Blog Post 1: BBG Chapter 1

As I was reading this first chapter, I did not realize how intricate genres and their definitions can be. A genre has the basic definition of the category a composition falls in but, in reality, they are so much more complicated than they are typically perceived. Most people sort pieces into one broad genre but I learned that genres can coincide and are actually quite flexible to fit different audiences. By overlapping genres and different rhetorical appeals, I learned that you can reach to a larger audience and influence more people than if you just stuck to a single genre. I found this interesting because I never thought that genre could play such a big role in how much an audience would enjoy a piece. What intrigued me the most was that two authors could write about the same event but each composition could have a different effect on people. For example, the two pieces on the arch collapse were about the same event but they were both two different genres. The composition by Henderson was writing to inform the audience while the other author Hurley was also writing to inform but also wanted to share his own personal experiences. By using different rhetorical appeals both of these authors gave completely different messages to their audiences. Henderson mainly used logos and had ethos because he worked at the park and Hurley used logos as well but also tried to play into his audiences emotions using pathos by persuading them that they need to be cherishing nature while it is still here. Each piece both contained the same information but reached out to different audiences. This is fascinating because rhetorical appeals can be applied to everyday life such as advertisements. A company can make multiple commercials about the same product but use ethos, pathos, and logos in different ways to reach a greater audience. This chapter really opened my eyes to the different ways genres and appeals can be used to interconnect several ideas.