Chit-CHAT

Learning Outcome Five: CHAT

This whole course has been centered around one thing: CHAT. Never in my life did I think that literate activity had so much else involved. CHAT is broken down into seven parts: production, activity, distribution, ecology, socialization, reception, and representation.

Production is the actual act of producing a text and the tools involved. For example, the production of writing a fairy-tale includes coming up with the idea for the story and then sitting down and actually writing the story whether with a computer or with paper and pen.

Distribution is, just that - how the text is distributed. A movie poster is sold to movie theaters, hung up around cities, and advertised online.

Ecology is the environmental impacts that a text has or how the environment effects any of the other elements of CHAT. To write a blog post, you need to have 1) a computer (which is made from nonrenewable sources) and 2) access to the internet, which not everyone has. Thus, blog posts are not available to everyone, everywhere, and that effects distribution and reception.

Socialization is any social interaction that happens because of a text. Someone could see a movie poster, and then decided to go see that movie with a friend.

Reception is how the audience receives and responds to the text. If someone likes the way that a movie poster looks, they are more likely to go and see that movie.

Representation is how the author or creator of the text communicates and represents himself. The author of a fairy-tale will most likely want to represent himself as family oriented.

Lastly, Activity is every single thing that is involved with the text. This includes coming up with the idea for the text, the research, every aspect of the production process, distributing the text, sharing the text with others, etc.

CHAT has helped me in my research and understanding of different genres. Knowing what goes in to a genre and the main goal/purpose of the text helps me to better create an example of text from a certain genre.