#1

Hello Classmates,

Just to share a little bit about myself, my name is Kari and I am 22 years old and I have lived in Santa Barbara for 4 years. People always ask the same ANNOYING question, “where are you from?” how many times has some random person decided to ask you this question? A lot? Yeah me to… and this is quite possibly the hardest question for me to answer. I was born in San Francisco and moved around California more times than I can count before moving to Sweden, where I spent seven years before making the decision to move back to California on my own for college. With that confusion out of the way, I like to spend my free time in the great outdoors. I am an avid hiker, and when visiting home you can find me out with the many different farm animals, llamas, pigs, sheep, you name it we probably have it. I am also really passionate about photography, portrait photography to be exact and it’s been a hobby of mine for several years with a few odd jobs here and there. 

Some other fun facts, my favorite book is Unbroken, my favorite movie is pretty much anything with Channing Tatum in it, and there’s nothing better than some tacos and a cold beer.

Other than that this is my first time blogging, and hopefully will get better at with time!

When I think of the word “Genre” what comes to mind first, is movies and books but after reading ‘Navigating Genres’ by Kerry Dirk and by using country music as an example, I have a better understanding of what makes a genre. For example in class when we listed what makes a country song a country song, it is really hard to then imagine or categorize a country song that doesn’t relate to any of those conventions.

What really interested me was when Dirk mention that genres function as social actions and that we predict how they function rhetorically without even thinking about it. For example I usually don’t put much thought into things like Facebook statuses, but it makes sense that you write something a specific way to get a certain desired response, consciously or not. This kind of relates to the readings we had on ‘Understanding Rhetoric’ and ‘Everything is an argument’, and how nearly every type of writing can actually be considered some form of an argument. Continuing on with the example of Facebook statuses, I commonly see people using pathos or emotional appeals in their writing to get the response they are looking for. Whether it’s just a cry for attention or to deliberately make others feel things like happiness, jealousy or anger, in this day and age arguments have the ability to become epidemic, now that almost anyone can publicize their thoughts and opinions. Overall I think this weeks readings really highlight the significance of genre and rhetoric and that rhetorical situations can be very dynamic.