Writing for different audiences

PB3A

The article that I have chosen for WP3 is titled Ecology, Sexual Selection, and the Evolution of Mating Systems, by Stephen T. Emlen and Lewis W. Oring. The main point of the article is to discuss how evolution has changed sexual selection and the mating systems, specifically of Humans and other primates. I chose this article because I believe that it is fascinating to find out how interactions amongst individuals has changed throughout history. It is also a topic that is not specific to one certain age group and many people can benefit from learning about it.

            For a younger audience, it would make the most sense to focus on the ecology and evolutionary aspects of the paper rather than the sexual content. Though it is all scientific and not crude, the audience I am targeting (4^th-7^th graders) might not be aware of how sexual relationships work. I believe that there is a way to get across the majority of the information in this paper without having to make them uncomfortable. Because it is a science-based article, pictures can help with the audience’s learning of this information. I want to create an adventure comic in which a main character analyzes the evolution of these social systems. That way I can also incorporate goofy fonts, younger jargon, and cool animations.

            For the older people genre, I had a harder time deciding which method would be the best to get across the information of the article. Obviously it would over-view all of the information without having to censor any, but would have less scientific jargon than the original paper. I finally decided on doing a news piece, similar to those found in magazines such at Time, or The New Yorker. These magazines are known for being very factual and therefor readers trust the institutions. The news article will contain all of the information, just a bit more simplified.

            I’m excited to work on the different parts of this word project because I feel that it allows us to be more creative than the last two projects. Writing for younger audiences seems like there is more freedom to be silly and yourself. Writing for an older audience will rely more on making the right moves and keeping the right style. I do think it will be a lot of work to create these pieces and wonder if I have to create the whole entirety of those pieces or just the beginnings? I will find out eventually I suppose.

Class responses: Painting Trees

I happened to be able to answer a few of the beginning class questions before the technical problems set in so I will continue from where I left off!

Painting Trees
When watching all the different clips about painting, styles and moves made a lot more sense to me. It was really easy to see the approaches the painters made and how they differed. In the clip of "Happy Trees" and "Painting Mountains" the artist seemed really relaxed and focused on the journey of the piece, rather than the main object. His brushstrokes were leisurely and he was not worried about messing up.
The artist who worked on the disney film had very different styles. Through research, they were able to collaborate to produce a medieval-looking background. This gives the audience a feeling of being drawn back in time to the story of romance and adventure.
The most interesting clip was when the three different artists all painted a tree. Their first move is in setting up their work. They all take different approaches and even use different mediums. They also all sit in different areas which means their perspective of the tree will be different. Walt's approach was to reproduce the tree graphically. This meant dark lines creating a solid picture. He compares the tree to a skyscraper. Josh takes more of a spiritual perspective and sees the tree as full of life. He says he sees the tree as "a living personality." Therefor he uses large strokes to convey motion. Ivan, the third artist, says he sees "all the richness and variety of nature." He makes his painting a detailed study of the trunk.
While all of the artist are painting the same subject, their styles and moves turn out completely original pieces that say a lot about their personalities. Not one is better than the other, as there is beauty in each of their styles.

Elbow and Bunn

PB2B

When writing a piece, an author intentionally writes a certain way to get their message across to the readers. These intentional decisions are called ‘moves’ and can go a long way in structuring pieces of writing. Each move can give a different effect and impart information in different ways. By analyzing two articles, we can understand how different choices and moves can structure pieces of writing.  

In the first example, How to Read Like a Writer by Mike Bunn, there are a number of ‘moves’ that are placed the way they are to give different effects at certain points. The first is a personal story he starts off with about his time as a student and how he personally learned to read like a writer. This move is effective in showing the reader how he learned and makes it more personal then say, a factual article might be. If you are someone who might not see the point of personal stories in articles very much, Bunn makes a point to tie it to his main argument and his personal examples of his own learning show his own thought process which is both interesting and helpful.

            Another move that he uses that also makes the reading more personable is he sets a goal with the reader. “You are reading to learn about writing…The goal as you read like a writer is to locate what you believe are the most important writerly choices represented in the text­­—choices as large as the overall structure or as small as a single word used only once—to consider the effect of those choices on potential readers”.  As a reader, this makes reading the rest of the text and achieving the goal of ‘reading like a writer’ much more important.

            There are also other smaller moves that are equally effective throughout the text. Bunn brings attention to certain words by using a different font and size for them, making them stand out on the page. “Then you can go one step further and imagine what different choices the author might have made instead,” is one example of this move. What this technique does is break up all the text and call attention to that information. It lets the reader know to pay particular attention. Bunn also uses block quotes from other writers to back up his argument and strengthen his paper. Two of the quoted are professors, one a famous poet, and the last two are students. Essentially all levels of writers are represented in his paper and this helps with explaining how important the goal of the article is.

            The next example of analyzing the author’s moves is Teaching Two Kinds of Thinking by Teaching Writing by Peter Elbow. Much like the first article, Elbow includes personal anecdotes that are in line with the main point of the article. “When I celebrate free writing and fast exploratory writing on first drafts—the postponing of vigilance and control during the early stages of writing—it seems to many listeners as though I’m celebrating holidays from thinking.” The topic of this article is the introduction of the idea of ‘two kinds of thinking’. The first is, much like the author said, a holiday from thinking where you just write down everything that comes to mind. This free write allows you to get all of your ideas down on paper without worrying about grammar or stylistic rules. The second order thinking is the cleanup of the first order thinking. It is where you think of the writing rules and apply it to your free write.

            Since Elbow came up with these ideas of two-order thinking and writing, he takes great care to explain in detail what it means and how to go about using these tools. His next ‘move’ is comparing and contrasting the two orders of thinking and writing and how though they are different, they go hand in hand and cannot be done simply on their own. “But I am not content merely to assert a link. The two writing processes enhance the two thinking processes.”

            Both pieces by Elbow and Bunn use certain ‘moves’ to try to explain a new way of thinking, writing, or reading to help with the writing process. Bunn uses a more personal tone and has a lot of quotes that strengthen his argument, while Elbow uses a lot of comparison and explanation of his techniques. Both authors use their moves to be informative in hopes that the readers will apply their theories in their own lives.

Comparing Conventions of CS Papers with Scholarly Articles

PB2A

When comparing different genres, especially ones slightly similar, it is important to understand the rhetoric of the different pieces. The easiest way to do this, in my opinion at least is to keep in mind the questions put forward by Lunsford in Finding Evidence and the ideas in Backpacks vs. Briefcases: Steps toward Rhetorical Analysis by Laura Carroll. Questions like “Who is the intended audience?” and “How are certain pieces of evidence used to prove a point?” In Carroll’s article, it is also about the analyzation of the genre pieces and examining how they are written within the context it is to persuade the readers. All good things to keep in mind when comparing and contrasting pieces.

            When I tried to think about the genre of computer science papers and scholarly article publications, my immediate response was to assume they were very similar. Both pieces report on something and back up their papers with a multitude of evidence, right? Well sort of, but there is also much more to both genres.

            For this purpose of comparing and contrasting, I chose to analyze the scholarly article Monogamy, Strongly Bonded Groups, and the Evolution of Human Social Structure by Bernard Chapais. It was published in 2013 in Evolutionary Anthropology. On a side note, if you have time, I would highly recommend reading it! Super interesting if you want to learn about human social relations. The Scigen genre generator spit out a paper titled Analyzing a* Search and Gigabit Switches by me, yours truly.

            Both pieces started off by introducing what they were going to talk about at the very beginning. Their titles were straightforward and clean without using any filler language. The titles are in bold and in a clean font. Overall, they exude exactness and an orderly tone. The pieces first introduce the topic at hand and the background information. This gives a build up to the rest of the article in which they present their arguments.

            Right off the bat, there are some big differences between the two genres. The Scigen paper is broken up into sections with headers titled in bold. It follows a standard format with the Introduction being first followed by the Results and then the Conclusion where the data is analyzed and tied back to the main topic. This is useful because it helps the reader navigate the paper with great clarity. Another tool they use is graphs. These graphs explain their evidence and back up their argument. Humans can be highly visual creatures and seeing the actual data as opposed to simply reading the results can be a big help in understanding it.

            In contrast, the scholarly article has a much longer and more in depth introduction. It included a lot of information in one part that was split up into different sections in the Scigen paper. As the article went on, there were different sections, but they weren’t split up as much. They had slightly larger headings than the actual text, which signified the beginning of a new part of the paper. There were also visuals to help the readers understand the information, however they were different because they were flow charts as opposed to data graphs. Another difference was that after the conclusion section, the article had a section for acknowledgements. This implied that a lot of work went into the article and the tests for it and that the author wanted to show appreciation for those that had helped him. This was very different from the Scigen paper and makes the latter seem more about the exact data and not about the work that went into the paper.

            There are many conventions of the scholarly papers that make them important, however one stands out to me. They are very evidence heavy and use different forms of evidence to prove their points. The authors can use other sources and papers, as well as data from their own studies and experiments. The evidence is very important in this type of genre because it proves to the reader that the claims being made have basis and are not just someone’s opinions. Scholarly articles are usually used as sources for other forms of research so it is very important that adequate evidence is used and that multiple people work on the paper to minimize the potential for mistakes. Mistakes in scholarly article publications would be very misleading to a great number of people!

Stereotypes and Conventions of Genre Generators

PB1B        

            Stereotypes are everywhere in our lives. When we look at something for the first time, we subconsciously analyze almost everything about it and make assumptions based on those observations. We are told as young children to not judge “books by their covers” yet do it all the time. Is this bad? Definitely not, as this process has been shaped by the experiences and encounters throughout our lives. It is how we learn and grow as humans.

            It is roughly the same concept with these online genre generators. Though they all deal with different genres of literary works, the sites use similar tactics to spit out a spot on finished product. The genres range from computer science articles to comedy in the form of Internet memes and comics.

            With computer science articles, the name immediately brings to mind several conventions. Personally, I think of numbers, graphs, and confusing language that everyday readers probably will not understand. When visited to try it out, the site generated pretty much exactly that.  The first article was titled Deconstructing Lamport Clocks with RowSackbut by yours truly. Now originally I did not understand what the essay would be about and questioned if “RowSackbut” was an actual thing. I looked it up and surprisingly it actually is a real thing but unfortunately I am still too confused to explain what that encompasses. The article had many sections and (surprise, surprise) multiple graphs. These help the tone of the literary work and keep it scientific and explanative.

            The next genre was much more entertaining. I have been reading comics since I was young and have always enjoyed the LOL’s that come from them. The comic generator in this case did not disappoint me. The conventions of this genre are well known across many age groups and are probably not as difficult to analyze as other genres might be. To start off, they can be colorful or in black and white. They are animated with different drawing styles and attempt to prove a point, whether it is political, personal, or social, through a short series of drawings and well-placed blurbs. These blurbs explain the context of the drawings and sometimes even tell out a story over multiple weeks of comics. Popular syndicated works of this genre include Calvin and Hobbes, Garfield, and my personal favorite, Sherman’s Lagoon.

            Internet memes are a more modern genre that can also be easily analyzed in terms of their conventions. Most memes are short and use the tool of sarcasm to make fun of a certain topic. These topics range anywhere from current political matters and ecological problems, to current culture fads and social news stories. They are similar to comics in that they use humor to address an issue, but different in the way that they employ a lot of “Tongue-in-cheek” humor. For those of you not familiar with that colloquialism, it is an expression that refers to humor that should not be taken at face value. In fewer words: sarcasm. Another big difference between the two genres is that a meme is one picture with one blurb on top of it instead of a series of pictures that make up a comic. The picture is carefully chosen for memes and usually follows a current social joke. For example, my personal favorite generated by memegenerator.net was a picture of the actor Heath Ledger as the Joker, and the blurb reads “One year left of water in California and nobody panics. Dude leaves One Direction and everyone loses their minds.” The joker looks like he can’t believe what is happening in the picture which goes along nicely with the blurb because lets be honest, who in their right minds would be more upset about another boy band break up than an increasingly ginormous drought? It humorously juxtaposes the picture with the blurb to draw attention to the problem that people in our society have their priorities kind of messed up.

            By trying to understand what each genre is providing and by looking at the conventions, we as readers can really experience what the writers fully wanted to get across to us. The conventions show trends in their respective genres and make it easier to absorb the material. Whether it is tedious science articles or ‘pee your pants’ funny comics and memes, their genres encapsulate similar conventions that you can notice each time you look at that piece of literary work.

I included some of my favorite works!

The Rhetoric of………Movie Synopsis’!

PB1A

Whether we like to admit it or not, Americans love movies. From romance, comedy, and horror, to sci-fi, action, and drama, we love a good story that takes us away from our own lives for a few hours. Of course, there is a process in seeing a film that involves multiple steps. Before even buying the tickets, the majority of people watch the trailer or read a short review of what the movie is about to determine if they actually want to go spend their hard earned dollars on the film.

The synopsis generally consists of a short blurb about the plot line, while highlighting the most exciting points and reasons of why to go see it. It does it’s best to spark the interest of the reader to go see the film without giving too much away. There are a number of ways to spark the interest of the readers through certain words that pertain to each genre. For example in the new ‘Furious 7’ movie that was just released, the synopsis starts off with words such as “unstoppable” and “international action.” The words are spot on with giving the correct impression to the reader as the film takes place on multiple continents and covers many large action car chase and combat scenes. The review also touches on certain personal aspects of the film such as the actors in it, and how one of them passed away during the filming of the movie. This especially tugs on the heartstrings of the reader and employs a pathos persuasion method. If you look at a different genre of movie however, you’re going to read a very different review. The newly released animated children’s movie titled ‘Home’ is about aliens conquering earth. Since the targeted audience for the film is young people and their families, the synopsis uses words like “Friendship” and “Fun.” This method takes a serious and presumably dramatic topic, alien invasion, and makes it seem lighthearted and like something the whole family would enjoy going to see. Another example is the synopsis for the movie ‘It Follows’ which is a dark suspense thriller. The synopsis itself is similar to the movie as it provides little detail for what is actually going to take place and uses words such as “inescapable,” “strange,” and “disturbing.” For those that like suspense and adrenaline rushing plot lines, this review surely caters perfectly.

            The art of a good movie synopsis is greatly unrecognized. One must pull the reader in with a splashy hook while not revealing too much. They must encompass the entire tone of the movie into a few single sentences. Through carefully chosen words and phrases, the writers pick the readers up on a roller coaster and climb up and up and drop them off at the top of the climb where the only way down is to go see the movie and find out what actually happens. It is a literary art combined with intelligent advertising techniques that get all of us going to the movies year after year.