Bravo 1

Major Assignment 2 Redemption

Since graduating from high school and transitioning into “adult life”, I've realized there are so

many things that I thought I knew a lot about that I really had no clue about. Things like working every

day and having to do things like cooking, cleaning, and doing laundry have really humbled me in my early

days of college. When I was brainstorming for this essay, I was having a really hard time coming up with

what I wanted to talk about. I'll be the first to admit that when I read the assignment and what it was

about, I had absolutely no interest in it whatsoever. However, as I started thinking about what I was

going to write about, I began to recognize patterns in my everyday life. In every type of literature, there

are certain structures, word choices, and phrases called “genre moves” that make their way into a

document, and professional emails is no exception.

Over the summer of 2023, I was given the opportunity to intern at a civil engineering firm. I went

into the office four days a week and spent my time working on various projects for the firm, albeit under

heavy supervision due to my lack of experience and college degree. Along with learning different

software and various aspects of civil engineering, I also learned how to be in a professional office and

how to act around coworkers and clients. One of the big parts of working in an office is writing many,

many emails to a lot of different people. When I was thinking about my topic for this essay, I eventually

decided to look back at some of these emails and I realized that there are genres within these emails as

well.

When people think of genres, their minds very often think of things such as genres of movies or

music. And while its true genres are most often used to describe these types of things, they can also be

used to categorize almost anything you can think of. In his article “Navigating Genres”, Kerry Dirk quotes

another scholar, Carolyn Miller, who says

 Bravo 2

To consider as potential genres such homely discourse as the letter of recommendation, the user

manual, the progress report, the ransom note, the lecture, and the white paper, as well as the eulogy,

the apologia, the inaugural, the public proceeding, and the sermon, is not to trivialize the study of

genres; it is to take seriously the rhetoric in which we are immersed and the situations in which we find

ourselves (Dirk, 254).

In other words, what Carolyn Miller is saying is that it is important to look at all aspects of life

when studying genres because they are all around us in the patterns they represent.

While looking back on various emails I have sent out during my time interning, I couldn’t help

but notice certain patterns that appeared in almost every single email I sent. Every email would typically

start with a good morning/good afternoon, followed by whatever the topic of the email was, and then

end with a thank you. An example of this structure is portrayed in Artifacts One and Two. As seen, all the

emails between myself and the people I was talking to follow this general structure. While there is no

written rule that requires this, it seemed to be a standard among every person I communicated with

throughout my internship.
 Bravo 3

Along with this basic structure, the verbiage used is very different from how I would speak or write in an

ordinary setting with my friends or family. There are countless examples that I would bet I can find in

most if not all of the emails I sent. One good example is the phrase “Please find the attached files” in the

second screenshot. In a normal setting, no sane person is having a conversation and talking like this. In a

professional environment, however, this is the standard. These examples are what creates the patterns

and moves that define a genre.

These pattern falls into the framework of Rhetorical Situation, another framework Kerry

references in his article. As an example, he creates a fake scenario involving a kidnapping and provides

three different ransom letters. When looking at just the words, all three send the exact same message,

that the kidnapper has taken the man’s daughter and is demanding money. However, when taking into

account the words and phrases used in each letter, each one comes across in a different way that reflects

on the author. The idea conveyed in this exercise is the concept of rhetorical situation. While this idea is

used to discuss many different topics, it has a big influence on certain aspects of a genre. Once again,

Kerry Dirk quotes Carolyn Miller, “a rhetorically sound definition of a genre must be centered . . . on the

action it is used to accomplish” (Dirk, 252). In the ransom letters, the kidnapper is trying to convince the

reader to give him money and be scared of what could happen to his daughter if he doesn’t pay up. This

leads to certain patterns forming in these types of letters as most if not all ransom letters more or less

have the same goal in mind. Much like rhetorical situation can be applied to ransom letters, it can also be

applied to my example of professional emails. If we take a look at Artifact 2, there are many different

ways I can rewrite it, however, if I were to do that, I may not get the reaction I am looking for. For

example, If I were to rewrite it as “Oi I’ve got a fever, I will not be hitting the office today” there is a very

high chance that I would not get a positive reaction from my boss. This is because there is a certain

professional genre that people are expected to follow in this setting. Another example would be starting

a funeral speech with “What’s up my goofy goobers” or watching a comedy movie that doesn’t even try
 Bravo 4

to be funny. There are certain words and phrases that are purposely used in certain situations to invoke

some emotion from the audience which in turn creates a “genre” of that scenario

In general, when people think of genres, they think of movies, TV shows, music, and video

games. While it is true that all of these things have well-defined genres, that is also true for almost every

form of literature. A genre is any sort of pattern the audience of a piece of literature can recognize. In

some cases, it can refer to things such as what kind of instruments are used in a song, or what things a

character in a movie might do, or it can refer to things such as diction and the use of certain phrases and

sentence structures. Because of this, we are able to find genres in every aspect of our lives such as

books, emails, speeches, and even social media posts and text messages. One thing that I’ve started

doing while brainstorming for this essay is trying to look for patterns in everything around me and it is

mind-blowing what you start to pick up on once you really try to recognize genres in everyday life.

Works Cited

Dirk, Kerry. "Navigating genres." Writing spaces: Readings on writing 1 (2010): 249-262.
 Bravo 5

Reflection
 Bravo 6

On my first submission of this essay, I did a very poor job of defining my argument and

connecting it all together. Looking back on my writing process, it was incredibly strange compared to how

I normally go about working on assignments. Normally I tend to procrastinate until one or two days before

and even while writing this forgiveness assignment, I followed this strategy. However, for some reason for

this assignment, I did the exact opposite. I began working on the essay much earlier than I normally do

and was able to get basically all of my argument planned out with a week left before it was due. Reflecting

on the main idea, I actually think it was a very good idea that had a poor execution by me. As the due

date came closer and closer when I would usually tend to become more motivated, I began to get tired

and it eventually led to a lot of sloppy errors such as forgetting to properly format things, and also led to

my argument being less cohesive and polished. The night before it was due, I tried to do some polishing,

but I found my motivation just wasn’t there and I ended up submitting an unfinished essay. After getting

my grade on major assignment 2 and revising it for this new assignment, I have learned many things that

I can use to improve my writing in the future. The big thing is that I need to try and find ways to be more

motivated, especially before submitting an assignment. I also spent more time looking at the rubric.

Typically in the past, I looked at the rubric once and then forgot about it for the rest of the assignment.

While revising, I decided to try and actively use the rubric while revising in order to get some extra points.

Overall, I am very grateful for the opportunity to try and revise the essay in order to get a few more points

on it and I learned many things to help me in the future