Charles Bazerman Summary

Based on the writings and readings we have done in class, the best candidate for discussing the many different types of genre systems would be Charles Bazerman. Bazerman does a successful job at breaking down the meaning of a genre system. His text also analysis’s the larger aggregations that genres are part of and introduces and methodological issue of how expand our perspective on genres and the systems they are part of. Bazerman does all of this successfully by using examples that young people can relate to.
Unlike other authors we have read from, Bazerman explains in depth, the concept of a genre system. He explains that a genre system captures the regular sequences of how one genre follows on another in the typical communication flows of a group of people. “A genre system is comprised of several genre sets of people working together in an organized way, plus the patterned

The purpose of this is to characterize how genres fit into and comprise larger organizations, roles, organizations and activities. Charles Bazerman is the only author we have read that explain a collection of types of texts someone in a particular role is likely to produce as a genre set. Although similar ideas are introduced in Wardles example of a man named Alan, Bazerman is the only writer to put a name on the concept. The activity system that Bazerman explains mostly focuses on what people are doing and how texts help people do it. Introducing basketball as an activity system, it may mostly be about skills and ball handling, but there are rules, strategies, cheers, league organizations, and newspaper reports which engage spoken and written genres. By using examples that young people can relate to such as school, basketball and factory jobs, the concepts of genre sets, activity systems and genre systems become more easy to