Parker’s post on genres is great. It nicely captures the fact that, when aspects of rhetorical context like speech act (or purpose) are repeated often, they give rise to genres. One common workplace genre is the directive. You may notice that these speech acts fall within the four purposes identified in my tutorial: representatives = informing, directives = directing, questions = consulting, and commissives + expressives = valuing. Declaratives, however, are something “special.”

Enjoy!