Internship Genre

In my internship I have used writing in the genre of instruction manual. I have been referencing a set of game rules as to assist with the creation of cards.  I have been working on creating various cards for a board game that are made up of several elements: title, identifier, and ability. The ability of the cards functions as its own set of rules apart from the main rule book. The main rules function more as the recognizable set of instructions, but the cards function as smaller and simpler set of instructions. Together, the rules and cards are both genre sets which prompt and allow players of the game to take actions. Groups of genre sets, create a genre system which is where the actions take place.

Both of these game elements have to be understood by not only novices, but experts as well and need to be able to adapt to expansions of the game. The users of the game are also always changing and playing the game in different ways, because of their unique experience. The game itself could also be utilized in many different scenarios. Instructions are also often monologue in nature and do not have the opportunity to a dialogue with the person reading. This genre of writing therefore needs to “normalize activities and practices, enabling community members to participate in these activities and practices in fairly predictable, familiar ways in order to get things done” (Rhetorical Genre Studies 79). But it also has to be dynamic because “of changes in material conditions, changes in community membership, changes in technology, changes in disciplinary purposes, values, …  and as systems of accountability—genres must change along with them or risk becoming obsolete.” (Rhetorical Genre Studies 79)

The use of instruction manual is found throughout varied situations which tell the user how to use the particular manual. An instruction manual could be described as type of situation that changes based on human action and the meaning we interpret from a situation. While the instructions of game tell how people to act based on others actions, an instruction to use a computer is for someone acting on their insufficient knowledge. Or an instruction manual to build an object is for a person that desires to have a finished product. Instructions often share a clear, concise, and dynamic writing style, but also have different meanings depending on how a user is acting in any given scenario.