Introduce Your Genre
- Identify your tentative “underappreciated” genre (or subgenre)
… The labeling on packaging (only food/drink at the moment), not totally set.
- What is interesting to you about this genre? Or, why might it be significant or otherwise worth paying attention to?
… -I realize that many times I have found myself standing in the grocery store trying to decide on one brand of food or the other.
-Much of the time, without realizing it, I am choosing food based on which one has the more appealing packaging, or describes its contest better than the competitor
-Does the packaging help guide us in the right direction or is it actually misleading?
- Tentatively, define/describe your corpus (collection of texts/examples)
…The examples I have provided below show the range of different techniques used by in packaging. We see the cereals the aim to be sweet, crunchy, and made with real reesee peanut butter. We can then see the cheerios which boldly claims to lower cholesterol and lower risk of heart disease. There are also examples of free range “happy eggs” to make people feel better about eating eggs. There is also an example of vegetables that show a big old organic sign on them to draw the middle aged ladies over. Everything is geared toward a certain audience and attract them as such.
- Provide links (and/or titles) of five samples. (Try to gather samples from more than one “place” [or type] in order to obtain a diverse and accurate representation of the genre. For now, choose samples without significant deviations).
Describe the Context
- Setting: Where (in what context or medium) does the genre appear? How and when is it used? With what other genres does this genre interact? How?
… Most commonly we could expect to see this genre at play at any given grocery store. It is used daily by everyone without really even noticing. Every item we purchase nowadays has some sort of packaging that was made purposefully to draw the attention of consumers. Attract the consumer, then once they pick the item up they are further drawn to purchase after reading the wording specifically chosen for that product .
- Subject: What topics, issues, ideas, etc. are common to this genre? When people use this genre, what are they communicating about?
… People are trying to communicate one common thing with packaging, and that would basically be please buy me, I am good. Depending on the product, there are different messages being delivered. For some people, they like to read that eggs or meat have come from free range, grass fed animals that get massages once a week, so there is packaging geared towards those types of people. Some people don’t care what they shove in their mouth so they are looking through boxes for words more like YUM or SWEET or CHOCOLATELY or some sort of big bold word on a box that appeals to their particular tastes. Some things have a full description and some, as stated before, will simply just choose to throw up one big bold word. Why does that work for some things and not others? A can of green beans I’d just looked at gave a fact about the percentage of both adults and children that fail to meet their daily vegetable consumption for the day.
- Writers: Who writes the texts in this genre? Are multiple writers possible? What roles do they perform? What characteristics must writers of this genre possess? Under what circumstances do writers write the genre (e.g., in teams, on a computer, in a rush, for their profession? for fun?)?
…There is a demand in any company to have a good advertising/marketing team working to get their products sold. Companies look to pay people in order to attract more customers and have them choose their product over the others. I am sure most larger sized companies have an entire team sitting around thinking of clever ideas for packaging. This is of course done on a computer as it needs to be printed and created quickly. These writers must be able to pick the most important aspects of the item that they believe should be described on the packaging. They must choose what will be written based on audience. So for example we have reeses puffs cereal that says sweet, and crunchy, and mentions that it uses real reeses peanut butter. Then we have cheerios that claims to reduce heart issues. Must be able to analyze audience and write based on what they want.
- Readers: Who reads the texts in this genre? Is there more than one type of reader for this genre? What roles do they perform? What characteristics must readers of this genre possess? Under what circumstances do readers read the genre (e.g., at their leisure, on the run, in waiting rooms)?
…As mentioned above, the readers are the consumers, they are basically any human being alive short of those in remote villages. If anyone has ever left their house they are sure to have seen food labels. Without the readers there would be no reason to make a creative label. If brands of items were simply chosen at random and no one read the labels there would be no purpose. This is not read in leisure but can sometimes provide for a very short, but sometimes interesting read. Could possibly learn a fact or two.
- Exigency/Purpose(s): Why do writers write this genre, and why do readers read it? What purposes does the genre fulfill for the people who use it?
…The genre of food labels helps readers decide which food they will buy. It can be hard to decide between two different options just by looking at them. If you get some creative writing on the labels it is much easier to convince someone to purchase that product. The genre should fulfill your need for information about the product if needed, its contents, maybe a bit about the people who make/produce the product, where its from, etc…
This is cool to think about because this genre is embedded into our everyday life. I even considered doing product labels as my genre. It’s interesting that you mentioned that some people for example, like to see that the product came from free range chicken and so on. That leads me to see that the label is done in a way that shows what kind of consumer the company that sells that product is attempting to draw in. It shows that they know certain people will be more interested in their specific product then others, and they market stuff that appeals to those kinds of consumers. The marketing that goes into labeling products in much more complex than we realize. They play into our psychology. They try to get into our heads. Crazy stuff! I’m interested to see what more you can analyze about this genre.
This genre is actually pretty awesome because it affects everyone. I don’t even think I realized I do this until you pointed it out. I think it’s crazy how companies can manipulate their products to seem more appealing by the way they design it. I can’t wait to see what you do with this (:
This is a cool genre you picked here, I have actually never thought that deeply about product labels, but they really are a huge reason in why I buy products. They aim for a certain demographic of people usually to get their eyes fixated on the product at hand.Really a huge part in why products are purchased, this genre definitely carries some massive importance.
When I entered the supermarket to buy goods, some food was the first time I bought it, but the same food has many different brands. So how to choose food is indeed a problem. Merchants attract consumers by packaging, designing logos and advertising, but these methods also increase the cost of goods. So how to choose between these conditions is very important. Some successful businesses monopolize the goods, and the failed businesses automatically withdraw from the market. So it is very interesting to discuss what can make the products most competitive.
The idea of packaging is a big thing that’s manipulated to sell. Many times if i’m not sure, i don’t base my decisions on package, but on the price. Considering that the most expensive is the best one! Is that true? or is it the packaging that determines it.