Amy Devitt's Genres

Within Amy Devitt’s academic research article titled "Teaching Critical Genre Awareness,” she discusses about genres and its ideology. By “genre,” Devitt is referring to the writing style and how they differ according to occasion. For instance, some of the genres we use at school are essays, and research papers. The former consists of a very strict guideline to follow, with a thesis, intro, three body paragraphs, and a conclusion. The writing is very formal and has little room for creativity. Meanwhile, research papers are formal, and require that the writer incorporate credible text from an expert to support his/her idea. This is the way we have been taught to write for academic papers ever since we were young and it is what we are used to.  

This topic reminded me of when I was a writer intern for an online company, in which I published news for various different websites. I wrote articles for the beauty website, electronics, and K-pop to name a few. Depending on which website I was writing an article for, I took on a different type of personality in my writing style. For K-Pop, I was more enthusiastic and excited. For electronics, I wrote in a more intellectual and formal writing style. Meanwhile, for the beauty website, I used a more girly tone of writing. I did not realize I did it then, but am aware of it now that we are discussing writing genres.  

The fact that we use different writing genres doesn’t only apply to writing products like an essay, but is also true when we are communicating with someone online. Our writing style changes online depending on who we’re talking to, and even what website or social media platform we’re using. To friends who we are close to, we write to them in an informal and casual style. To those we aren’t close to, our writing might be short and formal. We also write differently when we’re writing a Facebook update compared to when we respond to a comment on YouTube.

Devitt believes genre awareness is important because if students can understand the various writing styles, it can help students improve and become better writers. Being aware of different genres makes it more comfortable to write different genres and when we’re more comfortable, we naturally write better. This is especially important for our future careers where we may be asked to write various genres on a daily basis. It makes it less of a hassle if we are prepared and comfortable to write the specific genre.

When Devitt states, “When writers take up a genre, they take up that genre's ideology,” she means that writers take up the characteristics of the genre they are writing. For example, when we write a research paper, we know it must be informational and include supportive evidence from credible sources to back up our opinions. It does not contain any emotions or personal stories. Likewise, an essay has its own characteristics as mentioned previously. This is usually the five paragraph paper with an intro, thesis, body paragraphs, and conclusion. It is entirely different from a research paper. All genres have unique ideologies that makes it easy to differentiate itself from one another. Just like music genres.

Lastly, Devitt means that genres have so much power and structure because they direct us to write in a certain way. This is most likely because we have been taught to write in such a way already, so we continue to write in the same way. As mentioned before, the way we write an essay is something we know by heart now because we were taught to do it the same way growing up. We all know the same structure of an essay. Or a research paper. Or a resume. The structures of different genres is common to all of us and in that way, genres have so much power because it directs our writing.