Rationale: You have, so far, explored the roots of your assumptions (project 1) and reviewed some rhet-comp research on writing (project 2). This third project invites you to do some of your own research—in particular, to investigate a specific genre used by expert-insiders in a particular discourse community: What do these experienced writers actually do? What patterns of content, structure, style, modality, and situation actually characterize this genre? And, most importantly for your purposes (and your audience!!), what might ALL writers learn from your closer look at this genre? 

Purpose: Although this project is challenging in the number of steps required to complete it, it may nonetheless prove the most illuminating for developing your theory of writing. In just a few weeks, none of us can learn all there is to know about every possible genre, but if each of us investigates ONE and shares our findings with each other, we can begin to develop a kind of “meta-generic” awareness: a fuller sense of how genres tend to work. Your goals, then, are (a) to do your own close analysis of a particular genre’s patterns (like Thonney did for research articles); (b) to see if you can discover underlying, contextual (rhetorical-situational!) reasons for those patterns; and (c) to identify a motivating problem or “so what” to help your audience understand why they should care about your discoveries. 

Task & Audience: In short, make a case for what first-year college writers, especially the ones in our class, can learn from significant or meaningful patterns in the genre you’ve analyzed. What problematic assumptions, misconceptions, or inadequate theories of writing—held by scholars OR students—might your analysis of this genre help us to dismantle? How might a closer look at the patterns that define this genre—in content, structure, style, modality, and situation—help us to further refine our understanding of writing? 

Genre: The way you make your case—the form your argument takes, that is—is up to you: Formal academic paper? YouTube video? Podcast? Blog post? Live presentation with Prezi or slideshow in real time over Zoom? You may want to pick a form based on what your audience would best respond to. Or you could pick a form based on what you, yourself, want to practice creating. Whatever you decide will need, somehow, to meet the minimum requirements (see below). 

Process: One difficulty with this task is that the order in which you’ll want to deliver your argument—problem, claim, evidence, implications—will probably not match the order in which you’ll discover that argument. In fact, your sense of the problem, claim, and implications may change even after you’ve created your first, full draft. (Maybe you’ll even need the peer review process to figure some of this out!!) What, then, should you do to get started? Here are some suggestions: 

  1. Pick a genre, any genre. The first question to consider is what genre you want to investigate. It should be one you’re genuinely curious about. If you know what you plan to major in, you may benefit from investigating a genre particular to your academic discipline, so that you can learn more about the ways writing is used in math, art, engineering, sociology, history, or whatever. But you may also investigate ANY form of written or symbolic communication. 
  2. Find three or more samples. Make sure to pick a genre with real and accessible samples. Some genres, like SOAP notes or therapists’ records, may be confidential by design and thus inaccessible. Yes, you can find descriptions of such confidential genres online, but for this project, your task is to do your OWN analysis. If your samples are short and variable (like some artists’ statements), then you may find it helpful to collect and analyze more than just three. If your samples are really long (like travel memoirs or ethnographies), then two samples may be all you can manage. If you need help finding stuff, remember you can ask one of our librarians for help!
  3. Do some background reading. Don’t go overboard with this—remember that the heart of this project is what YOU observe in your genre samples. Nevertheless, you may find it helpful to see what others, particularly members of the discourse communities that use your genre, have said about its characteristics—recognizing you’re probably not the first person to enter this conversation. If you’re looking at an academic genre, you may find digital handouts about it at university writing center websites, or even relevant books or journal articles (such as Write Like a Chemist, The Rhetoric of Economics, or Writing Like an Engineer), some of which may be available online. You might also find it useful to consult an expert—someone who knows, uses, or writes your genre professionally—more directly, by email or phone: maybe a professor, maybe a family member, maybe the writer of one of your samples! 
  4. Analyze your samples! Read, re-read, and mark up your samples, looking for patterns of content, structure, style, modality, and situation. This is probably the MOST important step, because it’s the basis for the argument you’ll eventually make. 
  5. Identify potential problems. Once you’ve got observation notes about your genre samples, consider what you’re discovering and what you make of it. What if anything surprises you, or might surprise others? How do your observations square with what you’ve read (such as Thonney 2011) or been taught previously (such as in high school)? What common assumptions about writing—what it is, how it works, how it’s learned, how it’s evaluated—might your observations help to confirm or complicate? You need at least ONE such gap or problem to help you explain to your audience WHY they should care about your findings. If you’re struggling with this piece, remember it may help to discuss with your peer review group and/or with me in our conference.

Resources that may be helpful:

Minimum requirements to complete the analysis project: 

  • Give your project a title that anticipates the focus of the argument (such as your motivating problem, central claim, and/or principal evidence).
  • Articulate a motivating problem that your genre analysis findings could address, a problem not with the genre (per se) but with common-but-problematic assumptions or previous-but-inadequate research about writing or writers.
  • Articulate a central claim in response to the problem or question at issue.
  • Support your claim with textual evidence from your genre samples, plus any other forms of support relevant to the question or problem (previous research, empirical data, etc.).
  • Explain why your analysis matters to you and your audience, particularly highlighting implications for first-year students’ theories of writing.
  • Document supporting evidence (including references to others’ ideas, whether you agree with them or not) using in-text citations and a bibliography.
  • Organize the argument so that the audience can follow its development and see how the evidence supports the claim (e.g., intro/preview, background, support, response to possible misunderstandings or objections, conclusion). 
  • Craft your language choices (words, sentences, punctuation, paragraphs) to help readers process the information, focus on the message (that is, not be distracted by typos or clunkers), and enjoy the argument.
  • Design & format your argument using modes, media, and design strategies that meet readers’ needs and expectations. (If writing a formal academic paper, for example, try to follow MLA or APA guidelines for margins, line spacing, page numbers/headers, figure/image labels, and documentation.)
  • Share your initial draft with the class by the deadline identified in the course calendar or otherwise agreed to, in advance, with the instructor and/or the writers in your PR group. 
  • Post your project to your course portfolio by the deadline identified in the course calendar (or otherwise agreed to in advance with the instructor).
  • Include on your analysis project portfolio page, ahead of the project itself, a 150-word process note that briefly describes (a) the purpose of the project; (b) your own goals or intentions (what you’re trying to accomplish); (c) why you’ve made the choices you have (re: content, modality, organization, style, etc.); and (d) what you’ve learned about writing (or about yourself as a writer) from the process of putting this project together.