PB2B

All writers use different “moves” in order to communicate their argument in the most effective manner. These moves are the choices an author makes in how to convey the information he or she would like to present. A wide array of techniques can be classified as a “move”; opting to include a diagram or chart, putting a word in italics, and even the basic formatting of a piece of writing are all unique, stylistic choices made by the author and can, therefore, be classified as a “move”. In this essay, I will revisit “Murder! (Rhetorically Speaking)” and “Spaces for Writing” in order to compare and contrast the moves used by both authors.

In “Murder! (Rhetorically Speaking)”, Janet Boyd makes a move in the way she chooses to explain rhetoric by showing the reader how they already have an idea of what rhetoric is. She does this by asking the reader to write a variety of different writings (including an obituary and a detective’s report) based on 5 facts given about a murder. She then points out to the reader how they already knew appropriate and inappropriate ways to present the information based on who the audience was and therefore, have an understanding of rhetorical devices. I believe this move worked because it allowed the reader to engage with the writing in order to come to a deeper understanding of what rhetoric is.

The author of “Spaces for Writing”, on the other hand, does not use the same move as Boyd to explain rhetoric. The author instead explains rhetoric by using images to exemplify how we can change the message of something by altering the context, composition, and content of it. For example, the author shows an image of two people sitting at a desk and then zooms in on the image, making it only an image of apple on the desk. The author then writes that “the image sends a very different message without the official and imposing backdrop of an office” (Spaces 15). In this way, the author explains rhetoric by exemplifying how altering the context of something can change the entire message and meaning of it. I believe the use of images was an effective move because it provided a visual representation that was more helpful than simple text on a page in explaining rhetoric.

Furthermore, in “Murder! (Rhetorically Speaking)”, the author makes a move by choosing to divide the piece into different sections. The author separates the piece into sections such as “Cultivating Your Inner Coroner” and “Learning How to Say Goodbye”—which contained 5-6 paragraphs each—in order to make the text more easily readable. I consider this to be a successful move because it highlighted the main points of each section and gave the reader a chance to stop and process the information they just read. 

On the other hand, instead of presenting the text in sectioned groups of paragraphs, the author of “Spaces for Writing” made a move by presenting the text in the form of speech bubbles coming from cartoon characters. The author chose to present the information by means of a conversation between a few characters. I did not find this to be an effective move because I found the images to be too distracting from the main point the author was trying to convey. I believe the information could have been better presented by simply writing the piece in the form of paragraphs rather than the cluttered speech bubbles.

Both of the authors of “Murder! (Rhetorically Speaking)” and “Spaces for Writing” make the same move in that they both use a casual tone in their writing. The casual tone in “Murder! (Rhetorically Speaking” is evidenced by informal language such as, “Whoops, I gave you a clue” (88) and, “Mere coincidence? I think not” (90). “Spaces for Writing” also exemplifies a casual tone through its use of informal language as well—for example, blurbs such as “What’s up, Zander?” (11) and “Uhh…” (21). I think both authors make this move in order to appeal to their audience, which is mainly college-aged students. I consider this to be a successful move because it makes the learning material less intimidating and more easily understood by using jargon that is familiar to the reader. 

Both authors also make the same move in that a significant portion of both “Murder! (Rhetorically Speaking)” and “Spaces for Writing” is written in the second person. I believe both authors do this to make the writing more “conversationalist” (even if it is one-sided) which contributes to the causal tone of the piece. I believe this is an effective move because it helps the reader to feel engaged with the writing.

PB2A

In PB1B, we outlined the many conventions and rhetorical features utilized by the randomly-generated research papers on the website, SciGen. This week, we took a look at actual, peer-reviewed scholarly publications in order to compare and contrast the rhetorical devices in genuine publications with those in the simulated research papers. I used the scholarly writing “Local Environmental Grassroots Activism: Contributions from Environmental Psychology, Sociology and Politics” in order to analyze the differences and similarities between real publications and those of SciGen in order to further my understanding of the academic writing genre.

Firstly, the SciGen articles and “Local Grassroots Activism” had a lot of similarities in overall structure and formatting. Both writings began with a large title that was followed by the authors’ names underneath. Furthermore, both pieces were divided into clearly-labeled sections such as “introduction”, “methods of research”, “and conclusions”. Dividing the article into sections is done to make reading the dense material easier by clearly labeling what the point is of that particular section. Both began with an abstract—which summarized what the rest of the article would be talking about and gave the reader an idea of what they were getting themselves into—and ended with the works cited. Both the SciGen articles and “Local Grassroots Activism” utilized charts and graphs in order to give a visual representation of the information, thus making the data more easily interpreted. 

Both writings utilized many of the same rhetorical features. For example, both the SciGen pieces and “Local Grassroots Activism: Contributions from Environmental Psychology, Sociology and Politics” took on a formal tone—as evidenced by the use of advanced vocabulary, proper grammar, and the absence of slang words in both pieces. This formal tone—along with the scholarly, research-based subject matter—indicated that both writings were also geared toward and academic audience.

The SciGen writings and “Local Grassroots Activism” also differed in many ways. First of all, “Local Grassroots Activism” was much longer than the SciGen articles. This was partly due to the fact that “Local Grassroots Activism” went much more in depth in explaining the history of the subject of the research—in this case, how particular environmental discourses became dominant ideologies for community action. The authentic publication had to elaborate more on the history of the subject they were researching because, unlike the fake paper, the real article had to set the context and provide some background information to the reader in order for the reader to entirely understand the information.

Furthermore, the SciGen publication and the actual scholarly paper differed in that “Local Grassroots Activism” provided contact information for the authors as well as specified how each author contributed to the research. “Local Grassroots Activism” had to specify this information so other scholars and people in academia could collaborate with them and build upon their research; the SciGen papers, on the other hand, did not have to do this because the publication was fake and therefore there was nobody to communicate with. 

Lastly, the SciGen articles differed from the real publication in that SciGen produced only publications under the discipline of “hard sciences” whereas “Local Grassroots Activism: Contributions from Environmental Psychology, Sociology and Politics” fell under the social science discipline. This contributed to my understanding of the academic writing genre because it evidenced that  academic writing was not limited to fall under one discipline and showed me the broad array of subjects academic writing could cover. 

I think the format and the content are the most important part of a scholarly article. The format of a scholarly article is significant to the academic writing genre because it it helps the sometimes very dense material become more easily read and understood. The content of a scholarly article is also essential to the genre because, if the writing is not pertaining to research or another form of academia, it does not fall under the genre of “academic writing”. 

PB1B

As we examined in our first project builder, various types of writing differ in their conventions, audience, purpose, style, tone, etc. A genre of writing is defined by its specific rhetorical features and conventions. In this project builder, I will discuss the different characteristics of three different “genre generators”.

Firstly, the Sci Gen generator creates computer science research papers and helps us to examine the different conventions and rhetorical features of research papers. A research paper typically regards academics and scholars as their audience and therefore usually takes on a more formal tone. The purpose of a research paper is to describe an experiment that was done and state the conclusions that was made from the experiment. Research papers typically outline the procedures that the experimenters completed and how it differs from previous experiments. Research papers cite their references at the end of the paper place the title and the authors of the paper at the beginning. Research paper authors typically divide the paper into different parts in order to give it a more organized and readable feel.

Secondly, the Pandyland generator creates comic strips and helps us to examine their unique conventions and rhetorical devices. The audience of these particular comic strips are geared to a more adult audience because they contain swear words and graphic imagery. The purpose of the comic strips is to be funny and make the reader laugh. The tone of the comic strips leans towards absurdity in order to make them funny. The first scene of the comic typically starts out with one of the characters saying something to the other. The second scene usually serves to move the plot of the strip along and sometimes contains the punchline. The third and final scene is typically something completely unexpected and contributes to the absurd tone of the comic strips. The text is typically located in speech bubble, when the author is trying to denote that someone is talking, or in a box in the corner, when the the author is providing additional information to what is going on in the scene (for example, “30 seconds later). 

Thirdly, the meme generator helps us to analyze the conventions and rhetorical features typically present in memes. The audience of the meme is anyone on the internet, but typically only reaches a younger audience that is familiar with memes. Memes are usually geared towards users of websites like Reddit, 4chan, Tumblr, and sometimes Facebook and Instagram. The style of a meme is typically an image that is designated as a “meme” by the internet community, with block-like white text that pertains to the image. The first part of the text is usually on the top  of the image, while the punchline to the meme is typically located at the bottom. The captions of the memes are typically pretty short and do not need to be complete sentence. The purpose of a meme is to express an idea or expose a truth about a situation that others can relate to or find funny. The ideas expressed in memes change depending what meme is being used. For example, a convention of the text in the “first world problems” meme is that it is supposed to be about a problem that people in the first world complain about, but really isn't a problem at all relative to the rest of the world living in poverty and disease. An example of this would be, “told my friend ‘good night’ over phone…cant go on Facebook or she might find out I lied”.

Thinking about what’s happening in these genre generators can help to understand genre because they help us see the various conventions and rhetorical devices used in each type of text and how they contribute to creating a unique genre. By comparing and contrasting the conventions of the different genre generators, we can see that there are a unique set of guidelines and procedures to every genre that help make that genre what it is.

PB 1A

Snapchat captions are a specific genre of text that have a unique set of rhetorical features and conventions. Snapchat is an app that is used mostly by young people to communicate with their friends and therefore authors of Snapchat captions typically regard their friends as their audience and not, for example, their boss. Because of both the audience of the snapchats and their impermanent nature, the tone of the captions are typically a little more casual than, for example, a Facebook post, which may be seen by older relatives and/or will be able to be viewed for years to come. Also because of their younger audience, slang and (sometimes) curse words are typically viewed as acceptable over Snapchat. For example, if a girl receives flowers from her boyfriend, she may snapchat a picture of the flowers and caption it “my bae is the best” because it is generally assumed that the audience will know hip slang words used by young folks like the word, “bae”. The purpose of a Snapchat caption is generally to give some more information about what is going on or make some sort of commentary about the picture. To go off of my last example, the girl used the caption “my bae is the best” to denote that the flowers she received were from her boyfriend and to express gratitude. Had she not put this caption, someone who viewed the picture may think that the sender saw the flowers at the grocery store or maybe that her grandmother gave them to her. In this way, the caption serves the purpose to set the context of the picture and let the viewer know what is going on. Captions for snapchats also generally take their context into account by being somehow related to what is going on in the picture. For example, if someone is snapchatting a picture of an omelette they made, “yummmm!” would be an appropriate caption because it is related to the picture, while “just bought a new pair of shoes!” would be an inappropriate caption because it doesn’t have anything to do with their breakfast. Furthermore, because there is a limit to how many characters one can use to caption the snapchat, snapchat captions have to be very short. Because of their brevity, conventional spelling and grammar rules do not always apply. Abbreviations, acronyms, incomplete sentences, and lack of punctuation are all generally accepted on snapchat captions. To use my last example of snapchatting a picture of an omelette, “omg totez delish” is just as acceptable as “Oh my god! This omelette is totally delicious!”. As long as the caption gets across what one is trying to say, grammar and spelling rules can be disregarded. Moreover, snapchat users can use emojis instead of text to convey their message. For example, instead of captioning the picture “omg totez delish,” a user can simply use the emoji with hearts for eyes to convey the message that they are enjoying the omelette. What makes a snapchat caption a snapchat caption is that it is a short blurb pertaining to a picture sent over snapchat.

About Me

Hello! My name is Erica Bruckner and I’m a second year here at UCSB. I grew up in Santa Clarita, California, which is just north of Los Angeles.  I come from a very close-knit family and have two older brothers, Michael and Steven, and 10 cousins who are like siblings to me. In high school, I played tennis and was the editor-in-chief of my school’s yearbook. I applied to UCSB because I love the beach and the laid-back vibe of Isla Vista and I believe the choice to go to school here was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. I’m work at a coffee shop in SB and am also active in my sorority, which keeps me pretty busy. In my spare time I like to hang out with my friends, watch Netflix, and go window shopping in downtown SB. I’m a sociology major and am pursuing a minor in clinical psychology. My dad is a former public defender who now works to implement programs to make LA county prisons more rehabilitative and stop the “revolving door” of the justice system. The exposure to my dad’s job sparked my passion for social justice issues and I’m planning to pursue a career in social work after I leave UCSB to (hopefully) follow in my dad’s footsteps.