01/10/2016
PB1A: How Sorority Business is Handled
Being
in a sorority is not all fall in games. Joining the Greek life is a type of
life style, a unique business hustle. Many people have negative stereotypes over
Greek life and what we do but we are more than just a party person. As a proud
sister of Sigma Theta Psi Multicultural Sorority Inc., I have learned how to
become a sister, a spokesperson, a leader and most importantly a businesswomen.
Holding positions and trying to get our name out there and recognized is a very
huge part on how we write certain things.
If it
is not obvious by now, the genre I decided to focus on is sorority business and
casual material. As a proud sister of Sigma Theta Psi Multicultural Sorority
Inc. I must learn how to alter my communication skills to direct the audience I
am addressing and under the circumstances I am addressing them for. I want to
focus specifically on some positions I have held which would be; step and
stroll mistress and National Board communication chair.
All three of these
chairs have similar features and structures to them but as they begin to go
more in depth you start to see the difference between them even though they are
all addressing the same address. When writing emails out to my chapter, I will
always great sisters before I start anything. It will be a formal greeting with
a little bit of personality into it, for example, something I might say as a
greeting would be:
Good Evening Lovely
Sisters and Ladies of Psi,
I hope all my lovely
ladies are doing great today and are excited for…….Before I begin with any details
I would like to wish all sisters a lovely Founders weekend and I hope to see
you all soon. I love when we all get together because there aren’t any others
that can rep that purple, black and gold with this fierceness so let’s be OWT
sisters! With that being said I would like to…….
Itinerary: …….
Sincerely,
Kappa’s Baby Butterfly
This is an outline of an
email I would send out to my chapter which is the girls I go to school with. My
chapter does not include sisters from outside chapter (outside schools) or our
National Board which is created by alumni’s who continue to be involved in our
sorority but also the ones who oversee and run ALL chapters. If I were to send
my National Board an email it would definitely be more formal business than
casual. There emails look a little like this:
Good Evening Lovely
National Board Sisters,
I hope that all is well
and National Board is progressing well every day. I am writing this email today
on behalf of Kappa Chapter to let National Board know about our ………event and
would like to get it approved……
Best,
Casandra Irene Phillips
Kappa Chapter
Step and Stroll Mistress
2015-2016
Epsilon Line Spring 2015
This would basically be
an outline for an email I would send to National Board. There is definitely a
difference with the personality I put in to each email and the tone I present.
I am able to have a bit more fun and personalize my chapter emails because they
are just going to my chapter, but National Board emails are always very strict
and straight to the point since they are going to the women who run our chapter
and are later shared with other chapters once approved.
There is also many
differences within chairs regardless of who we are sending them to. As step and
Stroll Mistress I have the advantage of making my emails as personal and free
as I’d like. My chair does not really handle the business aspect of the chapter
and most of my emails are sent to remind sisters of practices and events so
they do not have to be very business structured, instead they are very casual.
I do this in order to persuade sisters to actually read my emails and look
forward to going to practice. Most of the emails we get throughout the day are
all in regards to work we have to do and workshops we have to complete so for
the most part those emails are ignored and deleted. In other hands, I’ve
actually had sisters tell me that they save my emails because they are so funny
and interesting. When I send out emails about my chair I tend to use a lot of
emojis, memes, and long greetings to remind sisters that this chapter is not
all business material and we can have fun with the work we put in.
In other hands, I am
also National Board Communicator. These emails are always very short and
straight to the point, I also do not personalize the greetings very much.
Instead I quickly wish them the best and then communicate what I had to
communicate and cut the email short. This is done because we know that those
sisters who are on National Board have a very busy life with their careers,
families, grad schooling, etc. so we do not wish to take up much of their time.
These emails are also always to handle business between a chapter and the
entire board so there is no time to waste with making a fun email, instead it
is tried to be as structured as possible.
In general these emails
just prove how much being in a sorority teaches you. I have learned how to
write emails that are strictly business, emails that are casual and emails that
are business casual, all depending on who my audience is and what point I am
trying to make with my email.
Cassy Phillips,
ReplyDeleteJust to be clear: there are many genres—I’d have to think, though I don’t really know because I wasn’t a member of Greek life in my undergrad years—within a sorority, but “sorority business and casual material” aren’t actually genres themselves. Genres are specific documents or artifacts that you can see/read/experience. Your emails in the “step and stroll mistress and National Board communication chair” present two different roles which impact these genres. Even though they’re both emails—and emails have specific conventions—since you have two different positions, you have two different needs to communicate. Your purpose and audience change, and so do some of the convention(al) aspects of these emails. The tone changes and you can be more of your supercool Cassy self in the first role, but the second role is much more cut’n’dry. This goes to show, I think, just how important it is to take the social roles of communication into consideration when analyzing genres.
Nice work here, Cassy, and thanks for bringing in some specific textual evidence. ☺
Z
Cassandra,
ReplyDeleteIt was really nice getting another insight into Greek Life. As you said, the negative social stigmas placed upon sororities and fraternities often undermine the important professional, academic, and life skills that can be gained by joining these types of organizations.
I also thought you also did a really nice job providing examples of the how you would go about producing each type of email depending on the chair position you were holding. As discussed in class today in our group, it was a very good example of how the rhetorical situation affects the message you are trying to send.
See you in class!
Junior Olivieri
Cassandra,
ReplyDeleteIt was really interesting reading about the Greek Life. Seeing two different emails made it very easy to spot the differences between the genre. I dont really have much knowledge on the Greek Life so what i can at least say, to improve your PB1A at least, is to just make things clearer. As it stands, the way you typed made it a little hard to read and I had to skim. Overall, you got the job done and still have a cool subject. I look forward to hearing more about it, great job!
Cassandra,
ReplyDeleteLove love love how you brought in the examples! You made it so much easier for me to understand and visualize what you're writing about in your blog. I really like how you referred to your examples also, and didn't just plonk them on the page. However, I did find it a little tough to follow where you were speaking about each of the conventions. You have two difference audiences here, so perhaps you could have narrowed it down to just one of these emails and gone a little more specific. Also, how do you sign off differently with each emails? Great first PB!