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Jose Real
Kneece
Writing 2
11 April 2016
Genres of the Black Lives Matter Movement
Police brutality is not a myth. The Black Lives Matter movement has proven such
statement, and as time goes by, people are starting to believe it. This movement has become
familiar in the American household, and is one of the most controversial topics today. The reason
this became such common topic in the United States is because of the publishing of writing
genres relating to this movement. News articles, entertainment articles, newspapers, songs,
posters, and even letters on the topic of the Black Lives Matter movement have taken over the
media. These writing pieces, however, differ in their writing genres. They are uniquely
distinguishable by the audience, purpose, and context of the piece, as well as the conventions the
author uses. In this essay, song lyrics and online articles, two distinct genres, will be analyzed
and compared in their conventions and properties through pieces of work revolving around the
Black Lives Matter movement.
To understand what makes up a genre, one must learn the components that separate one
genre from another. Audience, purpose, context, and conventions the searched properties when
attempting to define a genre. The audience refers to people who are intended to read the piece of
work. It is a generalized group of people the author specifically wrote for. They may range from,
age, race, color, sex, religion, etc. The purpose of a piece is simply the reason the author wrote

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the work. It is the message or gain of knowledge that the author wants the audience to receive
after they read the written work. Context just refers to the environment that the reader would
read the work in. It is the occasion as to why the reader would read such piece and under what
environmental situations they would read it in. Conventions are the specific rhetorical devices
and techniques used in that genre. These conventions make the essay vibrant and help catch the
readers attention. Most genres typically have different conventions, although they do share some
similarities.
Song lyrics are written to allow the listener of a song be aware of what the singer is
singing. They are essentially poems that are translated into songs. These poems can have any
type of theme that the writer wants to show the reader, but generally use themes that may relate
to one that listens to the song. Songwriters write them during their process of creating a song.
They are later released to the public to allow them to view the lyrics of the song. Song lyrics are
typically read when the audience of the song wishes to learn the lyrics. They can be seen in CD
booklets, online, or quoted by people on social media. These properties, however, are quite
different from online articles.
Online articles are one of the more common genres that are used by the general public
today. They appear on social medias and on any search engine. They range on topics from social
issues, to interesting facts, to recent news, and sometimes even cooking discoveries. Journalists
of these articles express their interests through their work and attract others with similar likings.
This genre is more broad with its audience, opening it to the general public with an access to the
internet, but each online article has a specific topic, thus giving each article a unique audience.
Online articles are typically written to inform the reader on various topics that can range from

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entertainment, news, social issues, etc. These online articles appear constantly in social media,
which is when most people read them. However, they also appear in most search engine.m
Genres tend to have distinct conventions when it comes to their style of writing. Some
genres have lists, some have steps, there are several with paragraphs, and a couple just have
phrases. Structure conventions allow the reader to clearly visualize the piece of work and lets
them read it in a more productive way. Song lyrics are generally written in stanzas, which are
used to separate the verses from the chorus. Also, stanzas allow the singer to acknowledge the
pauses of the song. For example, in Beyonces Formation, the writer separates You mix that
negro with that creole Make that Texas bama(Beyonce) from I like my baby heir with baby
hair and afros(Beyonce) to separate when the beat of the song changes, which is also an
indication of change from verse to chorus or vice versa. Articles on the other hand, tend to be
formatted in paragraphs. Each paragraph elaborates on the previous one, to allow a flow that
maintains the readers attention. By having such format, the author can separate the points they
attempt to make without making the writing piece too clumped. Aside from these structural
conventions, writers try to appeal the readers emotionally.
Both song lyrics and online articles try to catch the readers attention. They must use
conventions that appeal to the readers emotions. To do this, song lyrics use repetition, whether it
is through chorus repetition or specific word repetition. In general, songwriters use this technique
to help their audience memorize the song faster. By memorizing the song, their audience will
have the potential of enjoying the song more because of their ability to sing it. In Formation
Beyonc repeats the phrase Ok ladies now lets get in formation (Beyonce), which was meant
to become a household phrase in the United States, and it certainly did. The audience enjoys
such phrase, and invites others to listen to the song. Because of such catchy phrases, readers

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want to understand the rest of the song, thus making themselves search the song lyrics online.
One of online articles most important convention is the use of headlines. These headlines are the
first thing the readers see, and if they are appealing enough, they will open the article and read it.
For example, Lincoln Blades article has the headline Bill Clintons Black Lives Matter
Comments Were Revealingly Honest, which grabs the attention of the reader because of the
bold commentary. This headline implies that Clintons comments were justifiable, which most
likely baffles the reader and leads him to read the article in order to get closure as to why such
comments would be honest. Headlines could be deceiving, but that is not important to the author
as long as there is an audience that reads their articles. Besides these emotional conventions that
the author uses, in order to keep the reader engaged throughout the entire piece, authors attempt
to engage the reader visually.
Whenever one reads a piece of work, there always has to be some sort of visual, whether
it is through images or text, in order to keep the reader engaged. Song lyrics use imagery. The
use of this rhetorical device is part of what makes a song so artistic. Without such vivid
language, songs would sound like a singer singing an online news article, which is not
aesthetically pleasing. Imagery helps the audience gain a picture in their mind of what they are
reading, in this case song lyrics. Glory by John Legend and Common is another song that
speaks about the Black Lives Matter movement. The lines They marched with the torch, we
gon run with it now(Legend) and We sing, our music is the cuts that we bleed
through(Legend), penetrate our minds with strong images of people with torches and music
physically cutting human flesh. It contributes to the purpose of the song, which is to entertain
and learn the theme of the song. The main theme in this article was the acknowledging the Black
Lives Matter movement. Online articles use pictures as one of its conventions. In Blades article,

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the author posts a picture of Bill Clinton tussled with Black Lives Matter protesters while
campaigning for his wife Thursday. These images are used to reduce text space and give a
visual appeal to the article. Without them, the article would look overwhelming and full of text
that is unappealing to the reader.
Song lyrics and online articles are not genres that are usually compared. Most of
their conventions, audience, purpose, and context are quite different. Song lyrics use stanzas and
online articles use paragraphs as structural conventions. The stanzas build on establishing the
context and the purpose of song lyrics while paragraphs build on the context of online articles.
Song lyrics use repetition for a pathos appeal that help build on the audience and context. Online
articles use headlines to invite readers to read these articles, which, like song articles, allow them
to build on audience and context. Visual appeal is seen through both genres through the
conventions of images (online articles) and imagery (song lyrics) that both build on their genres
purpose and audience. Song lyrics have a more similar convention to that of poems and online
articles have similar conventions to that of entertainment news articles. However, this does not
intend that there are no similarities between song lyrics and online articles, as previously proven.
Each combination of conventions is what distinguishes one genre from another. If all genres had
the same conventions, there would not be any types of writing genres, and most text would be
odd and confusing to read.

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Works Cited

Beyonc. Formation. Formation. Mike WiLL Made It. 6 Feb. 2016.

Blades, Lincoln. "Bill Clinton's Black Lives Matter Comments Were Revealingly

Honest."Rolling Stone. N.p., 08 Apr. 2016.

John Legend and Common. Glory. Selma. John Legend. Dec 11, 2014.
Williams, John J. "Former Raven Ray Lewis Releases Video Critical of Black Lives
Matter Movement."Baltimoresun.com., n.p., 8 Apr. 2016.