The Idea of an Essay, Volume 2

42 shared throughout the group. These communities can be social, political, recreational, professional, or academic; also, we can be born into some communities while others we voluntarily join. Despite the differences between these various communities, the concept of genre demonstrating ideology acts as the unifying factor. Ann Johns, for example, expresses the significance of genre within a discourse community. She says, “These communities use written discourses that enable members to keep in touch with each other, carry on discussions, explore controversies, and advance their aims; the genres are their vehicles for communication” (503). As we can see from this quote, genre acts as the primary mode for members to communicate effectively with one another and share their goals. As a result, the genres that are used by the community focuses on uniting the group in communicating language, practices, values, conventions, and principles that they all share. In other words, genre is used to express ideology of the group. Genres act as a mean to unify a community by portraying ideology, but they also can be resisted and changed within the community. The dynamic quality of genres and their ability to be resisted has been discussed by several writing scholars. For example, Bawarshi defines genre as not just merely a classification system for sorting different types of writing, but “instead that genres are dynamic discursive formations in which ideology is naturalized and realized in specific social actions, relations, and subjectivities” (8). This means that genre is always changing and its purpose is to address ideologies specific to certain situations and audiences. These situations and audiences change over time, but they also can be changed through resistance shown by the members of the community. Ann Johns discusses the power of this resistance. She says, “communities and their genres are useful to study….because they are evolving: through affiliation of new, different members; through changes in authority; through anticonventionalism, dialogue and critique” (516). This means that within these communities, genre is constantly being resisted and adapting to the members’ diversity, shifting ideologies, explored controversies, and changing authorities of the group. So as a result, the conventional use of the genre can be resisted, or fought against, because of various oppositions displayed by members of the group. This concept of resistance becomes increasingly important for Christians in a secular community,