Somethings up with my adobe reader on my laptop, so I have to try and highlight &c on my phone. Which is such a pain.
I thought this reading was quite interesting. I think that since my topic is essentially a genre of history ( that is also made up of different genres) that this response will be really helpful in developing my inquiry.
For this response, since I could not really find any interesting genres speaking on my topic, I picked genres of my topic, of historical reenactment. They came to me instantly. Oh this is exciting.
Of course, none of that makes this any less confusing.
The First Genre: Youtube Satirical Webseries
First off, I love this webseries so so so much.
This series has a lot of each aspect of genre. Socially, idealogically, and rhetorically, it responds to the rhetorical situation created by the current political climate, as well as older ones. So many claim to have the founders’ interests and ideals in mind, but they have no way of really knowing the thoughts of men who died centuries ago. Their old words are applied to new situations. Historically, it builds on the genre of satire, by mocking this idea. Founding fathers are kidnapped through time by the ARFF super PAC in order to support their claims of acting as the founders would have. The kidnapped founders end up not having the same ideals of their captors.
As far as Discourse goes, the actors and writers are college students. A lot of their tools, the ideas they promote, among other things are reflective of this. The discourses and Discourses of the characters in the series are at odds most of the time. The language, tools, ideas, and clothing are… archaic, largely based on the time they were from (and their social standing). They soon discover modern tools and technologies: poptarts, laptops, foosball. Their Discourse from the turn-of-the-eighteenth-century COP frequently clashes from the modern.
The Second Genre: Historically inspired Webcomic
Founding Boys is a webcomic (by one of those History Peeps). It sets the American Revolution in an alternate universe. The founders are all students at a boarding school and are planning to overthrow their (tyrannical) headmaster. It’s a social genre because it aims to entertain, and ideological because it tries to make its readers view the world, view the past in a different way. “The revolutionaries were just silly kids who didn’t like rules” is an idea portrayed rather than ” they were fine patriots who worked for freedom and liberty from their opressors.”
Genre Three: Facebooks for Historical Figures Who Are Dead!
heres one: http://www.facebook.com/aaron.burr.9404
Let’s blame the History Peeps again. (They are a bit strange. Well, droll.)
This is a largely social genre. The people involved mainly do this to entertain each other. It isn’t a rhetorical genre at all. It has lots of ideological aspects to it, because they put historical figures in a modern setting. In doing this they focus on the personalities of the historical figures outside of a historical setting.
will probably add more later… but at least I met my word count.
coffeeshopcavalier 