Navigating Genres response

This was a very interesting read that got me thinking a lot about things I never would have considered before. I really appreciated the way in which this article was written because despite it being quite lengthy, the language used didn’t feel too complex or embellished. It got the points across and the way in which it was written goes hand in hand with what the author was discussing. Kerry Dirk knew the audience for this article and why they would be reading this in the first place and took that into account when writing this piece. In regards to the actual message the author conveyed, I felt was something obvious yet intriguing when looked at in this light. In any situation, people will try to write things that fit that genre’s conventions and choose the appropriate rhetorical situation without even really thinking about it. I liked the example of the ransom note to prove this point. Even though you might not have much experience writing ransom notes you still know how to format it and what content you need to include because that’s what society has taught you about that genre. In an instance where you are writing to someone like a professor, you consider the audience and what they are looking for by instinct. This then raises the question that was brought up as to how experimental can we be with each genre? Now this is something I never really thought about. Of course not every piece of writing will be the same if it’s in the same genre but how different is okay? Kerry Dirk’s response was that it can be neither too radical nor too basic or else it loses meaning. I think this is really interesting because every situation is different and has its exceptions so the answer really just depends on the situation. In any case I will definitely be thinking about genre conventions way more often than I did before after having read this article.