Dear readers,
The students from Professor Luger’s ASTU 100 class at the University of British Columbia have learned and discussed various topics – including memory, history, academic integrity, and genre – and wrote their personal blogs based on it. Throughout the students’ thoughtful and deep writings, the topic of memory & history and genre were used the most.
Genre, the topic most students had interests about was the new concept that was introduced in lecture. The concept of genre in academic writing was quite different than what we used to think that might help students to explore more about it. From the book “Academic Writing: An Introduction,” the concept of the genre was expressed in forms of the formula: Situation + Form = Genre (Giltrow, 5). About this new concept of genre, Lily described, “The situation of academic writing would be in an academic institution such as a university. The form in academic writing refers to the procedural elements that are required for scholarly work, for instance, citations.” (Post #1) As Lily provided with examples, the combination of situation and form creates different genres: the way you text to your friends, the way you write the letter, citation, and etc.
Different genres occur on different occasions and have different purposes. Based on this notion, Kaspar brings out intriguing questions to challenge this idea of the genre: “ Are there differences in languages that made one more suitable in specific occasion while some might be less capable of expressing certain emotions and messages?” (Language, an evolving matter) The answer to this question would be different depends on the culture, but I would answer those questions with “yes” that there are differences in languages that made one more suitable in particular occasion as there were certain words that are hard to translate to other language or have different meanings in different languages. In English, the word “gift” represents something that you give someone as the present, but in German, the word “gift” represents poison. Like the word “gift,” different occasions might require different languages that would form different genre.
As different situation and form create different genres, different genres need different context and different context comes from different types of information such as memory and history. Memory and history, those two similar but different words both represent the past experiences or events. However, memory and history are used in the different genre and have different reliabilities in a different genre. Codi states, “Memory is typically compared with data or facts when considering a notable event in history, or something of significance.” (Memory and the Complexity of Emotions) Memory usually based on personal experiences and emotions; history usually based on facts and data. In some genre – which requires connection with society or emotions – such as writing a letter to family member often use memory instead of history as its context. In some genre – which requires definite facts and data – such as documentary often use history instead of memory as its context. But sometimes, the documentary also use memory because “Historic accounts couldn’t properly represent those emotions [from past events] that went through me and countless others that day.” (Devon) As Devon argues, memory can be described as the better way to convey the emotions from the past. However, can we trust one’s memory as the evidence or fact of past events? Human’s mind is so flexible that sometimes memory can alter that would provide different memory from real memory. Furthermore, if the history has created based on people’s memory, the history – that we regard as the fact – might be different with an original fact in the past. A French military and political leader Napoléon Bonaparte said, “History is written by the winners.” What we learn and know as the history is written by people, often by winners. If the history was written based on winner’s memory, what we learn as history can be different with real facts.
The reliability and suitability of memory and history in different genres are an ongoing discussion among the students. The one thing we know from this discussion is different genres require different context and, whether it’s history or memory, looking back upon the past makes us learn and helps us to not repeat same mistakes.
Sources
Harris, Kathleen, et al. “10 English Words That Mean Something Else in Other Languages.”RSS2, 6 Sept. 2017, inktank.fi/10-english-words-mean-something-else-languages/.
“A Quote by Napoléon Bonaparte.” Quote by Napoleon Bonaparte: “History Is Written by the Winners.”, www.goodreads.com/quotes/34092-history-is-written-by-the-winners.