Final Blog

It's finally the last blog of the semester! Right now I'm reflecting on all the genres and writing assignments I've done for RWS. Even this blog counts as a new genre that I've explored through this class. The first blog where I was introducing myself was a bit tricky to say the least. I like to think that I'm great at introducing myself in conversation, but I'm not the greatest when it comes to walls of text. With so much real estate, I felt pressured to put my whole self on a page of text, which is of course unrealistic. I was luckily able to narrow it down to a few of my valued qualities. Moving forward blogs got easier because I was able to share my thoughts and analysis on topics we were discussing in class. It was a lot less personal, so it was easy to publish whatever I wan ted for the world to see. Hopefully a bit of my personality still showed in the blogs. The blogs were a great assignment that kind of defined what RWS 305 is to me: getting thrown into writing a totally new genre and conquering it. But it doesn't beat my favorite genre that I have written in this class, the memoir.

The memoir was and absolute joy to write! I know I said that it was tough for me to write about myself in my blog and that might seem like it goes against what a memoir is, but that was to introduce who I am! The memoir was a lot more focused, it allowed me to only depict a specific instance in my life, rather than summarize all of it. It was still a hell of a challenge though. I've heard that there are two kinds of people: maximizers and minimizers. Maximizers will make every event in their life a grand drama, while minimizers will do the opposite. I suppose I'm a minimizer, since I usually cope with stressful events by thinking they're not all too significant. The memoir obviously had a very maximizer set of values. I had to take this stressful event that I'd been trying to denounce as a very small issue, and blow it up into something that changed my life. Even with that struggle, it was a lot of fun to write. I thought of it as a nice challenge, plus I love the writing style used in memoirs. It reminds me a lot of novels, which are I genre I really appreciate. The focus on dialogue, sensory details, rising action, and all that other stuff makes it fun to tell a story.

If I had to pick a least favorite genre, it would have to be the Opinion Editorial. If you've read my previous blogs, you would already know my strong opinions on the genre. In short: I suppose I'm just a slave to the rhetoric I was taught in grade school. My values for a valid argument are about logical statements followed by concrete evidence, and Opinion Editorials seem to throw that all away for hyperbole. But even though it was my least favorite, that doesn't mean I hated writing it. After all, sometimes it's nice to just scream my opinions, and I understand why we took this as our first genre. The best way to learn how different rhetoric can be from the single way we've been taught is to learn a rhetorical genre that values opposing ideals. At least I think that's why we wrote it.

No matter which blogs were my most favorite or least favorite, I just want to say that this semester has been a fun experience for studying and writing different genres. I know that rhetoric is something that each and everyone of use engage in every day, so I'm hoping what I've learned here will help me in all my future endeavors. If you've read this far, thank you for reading my blog! I hope you enjoyed it.

Diving into Research

Hi Everyone! October always feels like such a busy month, doesn't it? First off I have to say I had an amazing weekend. This weekend my Sister got married so congratulations to her. It was a very fun but also very stressful weekend. Still I am happy to have experienced it all. Now I'm getting back into university mode, though I'm typing this from my phone because my computer broke down.

Anyways, now that we've finished the narrative assignment in class, we're shifting focus to the discourse community research paper. The community that I am choosing to focus on is actually the one that I have written about in previous blog entries, AB Samahan. In the past I have written about it as a discourse community, but for this paper I may define it as a community of practice. This is because our discourse is not only to be used for function, but also a social aspect. This particular community is so interesting to me and I know so much about it because I am a member and a previous leader. That may make things more complicated though. This project seems to encourage more of an outsider looking in perspective of a discourse community, which is difficult to use when you are a member of said community. Then again, it is a cultural organization and I don't share a lot of said culture. I feel that there is still a lot of outsider views that I can bring, but my insider knowledge will also help me to gain a lot of information.

For this paper I really want to focus on how the community, it's discourse, and the values of that discourse have changed people. What is the cost of affiliation? Also, the genres that the organization uses hold certain values, but do those values align with the values listed in the constitution? Is it possible that there is some dissonance between the two? I wonder how well the executive board is at communicating with new members to attempt to get them to share their values within the organization. And who holds true authority? Is it the executive board, or is it the mentors?

As for questions, I'm still not sure what to ask. I want everyone to answer honestly without and inhibitions. I know I can't ask anything too bluntly, or in a way that makes them believe their answer might offend someone (especially questions about authority). I also can't use any of the jargon that we use in class to study discourse because they likely won't know what lexis or discourse means. Still I can still get an understanding of what people gave up to join the organization or how their identities have changed. I want to get a diverse group of people to interview because I think that will give me the best information. Freshmen and transfer students will work great because they are still fresh to the whole experience, so I'll have a good sense of how difficult it is to get encultured into the community, the difficulty identifying who is in authority, and cost of affiliation. For older members who have already been with the organization for a year or more, I can find out how much mentorship plays a part in the community's dynamic and community values.

In AB Samahan, we have weekly GBMs, weekly eboard meetings, Facebook posts, newsletters, there is honestly so much to work with that it's difficult to think of which genre to start with. I wonder if the readers of these genres utilize one more than another and why. Is there a great deal of difference between members and which ones they use, or is the enculturation so unifying that they all hold similar genre use. Since the organization's name literally means unity, I want to analyze just how much members are united in terms of discourse.

Over all I'm really excited to start researching for this project. Everyone there already feels like a friend of mine, so it'll be super easy to go through the process of interviewing them, plus it'll be a great way to meet new people in an environment that I already love. It's also going to be nice to see all the things I'll learn that I had never thought of before regarding the organization. I'll come back from this project with a new understanding and appreciation of AB Samahan, and I'll be able to share that and maybe even help to improve the community with that knowledge.

Challenges of Adapting to My Workplace

This whole semester we’ve been talking about identity kits. When we leave San Diego State in order to pursue a career, we’re going to have to adopt a whole new set of customs, behaviors, and, as we’ve discussed in this class, new genres. I’m a business administration major with an emphasis on management, and I know that once I begin my business career, I’m going to face a great many challenges to craft an appropriate identity kit.

I was introduced to this concept in undergrad when I took my business RWS class. The purpose of the class was to introduce students such as myself to the types of genres that I would be using in my career. The first assignment wasn’t too difficult, a resume applying to a business of my interest. It was easy to empathize with the assignment because I am so close to that position in my life where I will actually have to apply for work. It got harder when we moved on to the next project. We were told to write a letter to our “boss” explaining why we could not attend an important meeting. Of course I had never been required to write something like this before. It was difficult to think of where to start. How do I communicate with a boss that I’ve never had or interacted with before? It took me a lot of time looking at examples and studying business values before I was confident enough to even approach the letter. And that wasn’t even the worst of it, because after that I had to give a presentation in a group as if we were pitching an idea to investors. This meant learning a whole new set of values and engaging in a bunch of new genres.

But this was all done in a still very familiar academic setting. Though we were writing for a different purpose than what is idealized by the academic essays from previous RWS classes, our audience remained roughly similar, a professor. There are grave differences between writing to your business professor and your boss. Though we were crafting the same genres, with my professor I was still able to express my uncertainty in the assignment and use large sums of time to study how it should be written. When I have write these sorts of papers for my boss in my actual career, my boss will likely expect that I am already well versed in the genre, and require little to no mentoring. As for time, I’ll need to be ready to respond as quickly and efficiently as possible. These are all impossible to simulate in a class setting, you have to actually be engaged in that environment, and without previous experience of course it’s going to be difficult. Not to mention how for the group project, working with my fellow students is a lot different than working with co-workers. We were all able to maintain the student identity kit that we had all become so well adjusted to. There wasn’t much thought put into how we communicated with each other. It’s arguable if the communication was more genuine, but it did come to us with great ease.

In the business world there are going to be workplace politics with our co-workers, and everyone will be expected to use methods of communication that are consistent with the workplace identity kit. I think the hardest part will be embracing the values and norms of my career environment. Once I do that, it should be relatively easy to build an appropriate identity kit and use the genres that embrace the same ideals.

Wardle’s article raises an interesting point about authority that I had never considered before. I think it’s fair to say that most people believe there is a stringent hierarchy in every business, but else than the manager, it’s honestly hard to say who has authority over who. In Alan’s case, he believed himself to have intrinsic authority over others because his coworkers required his technical expertise to use computers to perform their job functions. Along with this attitude, he would talk down to his coworkers. On the other hand, Alan’s coworkers noticed that he was not effectively using workplace genres, and thus saw him as a tool to fix computers so they could continue to perform the important functions of the business. After reading this article, I believe that authority isn’t about being above someone. Rather, it is that one can use genres effectively, thus building a credible identity kit that can persuade others to work with them. As a management major, I need to understand this concept so that I can maintain my own authority and ensure my employees work well with their coworkers.

Navigating University Life

Coming from high school, I had no idea what to expect from college. It was so much bigger and scarier than any community I had been a part of. In my three years, I've grown accustomed  to university life, though it still comes with unique challenges.

Before college I guess I was a pretty sheltered child. I didn't go out very often at night and my parents were always able to keep a tab on me. Here at San Diego State, however, life is always on the go. A lot of us are living in dorms and apartment.

Of course there's a lot of pressure to lead a similar lifestyle to my friends at state. I want to stay on campus as long as they do, to stay up at odd hours with them, and express a lot of independence and freedom. In the beginning my friends had a hard time empathizing with my inability do the same things that they did simply because they didn't have my same limitations.

Living with my folks meant that they were still constantly snooping into what I was doing. Of course, my parents expected my social life to be the same as it always was before, when my community was pretty much just composed of the people in my neighborhood. They don't really understand why 'm away from home so often to meet with friends, because my community has shifted from where we live to the area surrounding San Diego State.

There is constant dissonance between the identity kit that I present in front of my university friends, and the one I show to my parents. Even though I only use one or the other in specific contexts, they still seem to conflict with the people outside those contexts. If I spend too much time exercising my social identity kit, it will upset my family and their expectations for me, but If exercise my family identity kit by staying home or being too responsive to my parents demands, then my friends won't think putting in enough effort to spend time with them. It's like walking on a tight rope when I try to balance the two. That is what I believe is meant by the "cost of affiliation".

This doesn't only function into my social life, but in fact has an influence on my academics as well. Despite their claims that school should always come first, the expectations of my parents come in between me and my school work. They don't know how much time college students these says have to commit to their classes in order to succeed, so they expect me to work plenty of hours which cuts into my available study time.

In my fourth year of college I'm still finding the perfect balance and trying to adapt. I guess what it all comes down to if I'm going to make sacrifices for them, if my family if going to make sacrifices for me in return.

Discourse Communities

When we were first discussing discourse communities, I was given the false impression that they were limited to a professional or academic context. It also did not help that Swales described the term with such complicated diction. Still, even though a discourse community isn't limited to a professional environment, that doesn't mean it's simply a social or linguistic community either. I can't really define what a discourse community is in one sentence, but Swales does give us guidelines that I will be following. What I can say is that you and I are engaged in rhetoric every single day, and the reason a discourse community may be so hard to explain is because they form so naturally that many of us don't even think about it.

When I first introduced myself in this blog, I mentioned my involvement on campus at SDSU, namely with AB Samahan. Well, as it turns out, this organization just so happens to be a discourse community! I'll admit that the organization is very much a social experience, but just that fact doesn't exclude it from being a discourse community. The organization still meets all of Swales' requirements as they are listed below:

1. A discourse community has a broadly agreed set of common public goals. The goals of AB Samahan are clearly layed out in the organization's constitution. This constitution is available to the public and acts as the objective that unites all members of the organization. In short, the goals of AB Samahan are, "to support educational enrichment and advancement through preserving, and increasing the awareness of the Filipino and Filipino American cultures through organized leadership, academic learning, and political and community involvement". However, the way that the various members act to achieve this goal varies.

2. A discourse community has mechanisms of intercommunication among its members. AB Samahan hosts weekly general body meetings that allow the members to communicate with one and another. It is here that members can inform each other of future events that are being organized or current situations that in some way influence our goal. I can apply the The Cafe Owner Problem to this organization. If I am Individual A, and other members are Individuals B and C, then even if we never interact, we are still considered to be part of a discourse community because we all have lines of communication back to the meeting. The organization establishes intercommunication with all members who attend meetings.

3. A discourse community uses its participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information and feedback. At any meeting or event, members have the opportunity to give feedback. This is usually about how members feel, how well an event was organized, and if the organization was successful in promoting the values and goals defined in the constitution. This often leads to discussion and rhetoric focused on how future organization activities can be better planned in accordance with the discourse community's goal.

4. A discourse community utilizes and hence possesses one or more genres in the communicative furtherance of its aims. There's a plethora of genres utilized by AB Samahan. Everything from informal oral communication, to newsletters, to social media like facebook, instagram, and twitter. Though those genres do not appear to be unique to this discourse community, they have been assimilated to fit the purposes of the organization. 

5. In addition to owning genres, a discourse community has acquired some specific lexis. As a cultural org our lexis is influenced by some cultural vocabulary. I'll often call other members Kuya (Big Brother), Ate (Big Sister), or Ading (little sibling) based on their age and how close they are to me. We also abbreviate events such as FG and JFAV or leadership positions like NSRs and CoCos. We even have unique phrases like SPUFs, which is like a chant to cheer on your fellow team mates and get everyone pumped. All of these words and phrases would likely be outright confusing to a random passerby, but to members of the discourse community, they have a very real meaning.

6. A discourse community has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discoursal expertise. In simpler terms, survival of the organization depends on a good ratio of experts to teach the novices. As a collegiate student organization, we have a very fluid member base that is always changing from year to year. However, though old members will leave and new members will join, there are always some elder members around to inform the new members about the values of the organization. So when the new members become the elders of the organization they will repeat this process to the then new members. This ensures that every generation will share the common public goal that the discourse community was founded on.

By meeting all six criteria, there is no doubt that AB Samahan is a discourse community, and one that I'm proud to be a part of!

Are Opinions Credible?

It is difficult to think of where I should begin my discussion of opinion editorials and JSTOR Daily articles, as the two genres are vastly different. Though I am happy to note that both are relatively short. It seems to me that a JOSTOR Dally article is an abridged version of an academic article, and an opinion editorial is simply an opinionated discussion of a topic.

In all honesty, I absolutely hate opinion editorials. They are a big part of what is wrong with our Internet sharing culture today. It's the perfect genre to pass misinformation and insinuations as facts. Although maybe I'm just brainwashed by the five paragraph essay and it simply doesn't meet my standards for rhetoric. One of my biggest issues is how the genre establishes credibility. A prime example of my point is "Liberals Are the Sort of People Who..." from Townhall. This opinion article does NOTHING to establish its credibility with you or me. All it does is throw around baseless accusations of how liberals are hypocrites, how they hate christianity, and how Hillary Clinton deserves jail time. The problem is that this editorial provides no evidence, no examples, and no statistics to back up its claims! So the only people that this could possibly establish credibility with are those that already share these opinions. I'll admit that, yes, an emotional argument can be very effective, but only if your audience can empathize with the emotions you are conveying, and frankly I have no empathy for the anger in this piece. You've got to wonder, is this useful rhetoric? The greatest pieces of rhetoric have been used to change people's opinions. So what's the point of rhetoric that won't captivate a new audience?

On the other hand, JSTOR Daily articles are an absolute pleasure to read. "Where American Public Schools Came From" claims that while many people in the United States are skeptical of public education at the college level, there is little to no argument of providing tax payed education for K through 12. The article then establishes its credibility with logos, describing the history of how public schooling came to be law. The article doesn't use overt opinions like "Liberals Are the Sort of People Who...", but it does have a bias. The article describes how there was arguments about if K through 12 schooling should be public and tax payed, something that we currently take for granted. So if someone compared it to our current argument over public college, they may be convinced that public college could do the same amount of good that public K through 12 did. So even though the article doesn't say, "Public College is good", and you have to read between the lines to get that message, it's still more convincing than the editorial that told you "Liberals are bad", simply because the article effectively established credibility.

I guess I should cut opinion articles some slack. After all, JSTOR Daily articles can be very dry in comparison because the author will distance themselves from the topics they discuss. One opinion editorial that I found to be an enjoyable read was "Trump’s history of corruption is mind-boggling. So why is Clinton supposedly the corrupt one?" Partially because I do agree with many of the opinions stated, but I do also believe there is an objective reason that this editorial is good. This editorial discusses Donald Trump's history with corruption, most notably Trump University. This editorial shares many of the faults of "Liberals are the Sort of People Who...", such as a lack of solid evidence, but it does describe how it is unable to provide evidence due to the lack of journalistic research conducted by media, which somewhat increases the editorials credibility. Over all, it's great to see the author's personal engagement in the subject. As I stated earlier, a problem with opinion editorials is that they only work if the audience can empathize with the author's emotions, but if they do manage to empathize, the opinion editorial can have a larger impact on the audience than a JSTOR Daily article does. I believe I'll always trust in the JSTOR Daily article more because of its credibility, but hopefully I can still find a few opinion editorials that will strike a chord with me.

Genre as a Tool

It was a tad difficult to swallow Devitt's meditation on genre, partially because years of indoctrination to the five paragraph essay had already been forced down my throat. The most difficult part was that genre, as it is defined in this context, had never been a part of my vocabulary before. As one might expect, my definition of genre was limited to different categories of media within music, film, and literature. However, I am beginning to realize its application to the various forms of rhetorical writing we use.

Devitt frames a large portion of her discussion around a genre that many students are familiar with: the five paragraph essay. Genres can be effective tools for rhetorical writing as they provide guidelines and a formula for how an argument is presented. In the case of the five paragraph essay, it typically begins with an introductory paragraph that introduces the topic and a thesis statement which states the author's position, followed by body paragraphs which provide evidence that supports the author's position, and ends with a conclusion paragraph that ties the evidence and thesis together. The reason this genre is so effective is because the audience, typically professors or fellow students, is also well versed in the genre. Thus, the audience is easily able to derive meaning from the author's rhetorical writing. It is important to note that genre is context heavy. For example, this blog post is not written in the five paragraph essay genre because my intended audience and purpose differ.

It all seems simple that genres provide us with guidelines for how to construct our rhetoric, however I quickly encountered issues in my junior year of high school when my teacher's asked me to deviate from the typical five paragraph structure.  Because I was taught over and over again how to write a five paragraph essay, I began to believe that it was the only way to form my rhetoric. I had not considered that there were other genres that I could employ because I had not studied them to a significant degree. My difficulty with genre was that it narrowed my view of rhetoric to a specific writing format, which in turn inhibited my ability to approach my papers with originality. Although, it would be unreasonable for me to learn no genre at all. Then I would have no direction in what rhetorical techniques are effective.

The solution is to consider genre awareness when teaching and learning genre. Instead of allowing one's writing to be dictated by a certain genre, it is important to learn a variety of different genre and understand why a genre is used to suit a particular purpose. An author can then express their originality and free thought by adjusting the elements of the particular genre they are writing or borrowing elements from other genres. This can lead to more effective rhetorical writing by combining elements that better organize the author's argument and presentation of information.

Of course once I graduate and I'm outside of an academic context, it is unlikely that I will encounter the five paragraph essay again. As a management major, I'll be employing the use of business letters more than any other genre in my professional career. Devitt asserts that, "When writers take up a genre, they take up that genre’s ideology. If they do it unaware, then the genre reinforces that ideology" (339). In this case it can still be useful for me to consider the five paragraph essay for the purposes of genre awareness as it and business letters have a different set of ideologies, but first we must ask what is meant by a genre having its own ideology.

A five paragraph essay has a lot of what I like to call "fluff". It can begin with very general observations and discussions that don't get narrowed down until the thesis statement, which is typically the last sentence of the first paragraph. It reflects an ideology within academia that is concerned with abstract concepts and processes. Alternatively, business letters are very concise and to the point. They will immediately state a position on an issue with additional details and context following after. This denotes business values of efficient communication, concrete information, and priority on what is happening above how or why. This is what Devitt means by an author will take up a genre's ideology. Whether intentional or not, if I write a business letter, it is implied that my values are aligned with those of typical business practices simply because of the way I present information. That is why it is important to have a sense of genre awareness, because otherwise an author might employ a genre that brings with it an ideology that is counterproductive to his or her argument.

I hope that I may gain an understanding in a wide range of genres so that I may use their ideologies to increase the effectiveness of my rhetoric and promote the identity kits that I will maintain through my life.