Post 3

The two readings draw on similar material, but use a different medium to express the same concept of genre that we have been talking about. Chandler and Fish talk about the same thing, except Fish uses people, specifically his class and a list of names that was written on the board. Fish’s main point is that even as go throughout our daily lives, we are trained to abide by certain rules which guide our everyday lives that we aren’t always conscious of. For instance walking on the right side of the hallway, or stopping at a red light. He writes “It would never occur to you, for example, to wonder if the people pouring out of that building are fleeing from a fire; you know they are exiting from a class…” On a college campus you would usually think that if a bunch of students are coming out of a building, that a class has let out. This same thing we do with genres, for with a genre we already anticipate certain things to happen, and we also understand things that happen within those same sorts of notions. Eagleton brings excellent evidence to the table that even before we are put into society we are framed into a certain way of thinking. He brings up Saussure’s theory. This theory shows that even with the language we speak everyday we are framed into some sort of thinking. Language deals in the realm of concepts. If you said the word car to someone, they would be able to conjure and image and tell you what one is. This idea of a car though is abstract and also there are many kinds of cars. In another language there could be a slew of different words that mean different types of cars. For instance we all know the difference between, a sedan, a coupe, and wagon, a convertible, an SUV, a pickup, and so on. All these things are cars but in another language you might not be able to interpret to the preciseness that you would in another language. Living we use these words and can understand what they mean, but because they are so common we think of them as natural when they really aren’t.

A social interaction which has certain conventions would be any type of competitive sport, or game that could be played. When people get competitive with each other they tend to talk ill, or badly of opposing players. This “trash talking” isn’t meant to be hurtful, as the players could be friends outside of this competition. The reason it occurs though is that this action is supposed to give a sort of psychological edge, and get into your opponents head by distracting him off his current task in the competition. Once the game is over, (most of the time) the two teams will shake each others hand and go off in good standing with each other, no hard feelings.