short paper

Instructions

This assignment will allow you to use the theory of genre you encountered in the articles by Kerry Dirk and Amy Devitt. Like traditional theories of genre, Dirk and Devitt are concerned with form, but they ask us to think about form in the context of social action.Dirk and Devitt say that genres are responses to social situations. So when we think about genre, we are thinking both about recurring forms of writing (and their associated conventions) and about the recurring contexts, recurring purposes, recurring participants, and recurring themes that prompt those written responses. Because the situations recur, the responses, too, recur and they become recognizable to us as genres. In this theory, genre is not just about the conventions or features of a piece of writing, or what category it belongs to. It is also about the situation or action that motivated the writing and the social work that the text accomplishes. Devitt makes this clear by pointing out that a business letter is a different genre than a letter from a friend, even though the form looks the same.This assignment will require you to use Dirk and Devitt's theory to analyze one of the monster readings we have done in class in a well-organized essay. Purpose/ObjectivesThere are many purposes for this assignment, the most obvious being to demonstrate that you understand the theory of genre we've been discussing over the last few weeks (a key 1010 objective). But the following are also critical here:Demonstrate you are capable of analyzing and interpreting the writing of others (something you have not done yet in a major assignment);Incorporate the writing of others into your own writing using some of the basic paraphrasing and quoting techniques we've discussed in class;Articulate a thesis statement that captures the gist of your main findings in your analysis;Support your thesis with claims organized logically into paragraphsThese are basic elements that we will build on in all of our future papers, ones that will aid you in your writing elsewhere at the university and life in general. Writing ProcessFor this assignment, choose one of the monster texts/videos we have read/viewed and analyze it using Dirk and Devitt's theory. As you begin the process, these questions might help you think about the text through a social theory of genre:What recurring social situation or context might this text be responding to? Who are the participants/audience in the situation? What audience uses this piece?How does this genre respond to that social situation? What seems to be the writers purpose? Is she trying to define monsters? Explain their origins? Understand social phenomena through monsters? Maybe something else?What social action is the text trying to accomplish? What work does it do in the culture? Is the goal to frighten people? Entertain people? Educate people?Think of other situations or contexts that might be similar to the one you identified. What other kinds of texts have people created in response to those situations? How is the text you are considering the same or different from those texts? Does the text you are analyzing seem to follow the same rules as other texts? How much freedom does the author/creator of your text seem to have?To help get started, you may want to created a grid of these questions (purpose, audience, social situation, etc.) and jot down some of the answers to them for different texts. If you're able to arrive at these answers fairly easily for one particular reading, that might be as good a reason as any to choose that reading for this assignment. SubmissionAfter you have considered these questions in relation to your text and read some example genre analyses I've created (one here and another here), write a double-spaced, 500-650-word paper analyzing the texts genre. Your paper should do the following:1. Demonstrate that you understand the theory of genre being described by Dirk and Devitt. This means that you must refer to Dirk and Devitt and cite them at least a couple times in this paper, especially in the introduction.2. Identify a probable recurring social situation that this text responds.3. Identify the author's probable purpose for the text. This is the authors goal or the action she hopes to accomplish through her text. Note that because genres are social, the action will include the audience and the text's effect on them.4. Identify the author's likely intended audience.5. Provide evidence from the text (features of the text, including form) that help you identify answers to points 2-4. This means you'll have to cite the textWhich of the expected conventions of that genre does the text conform to? Which, if any, does it disregard?6. What effect do the authors generic choices have on the reader/viewer? What action is a reader/viewer likely to take because of the writers choices?This is a single-stage assignment, with no rough drafts (though future papers will be different). Submit on canvas by 11:59 pm on Wednesday, the 17th of February.Remember, as always, that I'm here to help you if you want to come ask me some questions or discuss your progress during my office hours :)

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