This fall, I decided to pledge for a sorority. With that decision comes many responsibilities that I must uphold in order to become an active member of said sorority in the near future. In order to take care of these responsibilities as well as be aware of upcoming events, I am a part of a group chat titled “Group of Friends” on an app. Below are my descriptions and processes of crafting my genre analysis, set to R. Stevens Amidon’s construct, lastly are my pictures displaying my genre analysis.

For Section 1, I discussed the social image of this genre of writing. Essentially, I was discussing the genre of the text, being a form of communication with the purpose of spreading information between advisors and the probationary members of my discourse community. It was easy to explain the kind of information or knowledge which I expect to gain from this genre, because the entire purpose of this document is to spread information from member to member. For Section 2, I state the writers within my document, this being the two advisor members and our eleven probationaries. A probationary member does not necessarily have any credentials, besides being a potential new member. To be considered an advisor, they must have gone through the same process we are currently going through. Writers can only be members of the group. In the audience section, I discuss the members of this group chat. They are the only people who can view this document. Regarding the audience, they also happen to be all of the writers I previously mentioned. All members of the document are required to also be writers on said document for the sake of communication. The advisors are seen as the leaders and as superior. The potential new members are seen as submissive followers. Both may relay information, but the tone and way of communication differ depending on the type of member.

As I stated previously, this is a strictly information based document. Its sole purpose is to share and distribute information between the advising members, and potential new members. The text may adapt depending on the needs of the audience. In Section 3, the formal features of the document are discussed. The general structure of the sharing of the information begins with a message from an advisor, followed by responses by the PNMs. The tone of this document has an overall feeling of forcefulness from the advisors, but it remains to have an overall personal feeling to it. The voice of the writing can differ depending on the current writer, or the current topic of discussion. The tone is not always formal, so full names are not necessary, and contractions are deemed acceptable. As this is an informal group chat, complete sentences are not expected within this genre. It is uncommon to see complete sentences within the text, let alone full paragraphs. Transition words are only utilized when moving between topics.  Due to this group chat taking place within a texting app over mobile phones, the format within the text (font size, headers, line spacing) cannot change. Graphics/ Illustrations are often used with a corresponding caption to explain said graphic to the audience.

At first, it seemed that studying this piece of evidence would be a complex procedure, but I’m happy to say that in this particular case, it may not be too difficult to grasp the genre at hand. It is a form of discourse with the intent of relaying information between its members in an informal but often times forceful way. Between the advisors and probationary members, there are many dynamics at hand so it’s interesting to see the interactions within the document. While it is informal, thete are particular forms of etiquette involved which make this document in particular, a very interesting one to observe.