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Genre Analysis. What's that about?

Brandi Bradley
Sep 6, 2017
5 min read

I have made more than one reference to Composition in this course. Composition is the act of combining parts or elements to form a whole. When you take a photo on Snapchat, add text and a bitmoji of your appropriate reaction: that is a composition.

Genres are any composition’s kind category or sort. That’s pretty vague, but it is because genres are not solid. They are fluid. They can be multiple things.

In the article Navigating Genres by Kerry Dirk, he suggests that looking at genres is looking at the patterns which reoccur in specific genres. Like a formula or a template. Horror movies are scary, but why? Usually because an uncontrolled entity wants the primary character to be dead. Chase scenes, murder weapons, looming presences: these are elements of a horror movie. Or what is known as Genre Conventions.

Consider the many genres you are accustomed to seeing on our Netflix account. (Cerebral Crime Drama with a Strong Female Lead. Gross Out Christmas Comedy). In the bookstore genres are mystery, thriller, literature, horror, etc. However, for the purpose of this class, we are going to think of genres ONLY in these three categories:

Informative
Persuasive
Narrative.

Why? Because you can apply these categories to any type of composition. Genres such as Horror, Thriller, Comedy, Pop, Rock, Rap, Historical Drama, Paranormal Romance: all these things are subgenres of the narrative genre. However, they can also be subgenres of informative genres or persuasive genres.

To be certain of a composition’s genre, you must analyze it. When beginning an analysis, begin with the Mode.

Mode is how you experience a composition. Mode are visual, audio or text based.

When performing a rhetorical analysis of an artifact, which you will be asked to do for Project #1, Mode is the best way begin that analysis. A song is an audio mode. It is experienced by listening.

Once you determine how a composition is experienced, you will then ask yourself how it was possible you experienced it. That is Media. Media is how you have access to a composition. This is either print, digital or face to face If something is a digital composition, is it behind a paywall? If it is face-to-face, was there a ticket charge, like a concert? How large was the venue? If it was print, how did people see it? Was it hanging outside a high traffic area or placed inside a large group of people’s mailboxes? All of these choices change the audience.

Audience: who is looking at this composition? Age, income, education, gender, these should all be taken into account when analyzing a composition. If a composition is only accessible if someone pays for it, then that is a different audience than a free composition. If a print composition is only posted on FSU’s campus, what does that say about the audience?

Style and Design: What are the choices the composer makes to make their composition appeal to that audience? Fonts, bold, all caps, arrangement of photographs: all of these things contribute to the message of the composition.

Rhetorical Appeals are tools which are used in order to evoke a connection to the viewer of the composition. These are also called the Aristotelian Appeals: Ethos, Pathos and Logos.

Ethos

Pathos

Logos

How can too much pathos be counterproductive?

Remember, effective Pathos is NOT throwing a bunch of sad words and images at people. Pathos is connecting to people on a personal level.

Purpose: Is it to inform, Persuade or tell a story (narrative)? An Inconvenient Truth’s purpose is to inform the audience about climate change. Crumb tells the true story of cartoonist R. Crumb. Both of these are documentaries, but they are different genre

s because they have different purposes.

Can a composition be two genres? Absolutely. Some persuasive genres use narrative in order to be more persuasive. Some narratives are structures in a way that informs the reader about subjects they are not familiar, like the movie The Martian. These are hybrid genres. When identifying genres, play the percentages. If it is a hybrid, determine which genre is more dominant.

In Lloyd Bitzer’s The Rhetorical Situation, he suggests that all writing is persuasive. The act of holding onto one’s attention for the duration of the composition is persuasive. You are persuading a person to keep on until the end. Ever stopped watching a YouTube video because it suddenly got boring? Or stopped watching a TV show because the premise became too convoluted? (I’m looking at you Season 6 of Buffy). Did you have to unfriend someone from Facebook, Twitter or Instagram because they “got too political”? The composer of these genres neglected their appeals.

Bitzer also explains that rhetoric requires appropriate responses for the situation. This is where he gets “rhetorical situation”: exigence, audience, constraints. Constraints can also be genre conventions, but constraints can also be money, technology, geography, politics and cultural climate.

Approaching: Project #1

Project #1 is a Genre Analysis of 3 artifacts which represent the BRAND of a Pop Culture Icon. An artifact is an object made by a human being, typically an item of cultural or historical interest. When selecting artifacts which represent a Pop Culture Icon, make sure they are DIVERSE. Do not pick Beyoncé and then pick three songs. You would pick one song, one Instagram photo, one album cover. One is Visual mode, one is audio mode and one is text based and visual mode. When performing the rhetorical analysis, make sure you cover all the elements of the Rhetorical Analysis: Mode, Media, Audience, Style and Design, Rhetorical Appeals and purpose. After you analyze the artifacts, ask yourself how the decisions made in those compositions contribute to the Pop Culture Icon’s image and brand. [Do not pick an individual who you do not like. You are writing 1,500 words about this person. If you don’t like them, you will not make it.] **I request no projects on Donald Trump. I have reached my limit reading papers analyzing our current president. You can blame last semester’s class**

Think Kardashian, Kanye, The Wkend, Lin Manuel-Miranda. Who do you follow on Instagram or Snapchat? Why do you keep going back to see how this person lives?

The first draft of this project is due before 11:59 pm on WEDNESDAY 9/27.

For more information about Project #1, go to the Course Policy Sheet.

Don't forget:

Before 11:59 pm on FRIDAY 9/8 Compose a post for your own Wix page (minimum 200-300 words):

First: Answer the following questions about the Bitzer article:
What does it mean when Bitzer says that rhetoric is situational?
Define the word exigence.
Then: take something you watched, listened to or read this week and analyze the rhetoric. Identify the Mode, Media, Audience, Genre, Style and Design and explain how all of those elements convey the purpose of the composition

Also: Twitter Assignment (minimum of 10 Tweets) - Get to know your classmates. Check out everyone’s blog and read their About pages. Seek those people out on Twitter and start a conversation with them about their interests. [DUE before 11:59pm on SUNDAY 9/10]

#genre #Project1 #Composition #Artifact #rhetoricalappeals #mode #media #genreconventions #purpose #Bitzer #Dirk