Anthony Cucci "Navigating Genre"

I am genuinely overwhelmed by genre. I imagine many people feel as I do, but I have never thought about genre complexly. After attending this class for only two weeks, I have been exposed to the "theory" behind genre and how to define and approach it. The writer of the the text made note of this, stating that readers would likely be left confused and even frustrated, but that apparently was his purpose. I thought it was ironic that the writer struggled with the genre of this text before writing it, seeing that it is an essay about understanding genre. The example of George Washington "creating" a genre with the State of the Union Address helped me to understand the way a genre exists and stays relevant. Even though every president has used his example to write their own address, they made it unique and delivered the messages they needed to get across to accomplish the goals they wanted. This relates back to an earlier text we read that stated all writing is persuasive to come extent. Genre is there to communicate effectively to provoke actions from a target audience. My biggest takeaway was that genre is not a strict set of rules to write something. Instead, it is a way to communicate information in a way that is appropriate to the audience and situation, like not cursing in a text to your parents or being very kind and well-written to a professor who you are asking to raise a grade.