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Clayton Campbell
Professor Leslie Wolcott
ENC 1102
6 October 2015
Genre Analysis on Engines
Amy Devitt a professor at the University of Kansas defines genre as Knowing the
genre, therefore, means knowing such things as appropriate subject matter, level of
detail, tone, and approach as well as the usual layout and organization. (Devitt 577)
Which accurately applies to mechanical engineering, because you have to know the
specifics of the blueprints and understand what makes the engine work and being bale
to understand the details, and the organization of the layout it. Also I feel that Devitt
really describes genre in discourse communities very well, "genres construct and
respond to the situation, they are actions. Which I understood this as in the discourse
community of mechanical engineering of how when a engineer looks at a blueprint they
understand it and apply it to the situation of designing the engine or have to fix the
engine by using the blueprints. This brings me to believing that in discourse
communities such as mechanical engineering in which you truly have to be
knowledgable of the engine and the parts that make it work, that in this discourse

community they only want in it to be able to have access to the language and concept if
the design and that people outside of the discourse community will not be able to
understand it or be able to apply it.

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Ever since I was three years old I've been around water every chance that I can
get whether it be on docks, swimming, fishing, but my favorite of them all was being on
a boat. I was fascinated by them and loved to be on them and mess around and learn
how to fix the engines and restore motors that had been around at least forty-one years
before my time. This lead me to want to become a mechanical engineer and deal with
basically anything that has a motor. When it comes to engine motors and blueprints of
them you have to understand the parts within them and how they make the engine work.
Below are three different examples of blueprints of engines in which involves, a boat
engine, car engine, and a airplane engine and the situation that arrises when dealing
with these blueprints.
This example of a Suzuki boat motor engine from 1999 (Appendix A) shows the
many parts of the engine thats labeled by numbers and lines and also has states that
this blueprint is the U.S. patent of this design and year. In this situation this blue print is
made for the employees and anyone in Suzuki company to have access to. This is so

that no other company or anyone that doesn't belong to the discourse community to take
their idea and use it as their own. Also the blueprint doesn't show the parts they use and
where they get them from and go to the extent of not even labeling what part the line
and number is assigned to. So if you don't have the knowledge of what parts go into the
boat motor then you cant understand the language of it, which as devote says is one of
the main parts of being in the discourse community. The reasoning behind having these
access to these being limited is so that when it comes engines no matter how well you
take care of it there will always have a part that breaks down and the average joe
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wont be able to fix it themselves. So they have to go to Suzuki and have the engine fixed
so it runs properly. Which creates the situation of having to fix it and or design the
engine again. Which creates the reaction of using the blueprints for economic reasons
and so that they have a consistent customer base fro which they can sell and fix the
engine.
Another example of the using the situation of motors and creating the reaction to
them is defined in the example of The Cinderblock Assembly (8BA) for Ford car
motors from 1949-1953. This blueprint shows the individual parts of the engine. This
blueprint is designed this way because in the time when this blueprint was made they
had assembly lines to produce these engines to put in cars quickly and efficiently. Due

to the high demand for these cars. As you see in (Appendix B) the parts are spaced so
that people in the assembly line understand the numbers and lines that go to the
assigned spot. In the assembly lines each person was assigned a part in the engine, in
which they would put that part of the engine or a few parts to put on the engine. This is
why they made the blueprint easily accessible for the people within the discourse
community of the people working on the assembly line.
Airplane engines are very important due to the fact that you are taking citizens
life in your hands by flying trough the air and basically having everything during the flight
go well or else you are going down and possibly having a fatality. As shown in
(Appendix C) which is a Junkers Jumo 004 design of a jumbo jet. Its very thorough and
is 3-D designed for the people that are within the discourse community to understand.
The reason for this is that many people use airlines around the globe so they have to be
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very precise and don't have room for error so they have to follow this blueprint very
rigorously so that the plane doesn't come out of the air and crash into the ground.
Rhetorical devices are used by the designer to have the reader of the blueprint to
understand the goal of the engine design and how it works. These rhetorical devices
help the person building the engine know and understand where each part goes and
what makes it work. Such as the lines numbers and colors are used as lexises to

describe the part of the engine being shown and using your knowledge from the
discourse community. A lexis is the level of language that consists of vocabulary,
instead of grammar and syntax. For example the lines are used for to describe where
the part goes and the numbers are used for an index in which you can find out what the
part it is and why it goes there. Which is how you build the engines and without these
rhetorical devices and symbols building these engines is virtually impossible.
It is crucial for the blueprints to be very detailed and seclusive so that only the
people within the discourse community can understand them and they can apply them
to the situations at hand. In which understanding the level of detail in which these
colors, lines and numbers create. But even beyond that as shown in (Appendix C) its it a
completely different language, Russian. Which just fascinates me that even if you don't
speak the linguistic language of someone else that your still able to be in the same
discourse community and understand genre, detail and meaning of the blueprints. This
also makes m believe that the discourse community of mechanical engineers may be a
very exclusive community to be in and its not easy to understand. But that its also
worldwide and that people are abel to talk about the blue prints and use them to
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collectively have the end goal of building a safe sufficient engine for consumers to have
and use.

The organization of blueprints what truly defines the meaning of them. As shown
in every blueprint they have the name of the company that produced the design. Such
as Suzuki (Appendix A), Ford (Appendix B), and Junkers (Appendix C).This is to use as
advertising so that they want the image of when people have engines that work well and
have everyone when they think of a boat, car, or plane engine they think of these
engines. Also if you look at (Appendix A) They use colors to truly help with differentiating
the different sections within the engine and the parts that go to them which are labeled
by the lines and numbers. But as you see in (Appendix B) the engine design is very
spaced out and show each individual part so that its easier to read and that it doesn't
take as much effort to assemble it as long as you know the parts and the meaning of
each part. so it can also be assembled quickly. The last big organizational difference
shown in (Appendix C) is that not only do they have the whole engine shown along with
the lines and numbers just as the first two. But it also has the blueprints of separate
parts under the main engine part which shows how extensive and important that part
must be due to the fact that a airplane engine has to literally be perfect.
In conclusion mechanical engineers is a very small discourse community in the
sense that the average joe doesn't really understand the parts of an engine and the
meaning behind the engine. But also these blueprints help us show that Devitt was right
about genre and that that you have to have the knowledge and understand the detail

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behind whats being portrayed to the extent of organization,
detail and who they apply to the situation which creates
and reaction.

(Appendix A) Suzuki Boat Motor

(Appendix B) Ford Car

Engine

(Appendix C) Junkers Airplane Engine

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Works Cited

Devitt,AmyJ.,AnisBawarshi,andMaryJoReiff."MaterialityandGenreinthe
StudyofDiscourseCommunities."ERIC WorldsLargestDigitalLibraryof
EducationLiterature.N.p.,n.d.Web.30Sept.2015.
HowOutboardMotorsandBoatEnginesWork:ExplainThatStuff!"ExplainThat
Stuff!ScienceandTechnologyMadeSimple.N.p.,n.d.Web.30Sept.2015.
"JunkersJumo004JetEngine."JunkersJumo004JetEngine.N.p.,n.d.Web.30
Sept.2015.