Introduction
A speech genre can be defined as a relatively stable type of expression that matches a specific characterized situation. Speech genres consist of daily communication activities like greetings, conversations, military commands and many more. Most speech genres are based on social, economic and relationship status between the sources of the speech and the target audience. It is important to note that, each speech genre consists of a unique tone.
However, the presenter of a speech genre is free to use accent to express individuality and is capable of mixing genres from diverse spheres. Since this is a daily conversation and communication process, the better we use genre commands, the more effective we implement an open speech plan which allows us to mix genres comfortably.
Basically, speech genre can be referred to as an utterance. It is true that utterance never comes to an end when it ends another one emergences and a response becomes an utterance to reply the previous one. Vocal statement is always created and formed as a response to previous statement/s and is always created in anticipation of a responding statement. There is no complete language, all language is sporadic, provisional unfinished and can be compared with to a connecting web of utterances. (Crowston 2000:234-238)
Gossip Genre
In this article we are going to discuss gossip as our genre and look into deep the causes and effects associated with gossiping. Mostly, the effects of gossip are normally negative and they do affect a person professionally, socially and even psychologically.
On the other hand gossip can be taken as an excellent bonding opportunity that provides an advance warning of possible potential crises with your company. They enable an individual to set his/her boundaries before in advance. Always it’s very painful; and damaging to the person who is a target of gossip. (Crowston, 2000:246)
Gossips mostly originate from one close friend who knows you in deep and discuss your characters with other on your back. They are common mostly in work place where maybe a person who originates with the gossip aims at receiving a favor and damaging other person reputation. Whenever giving rumors about the other person its good to understand the risks behind the scene, for gossips are taken as defamation and one can be convicted of a slander and be prosecuted. (Dillon, 2000:678)
For the gossip tellers its good to put in consideration some of the issues before spreading the rumors such as you have to weigh the importance a gossip is, check whether the rumor will affect someone career so if it’s a serious allegation its good to address the issue to the supervisor or the Human Resource Manager rather than gossiping about it.
Always keep it light and instead of gossiping it is good to be a trustworthy person who can keep friends secrets and in some extent company’s secrets. Always assume whatever you utter will be spread and be blamed to be the source and avoid gossiping during work hour for it can lead to disciplinary action, ensure you gossip during tea break or lunch hour.
Finally, to the gossip teller never put it in writing no matter how legitimate the allegations are, avoid using e-mails or instant messages for some organizations monitor all correspondences and it can be very risky if your boss walks in with a printed e-mail or message to be evidence against you.
With invention of new media rumors and gossip spread rate increased to thriving one. People are nowadays using internet, e-mail, social media e.g. Facebook, twitter, Skype and even mobile phones to communicate with their friends on some selected topic.
It has proofed to be very dangerous with the way news are spreading with a very short span of time and lack of identification where people use different names and holds more than one account with the email providers and the social networks making it difficult to monitor the correspondences flowing in the social sites.
We can be sure that if a gossip teller gossip to us, likely we become target audience for their gossip and there are no justifiable reasons for gossiping. Those who gossips aims at ruining reputations, injure others and for no good reason than to achieve their personal ego. For those get gossiped about are not assisted but definitely harm is being done on them.
Additionally, if any one of us is not addressing the issue directly to the person but instead we are talking about them from their back we behave and become gossipers and this makes us malicious and backstabbing persons.
Literary Genre
To define what is genre is like to embark on a conjectural journey within a theoretical minefield. Genre theory has drawn numerous debate and contemplation throughout literary history, however several conclusions have materialized. Genre types are unfixed categories whose characteristics differ considerably additionally, the role of literary history plays an important function in genre discussion for they evolve and shift with a new literary text.
There are some ways to discuss genre although challenges thrives in any approach, the subjective nature of the literary experience calls for attention to the importance of the interaction between reader and text to provide the final word on genre.( Spinuzzi,2003:75-77)
Although there is considerable theoretical debate about the definition of specific genres, the usual definition tends to be based on the idea that words or actions within a genre share particular convections of content and context such as themes, settings structure and even style. Consequently history and culture play a major role in the ever changing status of genres which are difficult to define because of their concept.
Essentially Masculine Genre
The crime fiction genre has for long period held principle antithetic to feminism. Through the ethics these principles imply that female traits are diminished and female characters marginalized to specific duties and responsibilities in a society. In Michael Ondaatje’s forensic novel “Anil’s Ghost” and also in the Alan Moore’s graphic novel “Watchmen” female crime fighters must posses’ male characters to succeed in maintaining order and administering justice.
Equally, in John Huston’s classic noir film The Maltese Falcon and Alfred Hitchcock’s film Rear Window, female characters are shown as chauvinistic or centralized ways through the engagement of Crime Fiction conventions. The female crime fighter appears to be only successful when she adopts a certain prejudiced characters. In Anil’s Ghost this is definitely true of the eponymous crime fighters who take on the principles of the hard-boiled seeker-hero, such as Huston’s Sam Spade.
While the amateur female sleuth “has been a staple of mystery novels for generation. The professional female character is an exciting newcomer to a market which is fully dominated by males.” (Jasinski, 2001:335)This is clearly shown out by Anil, she is a loner, and her family died and is abandoned by his lover and husband. Her name serves as a metaphor for her muscles as she first purchase it of her brother ironically using her sexuality and then denies her family’s attempts to emasculate her name by adding as ‘e’ at the end of it.
The significant element of the men hard boiled crime fighter is pursuit of ladies and this is confirmed by the sexual relationship experienced between Anil and Leaf. Additionally, an apart of boiled romance is that the crime fighter is never taken in by their lovers as Anil is not accepted by Cullis and does not give in herself to be controlled by him resisting forcefully.
However, Anil is basically a female character and so her basic inability to fit the masculine principle is reflected in her critical failure to achieve justice and restore order as expected by the norms of the convection.( Jasinski,2001:320)
Masculine perception in today’s world can lead to a very serious problem. Whether a male or a female both has equal potential of securing any opportunity that comes their way in life time. A sense of denial to some women mess a lot with their performance where they believes that a man is there to work better than that.
Gender equality has brought confidence in women life and make them feels superior as a normal man. Women has been in the front war line fighting and protecting the integrity on their motherland and therefore any statement which may intended to cause gender differences is highly regretted and its important for us to utilize the media that we have both electronic and print in preaching gender equality and condemn any partiality. (Kress, 2003:45-47)
Conclusion
Speech genre is generally supposed to support our means of communication. The way we send a message from the sender to the audience determines how our message will be received. The theme and tone of our utterances portray perceptions that we intend to send across hence one must be keen when making statements to avoid causing harm to him/her or to the others.
Once you utter a statement you become the originator and anything that protrude from the said words you tend to bare all responsibilities. Therefore, it is true that the language is naturally dialogic direct from its contexts. The sentence or phrases becomes a systematic utterance when uttered from one context of application to another.
References
Crowston, K. & Williams, M. (2000). Reproduced and Emergent Genres of Communication on the World Wide Web. The Information Society 16, 201-215.
Dillon, A. & Grushrowski, B.A. (2000). “Genres and the web: Is the personal home page the first uniquely digital genre?” [[Journal of the American Society for Information Science]], 51(2), 202-205.
Jasinski, J.(2001). Genre: Sourcebook on Rhetoric. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Kress, G. (2003). Literacy in the New Media Age. London: Routledge.
Spinuzzi, C. (2003). Tracing genres through organizations: A sociocultural approach to information design. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.