Genre and Purposeful Theses

The form of a thesis varies depending on the genre and the purpose of the piece of writing. Different forms of writing have different conventions and much of the time we pick a genre to serve a specific purpose, or a teacher assigns a specific genre because there's a form students need to learn. These conventions and our own purposes dictate how we will write the essay and the thesis.

In other posts on the Six Journalistic Questions, I addressed how they can be used for developing a thesis and selecting a topic. For example, let’s say your six journalistic questions map out like this:

• Who: High school students, American authors with different cultural backgrounds
• What: Multi-cultural, American literature
• When: High School years
• Where: American high school literature courses
• How: Studying multi-cultural literature
• Why: To gain a better understanding of other cultures

This establishes criteria to focus on. Your essay should address these topics in detail and nothing else.

The next issue is what genre you’re writing in. A few examples include: 

• Persuasive essays are aimed at specific audiences with the intention to change something. They outline the issue and give reasons why it needs to change or improve, as well as specifying steps that should be taken to make the change happen. Theses for persuasive essays identify who needs to do what.
• Personal essays are introspective and may involve reflecting on past experience and interpreting it. Most of all personal essays talk about and explore and explain who you are: your beliefs, convictions, and practices. Theses for personal essays identify what was gained or learned from the experience.
• Academic research essays gather information from a variety of credible sources and involve some primary research as well. Most writing done in schools is this kind. Theses for academic research essays focus on a significant fact or detail and use the research to support and substantiate it.

The issue is then how to take that criteria identified in the Six Journalistic Questions and phrase them in a single sentence that matches the functions of the appropriate genres. For example:

• A persuasive essay might say “The local school district should use high school literature classes as a way to improve young people’s understanding of different cultures that exist within America by having students read books written by authors of different backgrounds, in addition to the English canon.”
• A personal essay won't do that, but instead will look more like, “From my high school literature classes, I gained a greater understanding of different cultures that exist within the United States than I would have just by reading from the English canon.”
• Or an academic research essay: “High school students who read literature by American authors from different cultures gain a better understanding and appreciation of the complexities within their country.”

The different genres will change the approach. In neither the persuasive not the research essays will the author address themselves, and instead the focus is on the subject matter. In a personal essay, first person is acceptable because the author is part of the subject. Similarly, the persuasive essay is much more concerned with the audience than the others are: a persuasive essay needs to be directed at a specific audience. However, academic essays are prepared for conferences or publications intended for experts in a scholarly field; personal essays may have a broader audience yet.

Understanding the demands of the genre is an important way to properly assemble your information and prepare to write about it. It gives you a way to structure and understand your purposes, and therefore, what goes into the thesis as well. It isn’t enough to simply gather your topics into a sentence: they have to point the reader in a specific direction.