Devitt and Company

 

Summary

 

This article was a actually a combination of three different articles by three different authors all discussing the similar topics of genre and ethnography. Devitt talks about how genres affect our daily lives. She also talks about how some genres are created specifically for people outside of that community. She goes on to talk about how genres affect our everyday lives such as ballots and the judicial system. She talks about genre analysis, and how some words may have a different meaning depending on what community you are a part of. Devitt uses an example of a court case where the word might means two different things to the lawyer and the jury because they are part of different communities. Bawarshi says that genres are ways of classifying texts, and uses an example of the medical community to show how the same word can mean different things in different communities. Lastly, Reiff talks about how genres and ethnography can help students inside the classroom, as well as take the things they learn in the classroom and relate them to the real world.

 

Connections

All three authors give their opinions on how genres are depicted, and how many different definitions of genre there actually are. They all use different definitions to describe how genres affect our everyday lives. They also have some similar opinions as Gee did.

 

Definitions

 

Bawarshi says genres gives us specific access to the sites of language use that make up communities, in all their complexity. Swales says that only the people in the community can read and understand their texts. This is where they differ. Bawarshi thinks an outsider can study the language of the community and learn the genre of the community without being a part of it, unlike Swales. I agree more with Bawarshi, and I think that would be the better definition to use in our class.

 

Opinions

 

I enjoyed reading this article because it showed the viewpoints of three different people and how they feel about genres and their communities. Also, I found interesting the amount of different possible definitions of genre, and that none of them could pick just one