In class, we discussed how “new” genres develop out of new social needs within a discourse community. An example Professor Shultz-Colby gave was how the Presidential Address was largely based on the King’s Speech. I picture these colonists thinking about how beneficial it would be to have an annual speech from the president, a position they had just essentially created and elected. Ironically, the template that this Presidential Address was formulated off of was the speech of the British king. The point of this example to me is that genres do not just develop out of thin air- they are created through the revision and changing of genres that already exist. There is no way to create something that does not exist without drawing on the knowledge and resources we already have. This kind of goes back to our earlier conversations and readings about creativity, and how the interaction between intellectual property and building off of other’s ideas is necessary to develop new ideas and technologies. Creativity would cease to exist if we decided as a society that ideas were individual and not public domain. To some extent, we have protections for intellectual property. However, I would argue that any stricter restrictions would inhibit creativity and progress significantly.
One Paige At a Time 
When we were having this discussion in class, I thought about the age old question of which came first, the chicken or the egg? What I mean is that by giving something a name, does that mean that something new was created or was it simply just labeled? Relating back to genre, horror, comedy, drama, etc, had already existed in life, all genre did was give it a name. But the argument could be made that because we created a name, we had made up something entirely. When we discussed creating a new genre, I felt the need to disagree because we never invented a specific genre in the first place, at least I don’t think so. They have all existed naturally on their own for us to discover.
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