You will also apply this methodology to your own writing sample.

Writing

Compose a 4-5 page short report in which you report your process of analyzing three document of the same genre and what tentative conclusions that you have come to about writing this type of document in this context. In drawing your conclusions, acknowledge relevant similarities and differences. Again to support your conclusions use specific examples from the texts to illustrate your point and draw upon your genre analysis to discuss the context. You are also encouraged to support your findings with scholarly discussions about genre and/or this type of genre.

You will conclude this report by comparing the patterns you discerned from the three samples to a sample of your own writing (the same or a similar genre); explain what you will have to do as a writer to comply with the expected conventions of this discourse community.

In addition to the report, you will attach the four writing samples (the three documents from the institution and the sample of your own writing) or relevant excerpts to your report. You can electronically attach these document by including the original or scanning copies. With this appendices, the report should be no more than 12 pages long.


Criteria

Logistic:

In addition to the general evaluation criteria, the instructor will be looking for evidence of...

  • a sense of audience–is this document informative and illustrative? is this document written in a way that an uninformed audience would feel more confident approaching this context?
  • a well-articulated methodology that gets executed
  • a clear sense of what the documents you are analyzing are doing
  • a conclusion that demonstrates thoughtful reflection and clear plan for composing the analyzed genre in this context
  • your ability to support your claims with appropriate evidence
  • an informed understanding of disciplines, institutions, discourse communities, and genres
  • appropriate use of conventions, including appropriate use of APA citations, if applicable
  • a professional persona