1. Starting your
Genre Analysis
Tuesday, August 4th

2. Write
What type of genre would you say this is?
How do you know? What is it saying?
Your amorous ruling planet Venus,
turns retrograde,
puts your social life in reverse for much of the next six weeks.
The Moon's presence in your pleasure-seeking,
an invitation to indulge your senses.
Generously sharing the delights of food, nature, music
and physicality
creates a joyful experience for you
and your lucky companion.

3. From Carolyn Miller (quoted
by Bawarshi)
 “Genres are not just forms. Genres are forms
of life, ways of being. They are frames for
social action […] locations within which
meaning is constructed. Genres shape the
thoughts we form and the communications
by which we interact. Genres are the
familiar places we go to create intellible
communicative action with each other and
the guideposts we use to explore the
unfamiliar” (550).

4. Goals for today
 Discuss Devitt, Bawarshi, and Reiff
 Discuss your three articles
 Understand how to write your Preliminary
Genre Analysis assignment
 Be ready to work on this assignment as
much as possible before Thursday.

5. Quiz
 What is “genre analysis?” What does it
allow us to do? Find a quote to support
your response
 Hint: Look at pg. 541-545 and 553-557.

6. Devitt, Bawarshi, and Reiff
 “Genre study allows students and researchers to recognize how ‘lived
textuality’ plays a role in the lived experience of a group” (542).
 “But it is when genres encompass participants beyond a narrow
community that the effects of those interests become most troublesome”
(543).
 “Clashes of knowledge and perspective still result when specialists and
nonspecialists meet, clashes that have consequences in terms of how
participants interact, perform their actions, and produce certain effects
in the world” (544).
 “Genre study gives us specific access to the sites of language use that
make up communities, in all their complexity” (549).
 “genres appear to be transparent when they are understood as ways of
classifying texts. But recent scholarship in genre theory has tried to dispel
this view by stipulating genres to be language forms that have
identifiable and changing roles in interpersonal relations and in larger
collective contexts” (550).

7. Jury Instructions? “Might?”
 “Genre analysis strong suggests that the specialist and
nonspecialist users have different beliefs, interests, and
purposes as well as levels of knowledge” (543).
 “students should see the messiness and especially the
exclusiveness of genres” (543).
 “Juries do not and cannot interpret the genre the way its
creators intended, as lawyers would, and cannot render
verdicts that follow those instructions fully and accurately,
thus resulting in significant consequences, particularly for
defendants” (544).

8. Bawarshi, the Patient Medical
History Form
 “isa good way to understand something
about how doctors function and how
they treat us as patients” (550).

9. In your groups
 Take a look at the sample PMHF
 Then, discuss and be ready to share:
 What issues, ideas, suggestions does the genre address?
 When people use this genre, what is it that they are interacting about?
 Who reads this genre? Who writes this genre? Is there more than one type
of reader and/or writer?
 Why is the genre used? What purposes does the genre fulfill for the people
who use it?
 What diction is most common? What types of words are most frequent? Is
slang used? How would you describe the writer’s voice?
 What values, beliefs, goals, and assumptions are revealed through the
genre’s patterns?
 How is the subject of the genre treated? What content is considered
important? What content (topics or details) is ignored?
 What actions does the genre make possible?

10. What Bawarshi says about the
PMHF
“The fact that the genre is mainly
concerned with a patient’s physical
symptoms suggests that one can isolate
physical symptoms and treat them with
little to no reference to the patient’s state
of mind and the effect that state of mind
might have on these symptoms” (551).

11. What Bawarshi says about the
PMHF
“the PMHF reflects Western notions of
medicine, notions that are rhetorically
naturalized and reproduced by the genre
and that are in turn embodied in the way
the doctor recognizes, interacts with, and
treats the patient as synecdoche of his or
her physical symptoms” (551).

12. What Bawarshi says about the
PMHF
“The form is at once a patient record, a
legal document, and an element in a
bureaucracy, helping the doctor treat the
patient and presumably protecting the
doctor from potential lawsuits” (551).

13. So…
 Analyzing genres allows us to see why
individuals use language in specific
settings to make specific practices
possible.

14. Setting: Where did you find your articles? What other articles
were published in the same issue or journal? How did you
access your articles?
The articles I found were all related to legal studies. They were located on the
Internet in numerous legal databases and on some websites, making them easily
accessible to those in the legal community. The UCF library database had many
articles on the topic of hazing, as did Google Scholar. Cornell University has an
entire website devoted to hazing, on which I found many related legal articles
with different views on the topic. I even found presentations that were put
together by law professors from around the country. The Cornell University
website, which is open for public use, was my best source to find scholarly legal
articles relating to hazing.

15. Subject: What topic(s) are discussed in your articles? What
issues, ideas, questions are addressed? When people read
these articles, what are they discussing?
Each author focuses on a different part of hazing, but the consensus
seems to be that people define hazing differently, and that no matter
how one defines it, hazing is still wrong. There is a call for there to be
stricter penalties on university administrators who do not take the
necessary precautions to prevent hazing on and off of their campuses.
The authors of “Hazing in Higher Education” call for college
administrators to design more inclusive hazing prevention programs and
to design and assess intervention and prevention strategies (Campbell,
et al. 2010, p. 36). This is also seen in the statement made by the authors
of “Hazing in the Internet Age” when they say, “Universities should also
educate students, faculty, and staff about the adverse consequences
of hazing” (Lake & Dickerson 2006, p. 2).

16. Participants: Who typically reads this journal? Who would be
interested in these articles? What characteristics must readers
of this--of this genre possess? Who writes texts in this genre?
Who are the authors (this might require you to do some
outside research on the authors)?
The writers of these articles range from law professors at various
universities to law librarians and legislative attorneys. Darby Dickerson,
the author of “Prescription for Disaster” and coauthor of “Hazing in the
Internet Age,” is the Dean and W. Frank Newton Professor of Law at
Texas Tech and previously was a professor at the Stetson College of
Law. Peter Lake, the coauthor of “Hazing in the Internet Age,” is a
current professor of law at the Stetson College of Law. Jody Feder is an
attorney in California and graduated from Yale Law School. She
coauthored “Hazing in Schools” with Amy Bilyeau who has been a
partner at three different law firms. Each author is well respected within
their field and possesses outstanding accolades.

17. Features: What recurrent features do the articles share? For example,
what content is typically included? What is excluded? How is the
content treated? How is evidence provided? How are sources cited?
What sorts of examples are used? What counts as evidence
(personal testimony, facts, etc.)?
Each article either has a cover page stating who wrote the article and
the university from which they come from to establish credibility, or
something parallel along those lines. This can show that the community
values credibility. Darby Dickerson actually starts her article by stating
facts in order to draw her audience in. Next, the authors give their own
definition of hazing to fully define what they will be speaking about. For
example, the authors of “Hazing in Higher Education” define hazing as,
“Any activity expected of someone joining a group that humiliates,
degrades or risks emotional and/or physical harm, regardless of the
person’s willingness to participate” (Campbell, et al. 2010, p. 6). This is
similar to Cornell University’s definition of hazing. Cornell defines hazing
as:

18. Patterns: What do the genre features that you discussed reveal about the
genre and the situation in which it is used? Why are these patterns significant?
What do the patterns say about the people who use them, and how do you
know? What arguments can you make about these patterns? What do the
readers of this genre have to know or believe to understand or appreciate the
genre? What values, beliefs, goals, and assumptions are revealed through the
genre’s patterns? What actions does the genre make possible? What attitude
toward readers is implied in the genre? What attitude toward the world is
implied in it?
The actual tone of all of the articles was informative and stern. Feder
and Bilyeau state their facts and what they wish to see change. Darby
Dickerson and the others do the same. There is no fluff put into their
articles. Darby Dickerson says, “Hazing has become even more
dangerous given current campus conditions” (Dickerson 2009, p. 3).
After this, she continues to explain the changes she wishes to see take
place. There was much respect given by the authors because they
know how sensitive of a situation hazing is. Feder and Bilyeau show their
understanding of the hurt felt by the families when they state, “In the
absence of an explicit anti- hazing statute, some hazing victims have
sought other federal legal solutions, although such efforts have not met
with much success” (Feder & Bilyeau 2004, p. 7). This reveals that the
authors actually do care about those they are trying to help and are
trying to make a difference.

19. What to work on?
 Read Devitt before Thursday, and take
notes in your journal.
 Work on one section of your paper. Raise
your hand if you’d like me to read over
what you have. Post on FB for bonus
participation points.