I would describe genre as synonymous with the word category. When we’re talking about genre of writing this would include different types of writing such as fiction, essays, poetry, nonfiction and so on.  In the past, I have written all different types of genres most recently being essays for school assignments but I have also taken a creative writing class in the past where I wrote fiction and learned to write poetry. 

Bazerman does not see genre as a type of text but as a type of action.  Therefore, he believed that we should organize and analyze writing by “genre systems.” This differs greatly from my definition as my definition is much more simplistic categorizing writings by subject of the text. Bazerman by contrast determines genre by the intended action of the text for example a course syllabus is intended to communicate expectations of the class to the students. 

All of the commencement speeches that I have heard included the same basic building blocks, including pieces of wisdom and advice from the speaker’s own experience.  Commencement speeches are meant to be inspirational and motivational; Collins’ speech includes these signature traits. One commencement speech that I decided to read and analyze was Steve Jobs’ commencement speech at Stanford University in 2005. Steve Jobs started out his speech describing his humble beginnings, and ended with an inspirational story of success and triumph. He offers his advice on how to succeed in life and the lessons he learned through his own trials and challenges.  The other commencement speech I decided to read was J.K Rowling’s commencement speech at Harvard University in 2008.  She also followed the same sort of outline, including inspirational stories of her own failures and successes. 

I think that Collins’ actually differs from the other two speeches in several ways.  Collins’ speech isn’t as personal as the other two, Rowling and Jobs both detailed stories from their lives whereas Collins kept his speech more about his point.  Collins also makes an intentional effort to not be a cliché in what he was saying in his speech.  Though he does keep his speech unique and interesting it has the same message as the other two speeches.  All in all, most commencement speeches, cliché or not, have the same theme of motivation, inspiration and hope for the future. 

J.K Rowling https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2008/06/text-of-j-k-rowling-speech/

Steve Jobs https://news.stanford.edu/2005/06/14/jobs-061505/