Dipsiner1 Evan Dipsiner Leslie Wolcott ENC 1102 13 September 2012 Generalizing about Genre: Amy Devitt Summary

Since the beginning of literature, writing has been formed in a copious amount of ways, their organization by genre is one of the oldest ways and has been developing into a new form. The dichotemies that are formed in writing are; form and content which leads to extreme differences from an analytical approach. These perspectives of what genres should be within a community are varying from individual to individual. Todorov/Miller, 576. Analysis Throughout Generalizing about Genre by Amy Devitt, Devitt illustrates through her words how genre studies are vastly generalizations of the dichotomies of people and are Indeterminant and dependent on the diversity and education of our superiors. Devitt uses logos to support Todorov's claim by using the logic that the amount of genres available to a community are solely based on how interested and influenced they are by the subject. Furthermore, the content that goes into the form of writing is the most important way to define a genre, the format does not exclude a writing from being a certain type of writing. In merging form and content, we do not wish to discard the significance of form in genre (Coe, Apology). The writer uses facts from a source to support that form should not negate the genre of a writing. Reintegration of form into writing is a valuable aspect of genre, if there is no way to combine the two into one genre, the many more genres are created. Devitt uses repitition to focus on the point that genre should be only determined by form and content, not one or the other.