2.2 Genres, Stories, and Academic Writing
Nancy Ami; Natalie Boldt; Sara Humphreys; Jemma Llewellyn; and Erin Kelly
The title of this chapter is Writing Projects, which would seem unrelated to genre, but for many undergraduate students, academic writing is understood not in terms of academic genres but as a series of writing projects or assignments. That is, the essays, lab reports, discussion forum posts, reports, and other types of common academic writing you do for your classes often get listed on a course syllabus as assignments or projects. So why do we want you to start thinking of them as genres? Because once you understand types of academic writing as examples of different genres and learn how genre works as a concept, you will be able to read and write much more effectively (It’s true!).
You might have been introduced to the word genre in high school as a way to classify a literary text, such as a novel, a sonnet, or a play. But genres are more than literary categories; they are the communication norms that allow us to make sense of social situations. Think of a genre as a kind of program or perhaps even a highly sophisticated algorithm that runs in the background during every act of communication, providing guidance about form, content, and interpretation. Put another way, genres are dynamic structures of communication that tell us how to behave in a variety of situations. Dr. Amy Devitt, Dr. Carolyn Miller, and Dr. Kerry Dirk explain that genre is a word we use to describe repeated patterns of communication.[1] What’s surprising is that these “repeated patterns” or genres tell us how to interact with each other in certain communication situations. An example might be helpful here, so let’s talk about coffee.
In Canada, there are many different coffee cultures, but for the sake of argument, let’s talk about two corporate giants, Tim Hortons and Starbucks, as genres. Specifically, certain phrases used when ordering coffee have built entrenched expectations for communication standards. Let’s call these “entrenched expectations” conventions (because that’s what they are!). Here’s a quick exercise you can do before moving on:
- How do you order a large coffee at Starbucks? How many options for modifying that coffee can you choose?
- How do you order a large coffee at Tim Hortons? How many options for modifying that coffee can you choose?
I think you can see that each coffee chain has a language that their patrons need to learn. This language is now common, and those who know it are part of that “coffee community” (as an aside, linking a communication genre to a brand is like winning Olympic Gold for advertisers). This is a fairly innocuous example. Genres can also reinforce stereotypes and are not without their problems. The central idea we’d like you to take away from this example is that genres are composed of conventions, and because of these conventions, we can make assumptions about the communication situations we find ourselves in (fr