Lampman 1 Zachary Lampman Professor Wolcott Composition 1102 11 February 2013 Petitioning Swales Definition of Genre In Swaless articles,

The Concept of Discourse Communities, he discussed that a discourse community has a specific set of genres that they use to communicate between members and non-members. Swales lacked in defining how important genres are in a discourse community. Genres help one in learning the social aspect of the community and the situation it presents. Amy Devitt, an English professor, elaborated on how a genre mediates between text and context in her essay Generalizing about Genre: New Conceptions of an Old Concept. (Devitt 580) She is explaining that a genre is more than just a text; what is in the text matters as well. I have selected four petitions that I have analyzed to further Devitts definition of a genre. My genre analysis consists of four petitions: Boy Scouts: Make Including Gay Kids Your National Policy, Dear Roman Catholic Church: Stop funding discrimination, Legally recognize Westboro Baptist Church as a hate group, and Secure resources and funding, and begin construction of a Death Star by 2016. (Care2.com) (Servino) (Spring) (Longmont) The common factor all these petitions have is a voice of activism. They all want something to be changed through the means of legislation. For example, the petition that appeals to define Westboro Baptist Church as a hate group, wants to impose a regulation that will prevent the church from continuing to threaten the welfare and treatment of others (Spring). All these petitions have been procured from an online source asking for a first and last name and usually an e-mail. These

Lampman 2 petitions are short and sweet and lack important details, which makes it harder for the audience to understand the petition completely. In Devitts Generalizing about Genre: New Conceptions of an Old Concept, she explains how a lawyer sometimes confuses the jury by using a lexis that is only understood by the professional community. She believes that the specialists of the community have a different level of knowledge than that of a non-specialist therefore allowing misinterpretation to ensue (Devitt Bawarshi, Reiff 543). I find this to be important because some petitions cause this confusion as well. As inviting as petitions sound, they may confuse you with whom they really are inviting to sign it. After all, the main purpose for the petition is to procure as many signatures as possible. They dont care the means in which they are obtained making an audience undefined. The Internet really makes this possible because sometimes the Internet can be confusing in itself and mislead you to sign something you dont fully understand. I also believe that the audience is undefined when it comes to signing a petition online because sometimes the user can sign the petition of more than once if they have multiple IP addresses which undermines the institution of a petition; one signature per person. Even though online petitions have negative side effects, they do break down barriers that paper petitions encountered. In this age, the Internet is accessible by almost all Americans creating a potential for a petition to have a high signature rate. Having a petition online obviously has an advantage over someone who may be going door to door asking for signatures. The con of this is that you don't have somebody to explain the petition to you in person where you can ask questions on something you may not understand.

Most petitions follow the appeal of logos, pathos, and ethos. Some even have all of those appeals. They function this way to try to connect to the audience through either the means of

Lampman 3 passion, logic, or ethic. For example, the petition Dear Roman Catholic Church: Stop funding discrimination, a mother writes to a bishop about how her son is gay and is just as Catholic as anyone else. She touches on ethnic when she explained that her whole family was born and raised Catholic. She touches on pathos when she talks about her incredible son. She talks about logos when she exposes the amount of money used to fund a cause that she does not believe should be on the agenda of the Catholic Church (Servino). All of my petitions in my analysis touch on at least one of these appeals causing a rhetorical situation to form. Time and time again people have felt passionate enough to want to change something on the grounds of ethos, logos, or even purely pathos. And after time and time a repetition was noticed creating the common grounds of how to formulate a petition. Tying in Devitts definition of genre, I will explain why even though all petitions touch on some sort of appeal as discussed earlier, not all petitions are of the same genre. To be of the same genre they have to pertain to the same discourse community. As you can see the petition to build the Death Star does not fall in the same discourse community as, per se, The Human Rights Campaign. One discusses the creation of jobs and the protection of a country and one discusses equality. If the examples of petitions don't satisfy your desire to understand the difference between Devitt and Swales, then maybe this example that Divitt uses in her essay will. She explains how if she receives two envelopes and opens one and recognizes that it is a sales letter, she would throw it away or scan it for the item it is selling after she understand the goal of the letter; whereas, if she receives a letter from a friend, she will know to read it and respond if it asks for one (Devitt 575). She explains this as the two letters being the same text but having different context, which is the same quote that I promised I would explain through the analysis of my four genres.

Lampman 4 Concluding, we see that activists desired to have a set way to lobby for their needs. In which the structure of a petition was formed using appeals of logos, pathos, and/or ethos. In my analysis of petitions, I have established that they all create the same situation of wanting something changed. In particular, online petitions have the same goal but they procure signatures in a different way than physical, non-virtual petitions by keeping it short and sweet, which may or may not tell the whole truth of what you are signing into act. I believe Devitt was accurate when she said that genres also create a situation. Even though all four of my petitions were the same genre, they created different situations because they petitioned for different concerns; therefore, creating a sort of mediation between the text and the context.

Lampman 5 Work Cited Care2.com. Boy Scouts: Make Including Gay Kids Your National Policy. Devitt, Amy J. "Generalizing about Genre: New Conceptions of an Old Concept." JSTOR. National Council of Teachers of English, n.d. Web. 12 Feb. 2013. Devitt, Amy J., Anis Bawarshi, and Mary Jo Reiff. "Materiality and Genre in the Study of Discourse Communities Author(s)." JSTOR. National Council of Teachers of English, May 2003. Web. 12 Feb. 2013. Longmont, J.D. Secure resources and funding, and begin construction of a Death Star by 2016. 14 Nov 2012. Servino, Barbara. "Dear Roman Catholic Church: Stop Funding Discrimination." Message to the author. N.d. E-mail. Spring, G.B. Legally recognize Westboro Baptist Church as a hate group. 14 Dec 2012. Swales, John. ''The Concept of Discourse Community." Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings. Boston: Cambridge UP, 1990.21-32. Print.