Genre Analysis
The stakeholders identified in part one each have their own sets of genres that they read and write in regularly. For publishing groups, these genres include newsletters, blogs, news and press releases, and literary magazines of their own publishing or in union with other publishing groups. Publishing groups take into consideration information such as reviews of and responses to the works they put out, and publish pieces, outside of works of literature, such as book listings, related news pieces, and blog posts from individual members of the group. For authors, aside from social media platforms, genres include blogs, articles, press releases, and published works, novels, or essays. Authors take information such as research for accuracy, reviews of their works, listings, and writing resources that impact their writing and work such as audience response, writing guides, and criticisms. For teachers, these genres would include blogs, both personal and within teaching communities, and articles. Information teachers and educators take in for making decisions include what they could use to make their teaching more effective, such as articles and listings on books that appeal to certain demographics, articles and blog posts by other teachers in regards to their teaching methods, and reviews of works in relation to how suitable it would be for their curriculum.
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Common genres across stakeholders include articles (or professional journal entries) and blogs. These genres are to address their audience in a discussion-based format, with the author presenting their argument as the focus, with an area for discussion and comments from readers underneath. Both have a similar function in terms of appearance, as entries are blocks of text with the option to include relevant images. Articles often belong to a larger group or community and employ a more formal form of layout and language, though the language used within both genres generally employ similar, if not the same literary specific lexicon, with an argumentative or descriptive rhetoric. The format for articles may be physical, in print, or digitally posted. Blogs, on the other hand, are largely independent, wholly online, and have a more casual layout and language. A single article or blog post employs a similar format: a title, a subheading, author’s name and date, and the body of text underneath the header with a relevant image embedded above the header, underneath it, or breaking the text. Digital formats may have the authors information included underneath the article/post or within a side bar. Both formats should include a way to engage the readers, most likely a comments section underneath the focus or ways to contact the author, usually via email or social media platforms. While the host itself, the website the article belongs to or the blog itself differ in appearance. An article may belong to an organization, and therefore the website is formatted to accommodate to the mission of the organization. If printed, the article would take up a few columns or pages of text, with an accommodating header and author’s subheading at the top. The format for both genres are to be as user friendly as possible and easy to follow. Therefore, alongside the title, the body of the text should be organized by points the argument is making with subheadings. Sources will be embedded in the article whenever cited (with a full works cited page linked alongside the other parts of the project) while in the blog post sources will be included at the bottom. Each entry or article is to be formatted in a similar fashion, organized by function. However, for the article genre, the other parts of the project will be linked to the article in an essay format rather than another article whereas each entry for the blog will be another post.
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As the discourse communities of the stakeholders and their genres include much overlap in terms of genre, lexicon, and sources of information, either genre could be used for this project. However, due to accessibility, particularly for educators, and a greater relevance to authors and educators, a blog format would serve as the more suitable genre as it employs much of what an article entails, but with more freedom for discussion than an article would. A blog is more approachable for community and outside discussion, as the amount of informal discourse communities across stakeholders outweigh the formal and less accessible ones, particularly the discourse communities publishing groups may belong to, such as marketing and advertising discourse communities, that the other two stakeholders are not part of, as this project aims to touch more aspects of the issue than just marketing. A blog format is also easier to organize on a user-friendly basis, where the independent host website offers more customizability. The blog post itself is to be in a semi-formal format, with genre and discourse community specific language. While its presentation is to be accessible to all readers, the post is geared towards the specific audiences of the stakeholders, the discourse communities they belong to, and those that are involved in literary and, to a certain extent, social justice-oriented discourse communities, with expected according response.