Rhetorical Analysis: Genre

Genre Throughout the different texts we analyzed in the first half of the quarter, we looked at the various genres of the texts in order to see how they affect rhetoric. Genres are important to rhetoric because they raise and manage expectations the audience might have for a specific work. This is because people have internalized the generic conventions of a genre. We delved into these conventions by analyzing different genres of texts such as Pitbull’s music video, film, various poems, and speeches. An example of how we analyzed a genre is how we annotated Horace’s poem about carpe diem.

(Insert picture) The most important genre in regards to my rhetorical analysis project is the speeches. To practice analyzing speeches, we looked at Steve Jobs graduation commencement speech and David Foster Wallace’s speech. We looked at these two speeches and used Steve Jobs speech to analyze how Wallace’s speech breaks the general conventions of a graduating commencement speech. One example of how Wallace breaks the general conventions of a speech based off of the one Steve jobs’ did is how Wallace does not talk about the future with a hopeful outlook but focuses on the present

I would have liked to include analyze more general on the conventions of a book and how it conflicts with Wallace’s message in greater detail. This is due to how even though I focus a lot on the changes between the two and how that effects Wallace’s message, I do not bring much attention to how these changes were brought upon by the medium change of becoming a book itself. I also would add how the general convention of not only speeches, but also graduation commencement speeches and how it is important in regards to the context of his messages. These ideas would have heavily influenced the rhetoric of Wallace’s speech and my analysis while increasing my paper’s depth and