StepAside

christ, b. >sigh

what's "useful" about the genre chapter? the whole thing's useful to me, b/c i use genre to talk about everything. or, rather, the whole thing is an overview of more specific stuff that's useful to me. it was also frustrating to read b/c i spent 5 weeks last year WRITING this chapter, and i would have SO been saved the effort if i'd had clark in hand then!

the assignment she had her students do is useful; i've thought about doing something similar & might in 205 (or might not, since i don't really understand yet what "critical research" means & how it's categorized--the genre essays seem more like 307 assignments like ty's had his students do this year instead).

but for me, genre is a conceptual pivot-point for looking at grammar/style/access/englishes/etc., etc., etc., because it's in some ways so specifically localized (what's the "correct" genre for a business letter addressed to x kind of audience) that it's accessible as a site of tension in ways that taking on something as huge as "standard english style" isn't--but also it can be used as a way of looking at just about ANYTHING, because "genre" really is just a word for "type," and "type" can be defined in terms of artifacts (the "classical" model) or actions (the "rhetorical" model)--which is why amy devitt finds herself pollyanna-ing it & calling it the saving grace of english/writing/everything.

Behold--a useful chapter! The very cockles of my heart are warmed.
So why should the other members of the class stir their stumps & read this chapter?

OMG, you all, we're approaching the end of our allotted time. Class dismissed, and thank you for playing. Whatever the aggravations you've experienced with the genre, from my perspective this has been a great success. In fact, here on my blog I'll start a thread that reflects on my experience today, and I hope you all will post to it, if you're interested.
And you can stay today and keep "talking" as much as you wish, of course!
And because these threads will stay online, you can return to them and continue to post to them. That would be extremely interesting, I think. Because I'm sure we'll all have more to say after today's conversations, and after some cogitation may want to make more entries. Eventually today's threads will drop into the blog archives, but you can return to them easily, by clicking today's date in the calendar that's on the main page of this blog.
Thanks for a great morning!
Becky

"heh heh. heh heh. she said 'cockle.'"