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!