To demonstrate an awareness of the strategies that writers use in different writing contexts.
- The writing employs style, tone, and conventions appropriate to the demands of a particular genre and situation.
- The writer is able to demonstrate the ability to write for different audiences and contexts, both within and outside the university classroom.
- The writing has a clear understanding of its audience, and various aspects of the writing (mode of inquiry, content, structure, appeals, tone, sentences, and word choice) addresses and are strategically pitched to that audience.
- The writer articulates and assesses the effects of his or her writing choices.

Genre Analysis happens constantly, whether you’re aware of it happening or not. I knew genre analysis existed for years, but never paid close attention to the different rhetorical choices I would make for different genres. Writing and speaking rhetorical conventions are used differently depending on the certain genre and the audience you wish to address. A good example of this would be the difference in rhetorical choices that would be used if you were to email your boss versus texting a friend, or even begging your parents for a bit more food money (I had to analyze this genre pretty intensely this year). SA1 mainly focuses on my personal understanding of genre analysis so I chose this piece to represent my Outcome 1.

I really enjoyed playing around with Outcome 1 and trying to write in another Genre. I believe I showed a strong understanding of this through my SA1 by trying to write through the perspective of other people, specifically Michael Scott and Jim Halpert from The Office. I wanted to center my writing around the same overarching issue of Michael Scott’s internal battle between being everyone’s friend and the boss. To do this I had to think like Michael Scott and Jim Halpert, which was actually pretty hard but fun to do. I had to think of my different audiences and how I would address each not only for that particular genre, but also for the particular person I was portraying. What I mean by this is that I wouldn’t write in the same style for an email if I were to write as Michael Scott versus Jim Halpert. Writing as Michael Scott was fun, I pretended he was writing a memo to the office about how to be a good boss and a friend at the same time. While a memo from a boss is supposed to be professional, I had to assess the character I was writing as which would affect my writing choices. Because I was writing as Michael Scott, I made what was usually a professional piece into one that lacked the essence of professionalism and included some crass personal information. To portray Scott correctly, he talked about his lover relationship with a fellow coworker and how they are intimate even though they are not and never really were in her mind. I also wanted to address the arrogance of Scott and his personal love of himself, so I capitalized the first letter of every “Him”, “He” etc. that was referring to the his management position. Doing this was to show authority, power, and a sort of Godliness over others.

Through my SA1, I was able to demonstrate my ability to write in multiple genres through my next piece spoken through Jim Halpert. I chose to do an email to his boss regarding Michael’s incapability to run the office. To do so I had to think not only through the Genre but as Jim Halpert himself, which led me to write a more professional piece than I did for Michael Scott. Formatted like a typical professional email, I then went to work on impersonating Jim Halpert. The professionalism of Jim was shown through the fact that he did not berate Michael completely. This is represented by his respect for Michael while still holding an opinion, such as in the excerpt, “I know you know Michael well, and as much as I love the guy, there is no room for this in a co-manager position.” Jim then finished off his email with “Best Regards,” showing the typical format of a professional email by giving a nice salutations.

One thing that is very interesting about this particular assignment was that multiple audiences and purposes were addressed. Not only was I writing as Jim and Michael and using certain rhetorical terms to address their audiences, I was also writing this whole assignment compiled together to comically show the differences in behavior of both Jim and Michael. In a way, this in itself was to show the extreme differences that can be seen with a boss. With this being said, I hope you enjoy my SA1!