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”.