Navigating Genres

Kerry Dirk’s definition of a genre was mainly focused on how a new situation requires a
response and how every encounter with such situation will produce a response founded on the
first response. Genres are everywhere and most times to recognize a genre a person needs
previous experience with it. When it comes to writing, writing a letter compared to writing a text
can be considered two different genres. It all depends on what the writing wants to accomplish.
A genre helps organize and structure different situations by taking into consideration what it
wants to accomplish or the response it wants to produce, who the target audience is, and the like.
What a genre does not do is provide a baseline for every kind of genre. There is not a single rule
that is universal throughout all genres. We need genres in order, as I stated before, to organize
and structure different situations but also to adapt and take knowledge from previous experience
when faced with a new situation.
My original idea of a genre had nothing to do with Dirk’s. It was not nearly as in depth. I
simply assumed a genre was anything that could fit into a box. However, it is more than that.