Blog post 7

In this article the author says that a genre is made up of many conventions. We can take a work (say a class essay) and argue that it too is made up of many conventions. In this scenario, the conventions are the modes that are being used to compose the essay. For an essay one would use a computer, a word formatting software, ink, paper, a printer. These are just the basics, but the list could go on and on. We can compare a genre to this essay by noticing that a genre is also made up of several basics that come together to compose one thing. This assemblage of modes or conventions would mean absolutely noting to an audience if they did not have prior experience with the medium or the genre. The article compares the understanding of a genre to our brain’s use of schemas. Modes can also be compared to schemas. We can recognize genres from one another because we have been exposed to several and our brains are able to distinguish which genres are the same and which are different. Our brain does the same thing when distinguishing between modes and media. We are able to see which media are best for transferrin a certain type of information just as we know which genre to use depending on what kind of message we are trying to transfer to the audience. Genre and modes are just tools for transferring information. How we interpret these things in our brains is very similar and how we use them as writers is also similar in that we manipulate them both depending on our message and our audience.