[Source-Based Essay on Genre, Audience, and Purpose]

Imagine an automobile. Picture it. If you have driven one before, you will be surely imagining its inside by now. The cockpit not only provides you with a comfortable seat but also with the means of sitting in said seat driving the said automobile. While there may be those who would feel satisfied by simply sitting in the said seat, most, I believe, would probably need the instruments provided in the cockpit. A steering wheel, a gas pedal, and the brakes would be somewhat important if one intends on driving it. Having gas in your tank is also good, but at the price that the barrel is, I cannot afford to put it here.

So, we are focusing on three tools. The steering wheel will steer the automobile, without it the gas and the brakes are useless. If the said car does come with a steering wheel, it is convenient to have both pedal gas and brakes. If you do not have the pedal gas, the car will not move (unless you are in a slope and severely over-weight). Now, if your car by any chance did come with a steering wheel and a gas pedal, congratulations. You have a car that you can drive. However, the lack of the brakes may prove to be fatal by leading to an accident in some random road in rural Fall River, where the roads are so great. The same goes for writing. Observe that these three independent tools are not really independent but rather autonomous.  One will always need the others. Now, being the car - the book, the gas pedal – the genre, the steering wheel – the audience, and, last but not least, the brakes – the purpose. If one of these three fails, the others will not perform as they are intended.

So, if you do have an audience and you do have a purpose, e.g. a speech at a funeral to honor a deceased person, and you choose the very specific format of sarcastic dark comedy, reminding everyone that he still owes you 5 grand but at least you can now try to have a love relationship with the widow without worrying when he will come home, you might experience a severe case of an improper steering wheel for the brakes you have in other words, the wrong speech to the wrong audience. When it comes to books, however, you have a 50/50 chance – either its fiction or non-fiction. It may also be an academic work or a school paper or it may be random creative writing for the edification of your own ego. If it is the latter, you are in luck. You choose your genre according to your preference and it is the audience that will come to you. If it is the other way around, e.g. an essay for college, it is pretty much like the funeral situation – one has to adapt the content, always bearing in mind to whom will read it, to whom it is intended to, and the purpose of the said essay, (or, depending on the grade, the eulogy). 

From the facts mentioned above, one's able to deduce that the genre that the writer chooses depends on his audience and the purpose of his writing – what he wants to elicit from his audience.  Many authors today (and even in the past) are famous because they chose a genre that sells. One can easily argue that self-help books or ‘’Fifty Shades of Grey’’ will not stand the test of time. Steinbeck’s work continues to be considered of great importance. When a writer chooses a genre he does it because of his own preference writing style, that preference and writing style will attract a specific audience. That specific audience enjoys that genre. The purpose is common to both, one is active the other one is passive.

If we take Donovan Livingston’s speech as an example, his audience is the class of 2016, family, college teachers, and staff (all of the attending audience plus, due to modern technology, everyone who has access to the internet). The genre is, obviously, Speech based. Even though a speech that empowers teaching has the purpose of changing minds and raising awareness, usually, when done by means of what sounds almost as slam poetry, there is too much ego – the same as when your neighbor wants to show off his new Xbox series X and so he randomly calls you to watch the Bruins’ game. Donovan achieves his purpose not only with words but with the use of surrealistic promises about what can everyone achieve in the future while retaining their attention through rhythm and tone, specially when we goes on in saying, ''(...)the only difference between a class room and a plantation is time. How many times must we be made to feel like quotas like tokens, and coin phrases to diversity, inclusion, there are days I feel like only, a lonely blossom(...)'' (stanza one)

On the other hand, if we read Martin Luther King’s letter, the genre is, in opposition to the previous case, a formal letter that pinpoints problems and tackles them. The purpose is to contrapose what eight clergymen stated in “A call for Unity” and justify going against the Law, and to evoke sympathy towards his cause. A quote from his letter shows as follow, “when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can’t go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see the tears welling up in her little eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children , and see the depressing clouds of inferiority begin to form in her little mental sky , and see her begin to distort her little personality by unconsciously developing a bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking in agonizing pathos: “Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?”  (King, pg.3 - para.2)

As we can identify from above, he achieves his purpose through the use of both emotion and logic, appealing to the humanity in each person. His audience is not limited to the eight clergymen – it will reach, by extension, each and everyone who reads the open letter.

As for Gloria Anzaldua, she starts “in medias res”, first paragraph - quote, "We're going to have to control your tongue'', the dentist says, pulling out all the metal from my mouth. Silver bits plop and tinkle into the basin. My mouth is a motherlode. The dentist is cleaning out my roots. I get a whiff of the stench when I gasp''. (Anzaldua, pg. 1 - para.1), she is, in this way, probably trying both to create curiosity in the reader (why are we here?) and making a connection between the literal tongue and tongue as a language. She clearly show that in the following paragraph and I quote ''I remember being caught speaking Spanish at recess - that was good for three licks on the knuckles with a sharp ruler. I remember being sent to the comer of the classroom for "talking back" to the Anglo teacher when all I was trying to do was tell her how to pronounce my name. "If you want to be American, speak 'American.' If you don't like it, go back to Mexico where you belong."(Anzaldua, pg.2 - para.1) Her audience is everyone who reads the book (I am guessing people from Cultural Studies). She attempts to use metaphors to engage her audience and, like in Martin Luther King’s letter, she appeals to the humanity in each and everyone of us, but in a quite different way.

The Theory of Writing or The writer’s guide to utter, unequivocal success.

The fact that the GENRE (kind of writing), PURPOSE (why do we write), and AUDIENCE (to whom we are writing; who will read what we have written) are always connected gives us a better understanding of how a person can write well. It is also important to understand that writing can be FICTIONAL or NON-FICTIONAL. What compels us to write (are we forced to do it because it is a school assignment or are we writing to satisfy our own ego in the hope that someone will read it and like it, thus fulfilling the constant human need of external approval, much like a kid riding a bike with no hands down the hill, en route to smashing his head in a tree, screaming “Look, mom!”) should also be taken into account before formulating the ultimate guide to successful writing. The theory of writing (or if you will, the theory of literature), is deeply connected with the science of literature. 

Let us start with the formula for academic writing – e.g. an essay on the evolution of linguistics or a PhD Thesis on Clapton’s Chord Progression. It would be NON-FICTIONAL writing, compelled by the need of a good grade (or at least a good enough grade to succeed in the course). The writing MUST be formal. Any jokes and/or vocabulary that do not belong to that register (such as the everyday “heck”, “gosh”, or “ain’t”) would be as welcome as Stewed Beef being served at an Indian party back in New Delhi, or a severe case of presidential flatulence during the State of the Union Address - which, on that particular occasion, would be transmitted live worldwide. An example of this is Martin Luther King Junior’s letter. His writing is very formal and the choice of words is exemplary, like choosing ‘’seldom’’ instead of ‘’rarely’’(pg. 1), or ‘’moratorium’’ instead of ‘’postpone, delay, ban’’.  One uses those words when he wants to show that he can write, or when he wants to impress his future mother-in-law. Or maybe you just had lunch with the Queen.

Having done extensive reading on the subject will help greatly, or one might end up with an essay on Edmund Wells’ David Coperfield, Charles Dikkens Rarnaby Budge, or The Guide to understanding Beethoven’s Tenth Symphony (non-existent). Again, Martin Luther king’s letter is a stellar example of research done right. We can immediately see that he has done extensive research. Sentences such as ‘’History is the long and tragic story of the fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily.  Individuals may see the moral light and give up their unjust posture; but as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups are more immoral than individuals’’, show us just that, in this case that he read Reinhold Niebuhr.

It is impossible to stress enough the importance of knowing how many guards a bank does have, the type of alarm, and when the vault most is filled with live money before robbing it. Failure to do so will result in a shameful arrest and a consequent non-consensual love affair at the state penitentiary. This is called planning. Just like a proper bank robbing, we must plan our text properly. A good planning consists of defining the type of text (as mentioned before), making a list of the ideas/topics, organizing those topics, and structuring the text into three main parts (introduction, body, and conclusion). Being clear, concise, and objective is of paramount importance. To express in such a way is an ‘’Art form’’; a text’s cohesion matters also very much. None of this is possible if you don’t understand WHY are you writing and to WHOM.

Art is like water. “Be water, my friend”.

Sources:

• Gloria Anzaldua, “How to Tame a Wild Tongue”.
• Billy Collins, Commencement Address.
• Martin Luther King Jr. “Letter from Birmingham Jail” (Listen to King reading “Letter“.