In the past week, Writing 2 has taught me a lot about genres, conventions, and rhetoric. “Teaching Two Kinds of Writing” by Peter Elbow was both an interesting and helpful reading. When writing essays for high school english classes, I used to jump right into second order thinking. I would analyze every sentence of my writing and try to make perfect sense of it right off the bat. I now realize that using first order thinking is beneficial to my writing. It speeds up the writing process because I get my ideas down on paper more quickly.
Another helpful reading was “Backpacks to Briefcases” by Carroll. I took AP English my junior year of high school, and had to write many rhetorical analysis essays. Even though I understood rhetorical devices, I never completely understood what the point of rhetorical analysis was. Carroll’s comparison of the media to rhetorical analysis helped me to better understand why rhetoric is important. The article also refreshed my memory on rhetorical devices like pathos, ethos, and logos. I thought that the ransom letter example in “Navigating Genres” by Dirk was humorous way to explain the importance of the rhetorical situation as well.
This week I’ve also realized just how specific some genres can be. I used to think that all genres were very broad, like a letter or an essay. I learned, however, that a friendly letter and a business letter are two completely different genres because they have different conventions. I also learned that conventions are similarities found within genres. In addition, I discovered that advertisements, letter of recommendation requests, and Instagram captions are all considered their own genres.
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