Midterm Personal Reflection Project: 5 Things I Learned

1.
Photo Caption Lists are News Articles Too
Throughout this course, my personal definition of news articles has expanded. I had
originally thought of journalism articles as hard-facts stories telling the unbiased who and
what and where. Opinion pieces, photo lists, and restraint reviews were classified as
something other, something not-news. Now, I have learned about the categories of hard
and soft news and their places in journalism. Hard news covers immediate
who/what/why/when/where/how facts while soft news is more commentary and
storytelling. Both of these pieces are vital to journalism’s goal of keeping the public
informed. Hard news and soft news could be considered genres, as they are actions and
structures that journalists utilize to make meaning to their audience. One type of article
does not fit all stories. Some stories require unbiased factual relaying, while some stories
can be in creative formats and individual styles. When writing our first articles, I
attempted to make both hard and soft news style articles on the topic of study abroad. I
found rather quickly that there was not much of a hard news story to study abroad
preparations and memories. There was nothing immediate or factually intriguing about
such aspects. However, soft news style articles held endless possibilities for the topic of
stories from study abroad. I could directly insert people’s own words and relevant
pictures into my article. Though if felt less formal, I was still practicing journalism.
 Creating a photo captions list with my group similarly did not feel like traditional
journalism, but we were actually writing a soft news piece.

2. Meaning Making Is What You Make of It

The nuances of meaning and interpretation may seem more like philosophy than
journalism, but this concept is important for all interpersonal communication and writing.
During class discussions, we talked about how different people and discourse
communities will draw meaning and significance in different ways. All characters see a
cat in the book They All Saw a Cat, but they all view its form, meaning, and importance
differently. The same goes for writing and rhetoric. The author puts meaning into their
work, but the reader draws and makes meaning from the material that the author has
presented. The author can influence the meaning that the reader makes, but this is
ultimately up to the reader. The author is making meaning when she tells the audience
what she believes is meaningful, but readers may make meaning with it in another way.
One way for an author to clarify their meaning and ensure that the readers are making
meaning in the way the author intends is to include related images or descriptive word
pictures. These features in an article aid in telling the reader the meaning the author
wishes to make and to be more direct in creating that meaning. The article "Genre in the
Wild" supports the theory that meaning is made by the genre as well as the words in the
piece. Meaning is made when a genre is selected is response to the social and rhetorical
situation and not simply “poured” into the genre’s structure.
3. Discourse Communities are Everywhere
I remember feeling so confused while reading my first articles on defining discourse
communities. The academic discussions on vague descriptions and shifting qualifications
made the concept seem difficult. The Swales articles clearly outlines definitions and
requirements for discourse communities, which helped me to further understand them as
not just gatherings of people but a specific type of community. Discourse communities
gather, write, and share information around a common goal. People belong to many
different discourse communities, often for short periods of time, moving in and out of
various ones. We identified our class, ENGL2089, as a discourse community due to its
common goals, intercommunication, feedback, genres, lexis, and member requirements.
There will be countless discourse communities of various sizes in any audience, so the
author should select a small target audience of a few communities and write according to
that. Each discourse community has certain genres, mediums, and themes that appeal to
them; an author must know the discourse communities that make up their audience and
adjust their rhetoric accordingly. An author must choose their genre with care to address
the cultural situation, social structure, and actions of the chosen group. Knowing how
targeted discourse communities make meaning enables the writer to create meaning in a
way that will make sense to them.
4.
Audience is Everything
Near the start of the semester, we did an activity where we wrote out lists of qualities of
universally good writing and good writing for the Activist. We then went through and
found examples for each where a piece containing each quality was bad writing. Our list
said that proper grammar was required for good writing, but a social media post may
utilize poor grammar to effectively share its message, so in this case bad grammar is part
of good writing. We came to the conclusion that certain qualifications would or would
not work based on their intended audience. This led us to the conclusion that knowing
your audience is the only requirement to be considered good writing. To know your
audience, you must consider which discourse communities you are targeting and shape
your rhetoric to appeal to them. A medium, genre, or word choice that holds meaning for
one audience may not hold the same meaning for different audience. Genre, medium,
word choice, lexis, and subject matter can all be adjusted to make your writing
meaningful to your audience. For example, a news article on chemical reactions may
involve slang, pictures, and more common formatting if aimed at high school students,
while APA formatting and formal language will be involved if the target audience is
readers of an academic journal. Genre is mainly classified by the people who use them as
symbols for situations. The rhetorical, cultural, and literary principles of your audience
determine how they will receive and perceive the genre you select for your rhetoric,
which is why knowing your target discourse communities is so important.
5. So Many Genres
My original classifications of genre were previously limited to the sections at the library:
non-fiction, fiction, poetry, graphic novel, children’s books, and such. Photo caption lists,
lab reports, and journal entries were not included on my list. I had not realized there were
so many genres or understood how they all cast a different view on same piece of
material. For example, the poem “Still I Rise” by Maya Angelou has slightly different
emphasis and meaning when read by the author as opposed to on paper. On paper its
genre was poetry, but when read the genre changed to performance. One paper it was a
call of emotion and empowerment; when read by the author it became a personalized,
dramatic celebration. The content of the poem remained the same, but the genre that was
used affected the use of the writing and how it was used. Various genres carry particular
requirements, making some subjects difficult to fit into certain genres. Maya Angelou’s
poem will likely never be morphed into the genre of medical patient reviews. Each
discourse community has genres that it prefers and takes the most meaning from, so
selecting the right genre helps you reach your chosen audience better. The “right” genre
depends on the context of your audience, culture, subject matter, and approach. I also had
not considered the depth of the study of genre. Theories of genre have been discussed and
debated in depth, for genre is not as simple a concept as it seems. Genre is not merely a
classification or a format; it is a standard and a fluid social action. Many current theories
believe that genre should be defined by the people who use them and make meaning with
them in rhetorical situations. Coming into this class, I would never have expected people
to have written academic books and articles on the subject of genre. Having tasted the
depth of the proposed theories, I appreciate the need for numerous pieces on this rich
subject.