PB1A

            Acknowledging that nearly everything we read belongs to a genre is the first step to really understanding all the conventions are attached to those genres. A fairly modern genre is Rate My Professor reviews. Students flock in large numbers armed with their laptops to write up fairly concise reviews about their professors and the classes that they teach. Although these reviews do not belong to a very typical genre, they belong to a genre nonetheless.

            There are many conventions that can be associated with Rate My Professor reviews. These conventions include but are not limited to students writing about whether or not it is easy to get an A, their experience with the midterm and final, whether or not they liked the professor, whether or not you actually need to attend lecture, and whether or not they recommend taking the class. Students writing about whether or not the class is easy can probably be attributed to the writers knowing that is a main concern for the other students who are reading the reviews. Most all of the conventions of this genre exist because one student is trying to advice another student. However, there are some outlier conventions that are not so easily explained. One such convention is when students write about the appearance of the professors such as how they look or dress. This convention is unlike the rest in that it does not serve to advise other students about the professor or the course.

            The intended audience of these reviews is other students who are debating whether or not to take a course or which professor they want to take a course with. Although it is important to remember that the intended audience of the writers of the reviews is not the only audience. It is safe to say that many others, including the professors themselves, wander on to the website and read the reviews. The intended audience links directly to the writer’s purpose for writing the review. Many of the writers take a few minutes out of their days to write these reviews because they genuinely want to give useful advice to other students. Some other writers may write their reviews because they feel very strongly, either negatively or positively, about the professor and they want their rating on the website to represent their feelings about that professor.

            The stylistic pattern of these reviews is casual, informal writing. The students generally write as if they were talking to a close friend. Grammar mistakes, slang, and misspelled words are frequent. The reviews also tend to be short and to the point. The writers likely make their reviews short because they know that the readers will likely lose interest in a long review and they also may not want to spend an extended amount of time writing their reviews.

            Logos is the most commonly used rhetorical strategy in Rate My Professor reviews. The writer uses logos to make their argument because they want the audience to believe them. The writers know that appealing to logic will be the most effective form of persuasion because the readers of the reviews are trying to find logical information about the professors and their classes. The readers are not likely to be interested in the emotions of the writer so pathos does not play a role in many of the reviews. Ethos is also not very present because many of the readers simply assume the writers are credible because not many people would have a reason to write a review about a professor they had never actually had.

            Once you begin to look for it, it is easy to see that even something as simple as reviews about college professors can become a genre. Understanding genres and their conventions can help us understand what we read on a deeper level.