Blog 5 - Chapter 1 BBG

I decided to combine what I read from chapter one with my opinion on genres. I completely understand when the book mentions genres as a way to categorize music because that is how I've thought about it for years, and that’s the way I learned about the term. Usually I would only think of a genre as a type of music or book, but when genres go beyond such simple examples as that, I get confused. When reading about the Burton example, I still feel like genres was being used as just a way to say subject or topic, which may be true, but there must be a reason that the term genre has become so important. I feel like the next few sections, about Rhetorical situations, purpose, and audience help further explain how genres work. I think I am going to need to learn to change my previous definition of genre and open up to this new world of writing techniques and the meanings behind them. When the chapter mentions genre conventions, I understand where it says to know something about genres and what we are going to write about; however, why use the term genre? What is the difference between a genre of something and the topic itself. What is the difference in the way it is explained in a piece of writing? Is there a specificity to it that becomes more important in these types of essays? These questions, although explained a bit in the chapter, are ones that I need to work on understanding more. I also find the checklist on page 37 helpful when trying to figure out how to find the importance in a genre I am writing about. I am hoping that the more I read in this book, the more I will understand about genres, the term itself, and how it works when writing an essay.