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Castia Hunter Ms.Wolcott Enc 1102 15 February 2013

Introduction According to Professor Amy J. Devitt, Understanding genre requires understanding more than just classification schemes; it requires understanding the origins of the patterns on which those classifications are based. This quote is very important because in not only dissolves the previous definitions of what genre is, but it gives the word genre much more meaning than it was given in the past. My previous understanding of genre was that it was just the method in which the method was relayed to its audience, but through the previous readings and research I have done I can clearly see that the genre carries a lot more weight that it seems. In the criminal justice field, particularly lawyers, genre plays a major role between the members in this discourse community and the message that they are trying to send to their audience. Of course we all knew that lawyers are natural born liars, but who would have ever thought even the way that they structure their documents were designed to make us think and feel a certain way. For example, in the Devitt, Bawarshi, and Reiff article Devitt gives a specific example about how the voting ballots are designed by lawyers who are knowledgeable about the topics that are placed on the ballot. Unfortunately for the typical uninformed citizen, the questions are worded by these lawyers in order to confuse and/or persuade the voters in a certain direction. (Devitt

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543) Based off of the three articles that I have gathered, real life experiences, and previous research that has been done about genre, I have come to the conclusion that the genre that is disbursed by the discourse community of lawyers is created in order to use their lexis and the structure of their documents in order to confuse outliers. From this goal there are two different outcomes that are produced. You will either have to hire a lawyer to handle your legal matters, which produces income for the members within the community, or you will be motivated to take up law studies and a become a lawyer, which is positive also because it adds new and innovative thinkers to the community.

Discussion Legal journals and articles tend to be very lengthy with a large amount of footnotes placed at the bottom of the page. As you can see in the law journal that I retrieved from one of the University of Texass law students, on the bottom of the second page there are two footnotes that clarifies the purpose of the journal that is being written. (Greenblatt 2)Also, the previous court cases that have occurred about the topic that the law student has written about is cited and described in the footnote area. From my other two articles I have observed that the footnotes were used in order to describe and give background information on court cases that were previously mentioned. Footnotes are used to invite outsiders in and to give them a general understanding of what is being discussed. This is a ploy that lawyers use in order to restrict the amount of knowledge that the common person can have about legal topics. By this I mean that the footnotes only explain

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things minimally in the footnotes, they only tell you what they what you to know, nothing more or nothing less. For example, I will show you a quote out of the law journal that I found from Northwestern. By invoking the concept of office structure, we refer not to the physical edifice in which the prosecutors office sits. Instead, we have the social architecture of the workplace in mind: those alignments and routines inside the workspace that organize the staff to handle its caseload. (Levine, and Wright 1122)This quote was taken directly from the journal whose topic was describing the death penalty in a three dimensional way in order to touch on aspects that the average person does not see. Out of this whole quote there is only one footnote and the footnote did not even make sense to me. I would literally have to go on the internet and hope to find someone who can break down the content of this quote to me. Although it seems that footnotes should be there to help, it is not always the case with every article because the terminology that is used within the footnotes is like a foreign language to those outside of the field. In a way, footnotes can be used to invite people in as well as to keep people out. Something that I noticed about the structure of legal journals is that most of them begin with an abstract or an introduction and a table of contents, but the rest of the article goes straight into using evidence to support the claim that they are trying to make. This is very different from the traditional papers where the introduction is followed by the methods, results/discussion, and the conclusion. You can see the structure of a typical law journal by looking at the table of contents from the journal I have chosen from Berkley. (Greenberg 198) I believe that the structure that lawyers have chosen for their genre is very effective for the people in their community. Unlike the medical field, there are not very many experiments that are being run between lawyers, so there is no need for a methodology section telling you how they went about researching their papers. So, basically there whole paper is based off of research of past situations that have happened and their

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opinions about how the past has effected or shaped the outcome of new cases. As far as who has the authority, judges pretty much have the authority in this community. Although students begin off as lawyers, and the ultimate goal would be to become a judge and make thousands of dollars by ruling cases. Judges have a lot of power due to the fact that judges can overrule the verdict that has been given by the jury of peers. Also, judges have a lot of power because it is very rare that a judge is fired from their jobs. Once you become a judge you basically preside as a judge for the rest of your life.

Conclusion Lawyers have a specific way of manipulating people into believing what they want them to believe. From the three journals I have collected, it is evident that only certain things are meant to be understood. This is very important when it comes to how they present their genre because the way that they present their information attracts people who are already in their field of expertise. This ensures that the people who are already lawyers can attract clients who have no idea what is being discussed in order to make a steady income. Even if something as simple as a tuna fish sandwich is being discussed, they will word in such a way that you will be begging for help and assistance. Although the discourse community of lawyers are not very inviting, it is that very same reason why accomplishing the goal of becoming a lawyer it cherished and appreciated.

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Works Cited Devitt, Amy . "College Composition and Communication." Trans. Array Generalizing about Genre: New Conceptions of an Old Concept. . No. 4 National Council of Teachers of English, 1993. 573-586. Web. 6 Feb. 2013. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/358391 .>. Greenberg, Kae. "Still Hidden in the Closet: Trans Women and Domestic Violence." Gender Law Justice. (2012): 198-251. Web. 15 Feb. 2013. <http://genderlawjustice.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Still-Hidden-in-theCloset-Trans-Women-and-Domestic-Violence.pdf>. Levine, Kay L., and Ronald F. Wright. "PROSECUTION IN 3-D." THE JOURNAL OF CRIMINAL LAW & CRIMINOLOG. 102.No.4 (2012): 1119-1180. Web. 15 Feb. 2013. http://www.law.northwestern.edu/jclc/backissues/v102/n4/1024_1119.Levine.pdf Greenblatt, Jennifer L. "IF YOU DONT AIM TO PLEASE, DONT DRESS TO TEASE AND OTHER PUBLIC SCHOOL SEX EDUCATION LESSONS SUBSIDIZED BY YOU, THE FEDERAL TAXPAYER." utexas.edu. (2012): 1-25. Web. 15 Feb. 2013. <http://www.utexas.edu/law/journals/tjclcr/archives/141/Greenblatt Final.pdf>.