Category: Navigating Genres

Logan Aloise

Prof. Jill Belli

Navigating Genres

October 21, 2022

Some genres that I know well are romance, fiction, fantasy, drama, horror, humor, mystery, poetry, realistic fiction. I learned these genres throughout my time in years of schools. My teachers have taught lessons about these genres and topics. A rhetorical genre can be a useful phrase to describe a category of rhetoric or a methodology for analyzing a piece of rhetoric. It means that it is a recognizable pattern for providing specific kinds of information for an identifiable audience demanded by different types of circumstances that come up again and again. I think the journalism genre will be the most helpful for my research paper because it uses various journalism styles, fields, or separate genres, in writing accounts and events. Newspapers, Articles, and periodicals often contain features written by journalists. Many people specialize in this type of genre in depth of journalistic writing. Research articles requires a person to spend time investigating and evaluating sources with the intent to offer interpretations of the texts, and not unconscious regurgitations of those sources. Genres always make use of the various literary forms as foundations from which to stretch out in many directions of expression. Forms and genres join with content to create the meaning of a piece of writing. Meaning is the writer’s message to the reader. Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) and all-electric vehicles, also referred to as battery electric vehicles (BEVs), are both capable of being powered solely by electricity, which is produced in the United States from natural gas, coal, nuclear energy, wind energy, hydropower, and solar energy. In full electric mode, an electric car produces zero tailpipe emissions, dramatically lowering smog and greenhouse gas emissions even when considering electricity generation. Cleaner cars mean cleaner air and better health. Electric vehicles use electricity to charge their batteries instead of using fossil fuels like petrol or diesel. Electric vehicles are more efficient, and that combined with the electricity cost means that charging an electric vehicle is cheaper than filling petrol or diesel for your travel requirements. nonfiction genre is about the issues surrounding events that are relevant to the present and the people that live in the present and the future. Nonfiction genre would be the best to talk about the issues of surrounding current events that is relevant to the present and the people that live in the present and the future.

As a child, I had mainly experienced 3 fiction genres. Fantasy, Sci-fi, historical fiction, and mystery. These three genres made up a huge part of my childhood as all of the cool shows and books had one or more of these three genres. Growing up reading Rick Riordan was really interesting for me. His books had taught me a lot about different mythologies that I would have never known or looked deeply into. Watching Doctor Who gave me a sense of wonder on what is really beyond our planet. It taught me that there are infinite possibilities and that one’s future is never set in stone. Finally, playing plenty of different games taught me a lot about thinking outside of the box and not limiting myself to a certain mindset. What all of these have in common however, is that they apply to different aspects of their consumers. Whether it be one’s emotional attachment to a specific character, presenting ideas that conflict with what the consumer may believe, or just being super relatable at times. These are all different forms of rhetoric, and they all help create stories worth caring for.

For research however, the best genres to use are reports and review/critique essays. The reason that these genres would be good is because reports contain data based on experiments done. Data itself is good for any type of research considering the purpose of research is to come to a logical conclusion based on evidence. Review/critique essays would be good for the topic I’m doing because my topic is partially based on players’ experience. Considering that a player’s experience is inherently based on a person’s bias, it would work well to see how a large number of people view specific games (i.e., game reviews) that didn’t do well upon release.

I believe all of us are familiar with genre of some kind or another. The media we consume and the things we like more than likely influence what we are familiar with. Having seen and observed a lot of media throughout my life time I believe I am familiar with a large number of genres. But of course there are some genre more dear to me than others. What are primarily shaped this would be my interests and hobbies as well as some good old research.

A genre I particularly love would be science fiction, particularly the cyberpunk. While I have been interested in science fiction for a long time, the cyberpunk genre is something I got more into more recently. I love movies that explore scientific concepts and probabilities and delve into the laws of physics. I also like to watch science related videos and particularly like watching the Vsauce YouTube channel which I believe really brought about my love for science. While science fiction in general is more difficult to describe the nuances of, given it encompasses a very wide subject matter. While not always featured, the fear of the unknown is something prevalent in most science fiction. Creating an entity or situation beyond regular human understanding gives a sense of suspense and dread while still keeping room to explain the subject or object of the movie later on. Also most science fiction is usually not comedic in nature thought it might be comedic or have a comedic tone, like the movie Dr. Strangelove. Describing the rhetoric of the cyberpunk genre is more easier. I was introduced to the genre playing the video game (shocker I know) Dues Ex and movies such as BladeRunner. Most cyberpunk settings are set in a bleak dystopian future where humanity is extremely dependent on machines and controlled by a higher authority or sometimes the machines themselves. World building is one of the most prominent, if not the most important, feature of the cyberpunk genre. The settings are often very rich and vibrant, detailing the lives of the various people living in it and how they go about their lives sometimes even incorporating these details into the story to create plot devices and compel the audience. The plot in cyberpunk stories is most of the time very stoic and gritty showing every side of the human nature and how they can easily be influenced.

Another genre I believe would be useful for my Unit 2 research is research narrative. My topic is mostly concerned with facts and actual research which can backup claims and provide context to the various conceptions and misconceptions we may have. Research narratives usually contain a large collection of sources as well as interpretations on them so that the audience can better understand them. Being able to access such a large collection of sources from one place is also a bonus since the source are usually cited so I can use them for myself as well.

The word genre is weird to me. Although genre is present in things such as music and art, when referring to genre, I usually think of writing and books. When I see the words genre, I usually associate it with the genres that I know well growing up such as the two major genres fiction and non-fiction. The other genres that I began to like reading about were action, horror, mystery, and especially science fiction. Most of these I picked up reading around elementary to middle school. My favorite series would always be the Magic Tree House by Mary Pope Osborne. Eventually, I read three of the seven Harry Potter books by J.K. Rowling. From these books, I enjoyed the mix of feelings of mystery and action through fantasy. These books all shared a common feature of using metaphors and personification which for some reason really worked well in capturing my attention as a kid.

In regards to my research question, I think that the genre that would be best for giving me good information in Unit 2 is definitely history, biography, and philosophy. My research asks the question of how music influenced or played a role in supporting certain movements in America regarding struggle. I think that history would be strong since there’s no better evidence in research than the event itself taking place. The genre of biography could be used to describe what it was like and what caused such events to take place. And lastly, philosophy would explain why. I’ve done quite a bit of research, before this genre assignment, and most of it is a form of two of these three genres mixed together. I anticipate discovering new genres along the way, but for now, I feel that these three genres will pose the strongest in aiding my research.

The genres I feel I know well are Action and Adventure. I have not really enjoyed anything other than action and adventure as I feel like almost everything is considered an action and adventure story. The way my interest in learning about the action and adventure genre increased is by playing video games such as The Witcher 3, Cyberpunk 2077, and Control. Each of these games has its own way of telling the story of the main character through the use of pathos, logos, ethos, and kairos. The Witcher uses ethos, pathos, and kairos to tell the story of Geralt in his search for his daughter who is on the run for the Wild Hunt. In Cyberpunk the use of pathos, ethos, and kairos is also very important. The story in Cyberpunk is about the main character V who has a cybernetic implant that threatens to overwrite V’s body with the personality of someone who is dead. And finally, the story of Control is about Jesse Faden’s personal search for answers about her brother. With the use of Logos, ethos, and pathos she grows into the role of the Director in a secret U.S. government agency tasked with containing and studying phenomena that violate the laws of reality. Overall, these games, each with very different stories contain the same action and adventure genre that keeps me playing these games and enjoying the story for what they are.  

Some genres I think that might give me good information for Unit 2 are information genres and primary information. The reason for this is that primary information involves having facts as the main source and can help me with supporting my ideas and my side of my research. Using articles also makes my research easier because articles also have their citations and that allows me to have multiple forms of information for myself. Overall, nothing that has opinions will be used for my research because they don’t prove my point. Instead, they work against me because I am not using facts. 

There are many genres, some that we know of and there is some that are unheard of that many of us cause we do not exist. or the case maybe that others know more about a certain genre then the rest of us vice versa. Personally I am well educated on most of the genres that I’ve been taught in the past years. I few that I am well aware of is thriller, horror fiction. nonfiction and fiction. Horror is the one genre that I’m most interested about I love to read anything with horror and scary things! So i know most about that in non-fiction. I learned them in school Because I was constantly gave nonfiction books to read. I also know what the genre is because I’ve had to write and figure out what genre was a certain type of reading that I read. The common features in the horror genre is Your typical ”scary movie” outline. instead it’s not pictures actual words printed on paper. when you are reading anything with horror you tend to read about ghost, graves, haunted objects or houses. Four can be fictional or nonfictional because the Author could be telling a real life story, based on true events. on the other hand it could be completely made up. some of the genres that I would like to learn more about in unit two is Humor. Because I still don’t understand how you could write something that involves humor I would like to see different passages with the genre been humor. For some reason I cannot fully grasp the concept of tha type of writing. Along does a comedy, Once again I’m not sure if it’s two different genres or if they are connected but those are the ones I’ve never really understood and would really like to see more im unit two, just to step out of my comfort zone! The Genre that would probably help with my research for unit two is non-fiction because I would be reading peoples real life experiences, thoughts and emotions.