thlog 2/27/16

This class is interesting because finally we—the students— have an opportunity to write about something that really interests us. The thing that matters is how we write, not what we write about. However, it has been harder than I would’ve thought to come up with topics that make me want to write.

For my whole life I’ve been taught, like many others, to write a thesis with three points and then make a body paragraph for each of those points. All of my essays have been about books or articles or any school-related thing that I probably did not choose to do. The essay formula is engrained in my head and I have always viewed it as anything but creative. But now, we have the liberty of searching the internet and searching the world even for any genre that we like.

The activity we did on Monday where we came up with possible WP2 topics helped open my mind a lot to more topics that are out there. For example, I never would have thought of LSD effects. However, this could be a really interesting article because different fields would approach it in drastically different ways. More different than let’s say, sociology and communism would approach any given topic.

Topics such as these interest me, but I would not normally think of them because I feel as though I’ve been trained in a certain way to only see academic topics as worthy of writing essays about. For my WP1, I liked the topic I chose a lot (billboards), even though there was not a lot of text to work with. I think the absence of text is just as important as the presence of text, which I should have elaborated on more. For my WP2, I will probably try to pick a topic that is just as interesting, but has more substance to work with.

PB2A

Scholarly articles differ immensely between fields because different academic fields approach topics from alternate points of view. A huge difference in the approaches shows through conventions such as the organization and background information of the scholarly article, as well as the questions posed and jargon used. I investigated an article called Using the Science of Psychology to Target Perpetrators of Racism and Race-Based Discrimination For Intervention Efforts: Preventing Another Trayvon Martin Tragedy. I found that the article had a psychological approach because it had a specifically organization introduction and background information, and also used psychological questions and jargon throughout to try to explain, but not justify, possibly reasoning for racism and discrimination.

The organization of the article reflects a psychology paper in the way that information is first introduced. The first section of information is the “abstract”, which contains a general overview of the topics that will be discussed, such as “prejudice”, “racism”, “African Americans”, and “War on Drugs” (Mays). The next section is the “introduction”, which explains that Martin’s case “would be the catalyst for an examination of how racial bias in current policies, laws and social norms play a role in the interracial violence against young African American men”. The introduction then brings up psychology by explaining that “psychological studies of race, racism and discrimination contribute to society’s understanding of the bases and mechanisms of hierarchical differentiation” (Mays). Both the abstract and introduction of the article preview what will be addressed, but do not go into depth about each aspect of the topic. They summarize the article with sentences such as the ones shown above, but do not yet give information about how or why psychology may correlate to racism. Abstracts and introductions are vital parts of a scholarly psychological article because they help readers get a quick description of the article without investing a large amount of their time into reading all of its pages. This is important because the field is filled with a colossal number of articles for each topic of study.

The article then uses a plethora of background information to contextualize the issue at hand and inform the reader. There is a section about the “Psychology of Racism: Early Contributions to Social Justice”, which gives examples of previous studies done, such as Clarke’s study using dolls to find a correlation between race and initial reactions of people (Mays). There is then a section titled “Toward a Social Determinants Framework of Racism and Prejudice: Theories of Implicit Bias”, which explains the term “implicit bias” and gives background information about it. The background information then bridges a connection to the Martin case with the section about “When Implicit Bias Becomes Policy: The War on Drugs” (Mays). Then after more background information about the issue, the article explains a case similar to Martin’s—the case of Rodney King—and then eventually describes “The Trayvon Martin Shooting and the Challenge to Psychological Science” (Mays). Although to a black studies or art major, all of this background information may seem unnecessary, it is necessary in the field of psychology. It is important for psychologists to contextualize their studies and work by explaining the other studies done, different theories, and other instances that relate, so that the reader may understand further how the article relates to other information in the field and in the world.

The field of psychology also poses questions using ideas that other fields would not necessarily think of or understand. Some backbone ideas of this article are shown through the research questions, such as “what are the consequences of growing up in a society structured by police and cultural norms that implicitly support prejudice, bias, or race-based discrimination in everyday societal interactions?” and the question of “whether the tools of science about racism and prejudice can and should be employed to address the escalating deaths that young African American men are facing at the hands of perpetrators of racism?” (Mays). Psychology is a field that takes the interaction between individuals’ minds and the environment into account. Using research questions that address this interaction, as well as the relevancy of the scientific findings, the questions portray a psychological approach to this issue. I believe that this is the most important part of the article because the research questions reveal what kind of information they are looking to find out and how they will use that information afterwards, which exhibits the psychological approach.

Psychological jargon is used in methods of investigation and discussion about the findings. To investigate the role that race played in the death of Trayvon Martin, the article references many other studies that found correlations between the environment and resulting racism, as well as racism and resulting acts of hostility. In such studies, they operationalized racism by showing subjects models of people from different races (dolls or pictures) and then asking them questions about their initial associations or measuring the time it takes them to associate the people with good or bad quality traits. The article explains that “various psychological studies have found that embedded in the minds of individuals… is the perceived relationship among race, crime, and dangerousness” and that “stereotypes can become ingrained despite conscious beliefs to the contrary” (Mays). Bringing up previously done psychological studies, as well as using words such as “embedded”, “mind”, “ingrained” and “conscious” shows psychological jargon. Researchers from other fields may not know the exact definition of the word “conscious”, or exactly how an idea could be “embedded” or “ingrained” into the mind. However, to psychologists, this is what they study and these words would therefore explain more and hold more meaning when they read them.

The conventions employed during this article, organization, background information, research questions, and jargon, all work together to create an article that has a psychological approach to racism and the War on Drugs. If the same topic of racism and the War on Drugs was studied from the perspective of an alternate academic field, the resulting article would probably be organized much differently, have different contents, and use different jargon. It is important to format a paper and use the correct jargon when appealing to a certain field so that readers can better contextualize and understand the information presented.

Works Cited

Mays, Vickie M., et al. "Using The Science Of Psychology To Target Perpetrators Of Racism And Race-Based Discrimination For Intervention Efforts: Preventing Another Trayvon Martin Tragedy."Journal For Social Action In Counseling & Psychology 5.1 (2013): 11-36. Academic Search Complete. Web. 23 Apr. 2016.

thlog 4/20/16

I always knew that citing sources was important, but I guess I had never really thought about why. I feel like everyone looks at citing sources as a requirement. Teachers used to tell us that we needed X amount of sources and Y amount of those sources had to be from a paperback book. This made it seem like they were just trying to make our lives difficult because the internet is so accessible and has many books in ebook form. Making us go to the library instead of looking at the same book online made citing sources an annoying, burdening task.

However, the truth is that filling your paper with other sources is not just about adding quotations to get that requirement done; it’s about finding pieces of information from other people’s thoughts and data that will in fact help prove your point. Just because some sources are not taken from the text being analyzed, does not mean they do not have the same value in a paper. Dispersing support from alternate sources throughout a paper can bring the entire paper up a level by giving it more credibility.

If it is apparent that other people share the same ideas with you, or have evidence that supports your analysis of something, your readers are much more likely to take you seriously and listen. Looking at the journal from Monday was interesting because I got to see descriptions of how outside sources were used in people’s WP1s. For example, to define terms, to bridge gaps between definitions and their example, to support their analysis, to aid in their intro, to emphasize their topic sentences, etc. I usually use outside sources amongst my analysis, but now I can see how many other functions it can offer in a paper. This is important if I want to give my papers more credibility by doing research.

thlog 4/14/16

In class on Wednesday, I liked that we got to pick apart our successes and struggles while writing WP1. Although it seems obvious, it is really important to isolate and put into words, what exactly you’re struggling with, so that you know what to focus on. If your struggles remain an arbitrary idea in the back of your head that you never define and single out, they could end up not getting addressed or improved.

In addition, it is important to single out your successes. Often times, I feel that people enjoy doing what they are good at. For this reason, without singling out what is already working, students like myself could definitely end up just working on something that does not need as much attention or improvement.

I feel similarly to person 8 and 9 in the journal responses about the successes/struggles because I also liked the topic I picked, and found it interesting to write about. This seemed to be common among the journal responses. The journal responses varied more in the struggles category. It seems like everybody is pretty good at just picking out the conventions that their genre uses, but that analysis can be difficult for people, and so can the intros and conclusions. The aspect I had the most trouble with was organization. For some reason, I did not think it would make a good essay to structure it using one example per body paragraph. The example essay that we looked at in class did structure their essay this way, however I found it a little boring and flat. I chose to instead structure mine around the conventions. I hope it turns out okay, because I do not bring up every example in every paragraph. I did find it a little hard to meet the page limit without sounding repetitive, because we were only allowed to use 3 examples. But overall, I think my WP1 is going well.

thlog 4/7/16

4/7/16

In class on Monday, I liked the journal entry that we did because everyone got to take a step back from their PBs and see what their thought process was like through the whole thing. I thought this was interesting and found in the journal entries that many people really took the class reading about first and second order thinking to heart.

Person 2 described an important part of their writing process as finding something to write about that they found interesting, even if this strayed from the traditional examples or the examples given in class. I would consider this first order thinking because there is no pressure at all to write or produce anything, you are just simply thinking about what topics interest you. I related to this because I found my topic of billboards interesting as well.

I’ve seen billboards my whole life, but I’ve never stopped to consider what components make a billboard a billboard, although it seems so obvious. When I took time to just brainstorm and think about the components of billboards and their function, their rhetorical devices became clear. It was very helpful for me to practice first order thinking when starting this assignment. If I had not done this, it would have probably been a lot more difficult to start my paper and get ahold of my ideas.

Like most other people mentioned in the journal, after I brainstormed topics and just let my thoughts flow, I then started to organize my ideas and create an outline. It seemed that this exact process helped a lot of others in the class through the assignment. It was interesting to read something for class that actually had helpful tips for how to think and conquer a paper, rather than just reading something for content that relates to class material, like I do for other classes.

PB1B

4/4/16

PB1B

While experimenting with different genre generators, I noticed specific conventions that each generator applied to the texts to make the result fit the desired genre. I worked with comics, memes, superhero names, and scientific papers, and observed fundamental differences that made each of these genres their own category. Some of the differences in these textual genres lied in the the brevity and structure of the statements, and some lied in the diction, or choice of language, itself. Either way, there were a combination of conventions that attributed to each genre being its own category.

The length and organization of writing is a huge factor in determining what genre a piece of text is. In comics, the statements are usually pretty short because they often contain onomonopias, or conversational exclamations, such as “Bam!” Or “Wow!”. The language is informal, and often not complete sentences because multiple characters allow conversation to flow back and forth, and because the text must fit inside a small box. Similarly, memes can also be quite short. However, memes are always two statements, one at the top of a picture, and one at the bottom. Neither can stand alone, because they depend on each other to make a point. They are usually each about half a sentence long, however some memes use rhetorical questions instead. For example, a meme with Willie Wonka (Gene Wilder) looking sarcastically amused reads, “You type ‘U’ instead of ‘you’?” And then, “What do you do with all that time you save?”. These two questions are both short, and neither one would make sense without the other complimenting it. Even shorter than comics or memes are Superhero names, which are just a few words. When naming a superhero, people probably consider that the name will be used frequently in conversation around that superhero, and should therefore be relatively short and easy to say, such as “wonderwoman” or “wolverine”. A widely-accepted constraint for names is that they not be more than a few words, which is probably what attributes to short superhero names. In contrast, scientific papers are pages long, and are organized into paragraphs of sections, such as abstract, intro, related work, results, etc. This organization is due to the fact that papers are not supposed to be quickly read like comics, memes, or names; they are intended to be read in depth, resulting in their extensive length and helpful organization that acts as a guide for all the different components of the paper. An important part of understanding these genres is not only how long the text is, but also why the text must be that long, whether it is to be the caption of a picture, to be the title of something, or to be analyzed in depth.

Content and diction also helps define textual genres, and is therefore used by the genre generators. As aforementioned, comics often use onomonopias, exclamations, and conversational language. The language of memes can also be conversational, but often has more complete sentences than comics. Memes usually address the audience directly, using pronouns such as “you”, and asking questions to the audience, whereas comic characters address each other. Memes touch upon topics that are relatable to a specific audience, such as texting lingo, drinking, drugs, shopping, hipsters, and others, in order to appeal to their targeted audience of teenagers and young adults. Comics generally simplify stories, even when talking about complex topics. The context of comics and memes and the language that they use are different because they appeal to different audiences.

On the other hand, superhero names are directed towards fans of superhero comics, movies, videogames, etc. Because of this, they usually contain a descriptor of either the hero’s physical appearance, or their power. For example, “Batman”, “Superman”, and the names from my generator, “The Gold Fog”, and “Professor Dazzle” all employ this convention. Batman and Professor Dazzle describe the appearance of their heroes, being dressed like a bat with bat-themed accessories, or being a professor-turned hero who is flamboyant and dazzling. Superman and The Gold Fog reveal the powers of the heroes, having super strength or being able to turn into a fog and float through any barrier. Superhero names are a very specific genre that reveal aspects of the superheroes that they represent. The opposite of superhero names are scientific papers because they delve into details and explain every topic that they bring up. Rather than being a small window into a person or hero, they are the full exploitation of an experiment or academic discipline. The paper from the generator even mentions that, “Though many elide important experimental details, we provide them here in gory detail.” The difference in language ranges so widely between superhero names and scientific papers because they are used for completely different purposes: to identify and to explain.

The way that the genre generator websites work could help aid someone in understanding how genres differ from one another and how to distinguish them. If someone is able to see multiple examples of the same genre, with entirely different content each time, they will be able to see the similarities between each example. The similarities that are present each time will be the conventions that help define each genre. Then, seeing this same process with other genres could offer more insight into how genres differ, and how the conventions of each genre differs from those of another genre. Overall, playing with these generators was useful in seeing the conventions and rules for what makes a piece of text qualify as a comic, meme, superhero name, or scientific paper.

http://superhero.namegeneratorfun.com/

PB1A 4/3/16

A broad textual genre that almost everyone is familiar with from a young age is advertisements. Advertisements use pictures and textual evidence to convey a message and sway their audience to buy a certain product, donate to a certain cause, support a certain idea, etc. A subgenre of advertisements are billboards. Billboards are usually large advertisements that are placed on the side of busy roads. A billboard in Massachusetts reads, “We’re not anti-gun. We’re pro-life. Massachusetts gun laws save lives.” The context and content of the billboard both have rhetorical features, such as exigence, audience, constraints, purpose, and choice of language, in order to persuade adult drivers and passengers to support laws on gun restrictions.

Gun use and the ability that people have to purchase guns is a controversial and relevant topic to discuss because shootings happen relatively often if people have access to guns. Many shootings, especially school shootings and other related incidents often make national news and are on people’s radar. The exigence, or the problem that elicited such an ad, is that there are shootings that people are aware of on a consistent basis. Shootings can be a touchy topic of conversation, and are not usually considered appropriate for children. Because of this fact, the intended audience of this billboard is likely adults and older teenagers. Because billboards are usually on highways where drivers tend to go by quickly, there are multiple inherent constraints on this ad as well. For example, the text has to be large enough to see from relatively far away, and the message has to be short, concise, and clear in order to be read and understood in a short amount of time. All of these contextual rhetorical features are to help get the purpose of the ad across, which is to convince a population of adults to support restrictions on gun laws.

Aside from the context of the ad, the content and use of concise language in the ad also help communicate the message. For example, the billboard uses three very short statements that take a clear stand on one side of the issue and explain why. By using the word “We’re” two times, the billboard creates a united front of people that are taking a stand against people having easy access to guns. This appeals to the intended audiences’ ethos, the trustworthiness of the source, by building a united source with morals concerning the lives of others. Then, by describing that they are “not anti-gun”, but rather “pro-life”, the billboard dissociates this group of people with the negativity of being against something, and reveals that they are just concerned with the lives of people. This appeals to the pathos, emotional side, of adults and young adults because it brings the life of other humans into the picture, making a statement that would be hard for anyone to disagree with. The ad then finishes with the simple statement of “Massachusetts gun laws save lives”. By making a very complex issue fit into three short sentences, this billboard simplifies the controversy of gun laws into a matter of caring about people’s lives or not caring.

Billboards often use rhetorical features such as these in their content and context in order to be effective in persuading their viewers. They often simplify much larger ideas into a few concise sentences, in order to be read quickly by drivers and make the biggest impact that they can. They also often appeal to the pathos of their audience, as this one does, in order to make their message effective in a short period of time. And lastly, they often contain issues that are not intended for younger viewers, who likely will not notice or see the billboards. The audience of billboards is usually adults because adults are the ones driving, and the ones who have an opinion that matters when voting or making changes in the world. Billboards are a specific type advertisements that are unlike other advertisements in all of these ways, which makes them a separate, more specific textual genre.