Understory 2021

Theory of Workplace Genres: Reflective Essay

Over the course of the semester I have learned a lot about genre knowledge and how it ties into writing in the workplace. The writing entails a focus surrounded on its genres and this helped prepare me for the future of workplace writing situations. The genres varied through subject matter knowledge, rhetorical knowledge, and writing process knowledge. All of these allowed for me to gain strategies needed for learning to write in the workplace. Reflecting back on what I have learned in terms of subject matter knowledge, I was able to analyze my theory of learning workplace genres. That theory entails, assessing the work place and understanding their guidelines both in regard to the way a document is written and how discourse within the community plays a role in the writing of that document. To understand a genre, I have to be able to understand where it came from, why it was written, as well as what was contributed towards writing it. What has contributed the most to my theory of learning workplace genres, was understanding the rhetorical knowledge of the situation, ranging from genre constraints to genre sets. Genre constraints entail what the writer can or cannot include in the writing of their genre sets. I find the rhetorical knowledge to play a role in how we interpret a document based on where that document came from. When we are informed of the document and the rhetorical knowledge we are able to understand our expectations of that genre.

The knowledge I have learned this semester to be particularly important is that the writing is in the detail. I have come to understand the writing and genres vary, we can see examples in different genres by examining documentations that differ immensely. For example, the writing process that goes towards the back of a cereal box versus the writing process that goes into a legal documentation vary immensely; but the question is why? And how do they vary? At first glance, we can acknowledge that their purposes offer an immense difference, but what I learned is that I have to be able to examine all aspects of the writing in order to examine their genre. Being able to examine the physical and social conditions of genres allowed me to be able to understand the way genres differ upon these conditions. I think I was able to differentiate the differences between genres by taking the time to analyze them, by understanding how the rhetorical and writing process knowledge are defining factors of analysis in the learning process of writing workplace genres. Overall, I feel as though I now have a better grasp and understanding as to how the knowledge I learned this semester in terms of workplace genres, will help me not only in my future field of work, but also help me understand what goes into the writing process of genres in different workplaces as well. I am looking forward to applying these practices toward my future endeavors.

                                                                  
DORINA PELLUMBI is a senior pursuing a Baccalaureate in English. Selected by Professor Jenkins.

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