Genre Analysis

Dirk and Devitt believe that genre is defined by reoccurring action within society. Dirk
say that genre is defined by specific rhetorical situations and Devitt says that its the gene that
creates the situations. A quote from Amy Devitts paper, taken from Carolyn Miller, says, the
number of genres current in any society is indeterminate and depends upon the complexity and
diversity of the society (Devitt, pg. 575). This quote emphasizes that genre and the amount of
genres that an individual can understand is dependent on the society that they have been placed.
Genre is defined by a multitude of things but a major concept that influences everyone in
understanding what genre is are the rhetorical situations that continually occur in certain genres
and vis versa, what type of genres define certain rhetorical situations. To put in perspective what
this means, in the simplest way, imagine youre watching a movie and the audiences laughs. In
most cases most people consider this a comedy when they are referring to the type of movie it is
categorized. Genre helps people understand the directed audience and the purpose of the film or
story that youre reading or watching. In the Article Amish Technology: Reinforcing Values and
Building Community, it talks about the Amish and the culture of the Amish that prevents them
from using modern technology in their lives, which lead me to the conclusion that the genre for
this article was Academic Scholarly Article. The Article was Published in an Engineering
Magazine most likely for the intended audience to be direct to students also understanding that
the Author was a Professor at Arizona State University (Wetmore, pg. 21).
Wetmores writing is very informative on the Amish and the background knowledge you
need to know to be able to understand the Amish today in our modern society and why they dont
use the same technologies that most people do. When reading through this article it gives you a
time line and a variety of examples of what types of technologies and ideas are allowed in the

Amish Community and then they give reasons why they may or may not allow them to be a part
of the Amish way. This article also gives great examples of what the Amish use in place of the
technologies that we use today. An example that the author gives to show an alternative is the
comparison between electricity and dieselized powered generators that power their tools they
need to perform daily tasks at their job and at home. As the article progresses it shows the
evolution in technology that we use and what the Amish do to counter act the new technologies
to make them able to perform the activity in a different way that isnt the norm for society.
Amish Believe that technologies can reinforce social norms, enable or constrain the ways that
people interact with one another, and shape a cultures identity (Wetmore, pg. 11).
Wetmore has written this article not having lived it, but researched and interviewing
people that have lived it. With his great research it presents the case that the Amish have their
own little system of rules and government that guide the community of the Amish. Through the
research he has given we are able to pull a lot of information from the article about the Amish
that we might not have known prior to reading it.
This article was published in the IEEE Technology and Society Magazine for students to
be able to access to use in their educations. Wetmores main message in the article is that the
Amish use much caution when looking at technologies and deciding what types of technologies
they want to use in their community. This can be seen through what is written on page 14 of the
article saying, The Amish believe that social change is often closely tied with technological
change and therefore tend to be suspicious of new technologies. They must be fully convinced
that a given technology will benefit the things they do value their ethics, their community, and
their spiritual life before they will accept it.

When looking at the two Genres that this article could fit very well into, a scholarly
article and an encyclopedic article you have to be able to realize what they author is trying to do
by writing this article. As defined on the website by the authors of the web article Academic
Genres both the Scholarly Article and the Encyclopedic provide new information to a subject or
object, however the reason I choose the Scholarly Article over the Encyclopedic Article is
because of the idea that this article is directed to other scholars and provides a bunch of new
perspective and knowledge from the view of a person not of the Amish culture that had to
complete a ton of research and interviews to be able to put this article together. This article
brings a lot of questions about why, how, and what. This is my final reason as to why I believe
its a scholarly article because this article can bring up some arguments and or just conversations
as to why they live the way they do and whether its right or wrong.
This article does a really good job at fitting into two genres, but it does a really good job
at fitting into the scholarly article genre the most as it is written by a professor who wrote the
article directed to students of engineering. It provides information that can help students build
ideas and conversations about certain ideas the Amish have in their culture. It becomes very
complicated sometimes to place a genre on an academic writing piece, but this genre fits Amish
Technology: Reinforcing Values and Building Community really well. Academic Genres have
been around for a long time and not much changes with the rhetorical situations in academic
writing as it would for a short fiction story. Academic writing is pretty straight forward with the
form, a piece of writing needs to have in order to enter a certain academic genre. And with this
article it fits the form really well.

Work Cited

Wetmore, Jameson. M. (Summer of 2007). Amish Technology: Reinforcing Values and

Building Communities. IEE Technology and Society Magazine, 10-21.

Devitt, Amy. J. (December 1993) Generalizing about Genre: New Conceptions of an Old
Concept. College Composition and Communication, Vol.44, No. 4. 573-586

Pl Steiner, Bente Tveito, Astrid Anderson, Hans Christian Farseths, Simon Mitternacht,
(2014, February 4). Academic Genres. http://sokogskriv.no/en/reading/academic-genres/