Davis 1 Lindsay Davis Professor Wolcott ENC 1102 12 February 2013 Electrical Stuff Genres Genres are something

that most people think are easy to define, but when you really need to think about it they can be very complex. The act of just putting a piece of literacy in a specific pile of genres is something Devitt despises. She thinks that when youre doing that youre not reading something for its content and why someone maybe wrote that specifically for the audience that youre not even looking at how the paper was wrote or even about. She says at that point youre basically not even trying to understand why the author wrote it that way in the first place. My genre of articles, that are diagrams of schematics, or map of wiring, has a lot of things similar but not all the same either, thats what Devitt was trying to point out. That just because you put a literary piece in a genre does not all the sudden make all of the articles in that category the same. Different genres about different topics are all set up differently on purpose for the reader, or writer. My group of schematics has a very centralized focus. All of their focus is to give directions to the person who reads them, but only in their specific way. You have to be fluent in the language of electrical terms and symbols to understand the schematics. Also you can see that because of this specific lexis there then becomes a specific targeted audience. I think the main purpose of these diagrams is to make is easy to read for the electrician so he can put something together the proper way. I also noticed that whenever you draw a schematic of

Davis 2 something you always use straight lines. They use straight lines on the diagram that way you can fit the most lines on a piece of paper and dont lose track of where that one thing was going to. Even though people wire things in real life and the wires definitely dont go in a completely straight line, having sharp cornered ninety degree angle turns, but its just accepted that you draw the diagram with straight lines. There is one specific purpose for these schematics and it is directly for the readers use to assemble things. As talked about before, there is a set audience for these schematics. This means that you can establish that there is a very specific target for their work. These types of drawings would normally be seen by two people besides the writer. The first would be someone just building the actual robot to need to know how to build it and put the right wires in the right place. The second type of person who will look at this is just someone who is researching or curious about the project. For example, this project is building a FIRST robotics robot to compete in a certain game. If someone who is looking to just find out information about the FIRST robotics organization they can go to their website and find these exact schematics. The reason this type of drawing is just for the people in the field and is more catered to them is because if all of the symbols for actual words, such as: volts, resistance, ohms, etc., are there for a reason. If they hadnt been invented then the schematic would be f illed with jumbled up words and you wouldnt be able to see the direction of anything or understand anything it was trying to say. Even if it had all the longer version of the words I still dont think other people would understand it because the paper would be even more jammed packed and confusing to look at. So therefore it is very vital that it is written just for people in the field to make it easy to read and to understand.

Davis 3 These texts create a certain situation that is specific to only this discourse community of people. The situation is that these texts are created for would be the need to know how to wire a robot. The people that do the hands on wiring are not educated enough know how much power needed to make it work, or which wire gauge you need. So the engineers create the diagram for the people doing the hands on work. Not just students who are working on a robot, but technicians building the next iPhone rely on this type of literary document that is the diagram. It basically gives the people putting the wires together the directions of how to do it, since they cant figure it out themselves anyways. This is the perfect situation for needing someone to create these schematics. Through this discussion of these documents I have found that asking a lot of questions can help figure out many things about it as a text. Looking at this genre through Devitts perspective that genre should not be a normalizing and static concept, a set of forms that constrain
the individual, but be more loose and free so that you can stop and think about why someone wrote,

or in this case drew, something for the audience for a specific reason they had in mind that the practice of putting these diagrams in a group hides (Devitt 574). I have found that this genre is written mainly for a certain audience and that they are very functional pieces of material. They basically are the directions for wiring something in picture form instead of word by word step form. The discourse communities of electrical engineers and electricians have found this form of genre the most helpful and easy to follow when it comes to understanding how to put it together. This genre is very important to these discourse communities because without this type of transfer of direction by drawing things would be a lot harder to convey to other members in the community.

Davis 4 Works Cited

Devitt, Amy J. "Generalizing about Genres: New Conceptions on an Old Concept." College Composition and Communication. 4th ed. Vol. 44. Boston: National Council of Teachers of English, 1993. 573-86. Print. Robot Data Connectivity Diagram (PWM). Digital image. 2012 FRC Robot Electrical Information. FIRST, n.d. Web. 9 Feb. 2013. <http://www.usfirst.org/sites/default/files/uploadedFiles

/Robotics_Programs/FRC/Game_and_Season__Info/2012_Assets/Robot%20Data%20Connectivi ty%20Diagram%20%28PWM%29.pdf>.
Robot Data Connectivity Diagram (Serial - CAN). Digital image. 2012 FRC Robot Electrical Information. FIRST, n.d. Web. 9 Feb. 2013.<http://www.usfirst.org/sites/default/files/uploaded

Files/Robotics_Programs/FRC/Game_and_Season__Info/2012_Assets/Robot%20Data%20Conn ectivity%20Diagram%20%28Serial-CAN%29.pdf>.
Robot Power Distribution Diagram (24V Solenoid). Digital image. 2012 FRC Robot Electrical Information. FIRST, n.d. Web. 9 Feb. 2013. <http://www.usfirst.org/sites/default/files/uploadedFiles/Robotics_Programs/FRC/Game_and_Season_ _Info/2012_Assets/Robot%20Power%20Distribution%20Diagram%20%2824V%20Solenoid%29.pdf>.