Post #1: rhetorical situations and genres

Rhetorical situations and genres are largely connected in one way, which is that they are both situational. Bitzer states, “Rhetorical works belong to the class of things, which obtain their character from the circumstances of the historic context in which they occur”. A rhetorical situation is one that called the discourse into existence.  Both of these explanations can relate to what a genre is.  When people think of genre they think of what category the book, movie, reading, they have would fall under, like comedy, horror, romance and so on. Both of these things fall under their own categories due to the content they contain. Sydnee opened my eyes to a deeper way to connect the two together when she stated a new genre could be the result of a situation that requires a response. This shows that genres are not as concrete as they may seem and new ones can arise as new works are created, which widens the boundaries of writing just like rhetorical situations does.

The understanding of rhetorical situations and genres can help us understand everyday writing because it helps us specify our writing more than before. It helps us focus on one situation more and correctly categorize the writing. As these readings pointed out different works may seem they fit into more than one genre perfectly but when you look deeper that is not the case. With the more in depth understanding of genre we will be able to have our everyday writing more specified to a certain genre. With the outlines that both of these give us it will also allow us to analysis readings and writing better and understand them like Claire pointed out.