Blog post 7

In the last blog post I discussed multimodality, which is the combination of two modes. I also discussed that some modes can be pictures, text, video, speech, and much more. An example of something that is multimodal is a website. If you took the New York Times website and look one can see that there are many different modes interacting with each other. There are pictures, which provide a visual tool. There is text, which accompanies the picture by going explaining it. Then there is video, which provides a visual and audio approach to the mode. With all of these different modes combined, the website becomes multimodal.

            When it comes to genres, many of us think of music like rock, jazz, rap, etc. Essentially genres are a category of something and some people see them as a kind of contract between authors and readers. However, there are some critics that argue that genres limit the meaning-potential of a text. This idea is a romantic perspective of writing. Genres are available to us in our everyday life. For example, when we are watching television, we can decide if we want to watch something funny, something scary, or something filled with action. There is also a correlation between genres and schemas. A schema is a framework that helps us make sense of things. One could look at a schema as a mental template. From a psychological perspective genres are considered a “ textual schemata”.  Genres also help us with our emotional needs because we can search for a genre and find what something to satisfy our emotional needs.