By Steven S. Kapica Writing courses are not like other courses (or at least they shouldn’t be). In the writing classroom (we often call them workshops to connote shaping and crafting, actively working on something rather than passively ingesting content), you are not expected to learn something and then repeat it verbatim on a test. Writing doesn’t work that way. True, there are rules to writing, from basic grammatical principles to genre tropes, but college writing classes are not about rules. They are about writing. And students are expected to, well, write. A number of questions could (should) pop into your head after reading that last statement. Write. Okay. Write what? What kinds of writing? How much writing? And what was that about grammar, genre, and rules? The answer to the third question is simple: A lot. But I’d like to focus on the first two in this post. Take a look at this screenshot of a board from one of my classes: Divorced of context (what class?), you might struggle with understanding what’s going on, but if you look at the board long enough, you should see patterns, familiar words. Look a little longer and you might begin to parse out what the discussion was about (“methods of composing”?).
What will likely draw your eye, though, is the big squiggly line that runs from one end of the board to the other. It starts on the left with “not fully formed” (and just to the left of that, we have “idea/brainstorm”) and then it makes its squiggly way across and up the board to end in an arrow pointing at “finalizes.” The squiggly line is the process by which an idea makes its way to a formalized, finished (publishable) product. It’s a squiggle because writing’s path is never straight. Now. If you look past the squiggle to the other lines, you should see that on the left is “personal.” On the right, is “public.” This continuum is bisected by a line (the squiggle makes its way through that line, too). Almost looks like a sine graph, doesn’t it? This pseudo-sine graph is my way of explaining what writing is—it’s forms, functions, and methods. On the one side, is the personal (expression). Writing is an act of thinking and thinking is both idiosyncratic and personal. We may think the same things, but we do not think in the same way. When our thinking emerges in words, and those words collect into sentences (language’s organizing unit; see Stanley Fish How to Write a Sentence), we get something that is unique and (you guessed it) personal. What are the most personal kinds of writing? Journals and diaries. Bad poems we write in the throes of love (or rejection or despair or…). Deeply personal writing is rarely, if ever, meant to be anything but our own. It isn’t meant to be seen by others. And it doesn’t need to make sense to anyone other than us. It can break the rules because the rules don’t really matter when we are the only ones who will ever see it. Okay. Let’s leave the heartbreak and slant rhyme and flip to the other side of the spectrum: public. What are the most public kinds of writing? The news. Speeches. Textbooks, maybe. Public writing is meant to be consumed by lots of people. And because it’s meant to be read by lots of people, it has to be easily understood by all those people. Public writing, then, usually follows lots of rules. In fact, you might say that the rules exist because they are necessary in order to make what’s being said understood by lots of people. So. We have this spectrum: On one end, we have acts of personal expression; on the other end, we have acts of public discourse (communication). I argue that all writing falls somewhere on this spectrum. You can test this idea out. Where on the spectrum would you place the following texts?
Now. Where we place these pieces of writing (all of which fall within certain genres of writing—the personal letter, the news article, the scholarly article, the academic essay) depends, in part, on our perceptions of them (and their “audiences”). It also depends, in part, on writing conventions. But here’s the thing that you may not have noticed: Private and public are connected. To rely on a lame cliché, I might say they are “two halves of the same coin,” or “you can’t have one without the other.” If this is true (it is), then all writing is both personal and public. Difference lies in how personal or how public the writing is. And that difference often manifests itself in rules, conventions, genre tropes, and audience expectations. Huh? Look back at two of the texts listed above: letter to your mother; academic essay. On the surface, these two texts are immediately recognizable as different, right? You’re not (I don’t imagine) going to write an essay for your organizational management class like you would write a letter to your mother, right? Why not? This may seem like a dumb question, but it’s a question that relies on your sense of audience. Your mother is not (I hope) your organizational management professor. Her expectations for your writing are different than those of your professor. If you turned a letter to your mother in to your professor, he might laugh at you. If you sent your mother your organizational management essay, she might throw up her hands in exasperation. And that’s not because she might not know the content/subject area you are writing about; rather, it’s because her expectations are for something more personal. Your mother might not care about organizational management; what she wants from you is the personal stuff (how are you feeling, are you getting enough to eat, do you miss me?). Switch the genre expectations for each of these modes of writing and both audiences will not be satisfied. This silly little comparison, then, goes a long way toward explaining the roles audience and genre play in writing: Audience matters almost as much as purpose… When students receive poor grades on essays for college classes, it often has to do with mismanagement of audience expectations. If your writing is too informal, for instance, then your great ideas might be overlooked because of your professor’s style expectations. This is unfortunate, but it happens. It’s like receiving a package in the mail and judging the contents by the looks of the box. If the box is all smashed up, you might assume that its contents are likewise smashed and/or broken. However, you might open the box and discover its contents are unharmed. An essay with excellent ideas and insights might, on the surface, look broken because the grammar is poor, or the formatting is off, or, God forbid, sources aren’t properly cited. Don’t get me wrong, often that busted up package does, in fact, contain broken goods. Professors might be occasionally, marginally justified in complaining about the appearance of your writing—about those broken rules and lack of consistency with regard to conventions. But those are easy fixes, especially when you understand that “correctness” is not a matter of mastering one standard to rule them all, but a matter of navigating (and writing to) audience expectations. Just remember: When you’re writing a college essay, you’re not writing a letter to your mom. Instead, you’re writing to her judgmental ass of a boyfriend who’s never really cared for you… Know your genre(s)… I’m a film buff. If I’d had more self-confidence, more faith in my talents, more chutzpa, I would have pursued filmmaking instead of what I do now. Like legions of kids enamored with the magic of the silver screen, I wanted to write and direct my own movies. I love them all—the good ones, the bad ones, and the bad ones that are so bad they’re good. What does any of this have to do with college writing? Simple: The concept of “genre” is most recognizable in film. Have you seen The Avengers? You have? Okay. What kind of film is it? I’m not even going to dignify that question with an answer it’s so obvious. And that’s the point. If you’ve ever watched any movies, you’ve experienced the power of genre. Consider: Would you put The Avengers in the same category (genre) as, say The Purge?! One is a superhero action film; the other is a horror movie. And while each may have moments that transcend their genre’s, they mostly follow the common tropes of their respective genres. The same is true with writing. Genre matters. A formal lab report is going to have different genre expectations than a personal narrative. If you’re struggling to write to/for a specific audience, then consider the features of the genre your audience expects you to be writing from within, and let those guide you.
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