PB3A

  For this PB, I have decided to use the research article “Evoked Emotions Predict Food Choices” as my scholarly, peer-reviewed, academic publication. This research article is about how people would often choose which food to eat based on their emotions rather than just mere liking. “Evoked Emotions Predict Food Choices” focuses on an experiment that tries to prove this theory by predicting which breakfast drink the participants would chose and then comparing it with the real results. It shows how evoked emotions better predict food choice than perceived liking alone. This article could provide information useful to people of all ages since it can explain someone’s eating habits. However, this research article may not appeal to a wide range of audiences. Since it is an academic, peer-reviewed article, it was most likely intended to appeal to educated scholars who are experts in this field. People from a younger and older audience wouldn’t be appealed to this certain genre of writing so it would have to be modified to their liking.
Younger audiences would be completely turned off from reading a scholarly, peer-reviewed article and wouldn’t even give it a second glance. There is a lot of text all crammed together in a long article. There isn’t any pictures or colors throughout the text. It may seem very boring and not very appealing. To attract a younger audience, I would turn this research article into a storybook. I would incorporate a story into this experiment to showcase the information. I feel like a story with fun characters in it would entertain a younger audience more. It would make it more interesting to read. I would also add more pictures and colors to the text to make it more visually pleasing. To make it easier to read, I would use vocabulary everyone can understand instead of jargon that only a certain group would know. A little humor to the story would also make it more appealing and entertaining to a younger audience. A younger audience would generally be more attracted to reading something that is a lot more interesting and fun. A storybook can be successful in changing a scholarly, academic journal into something younger people would be more interested in reading.
Similarly, this academic article wouldn’t be that appealing to an older audience either. An older audience wouldn’t be attracted in how long and in depth the article is. Older audiences tend to be busier, and have a family to take care of or work long hours. They would just want a quick, easy read so I would change this scholarly article into a news report that could be found on TV. This could be a 10-15 minute segment of a news channel to highlight the important information in the experiment. Older people tend to watch the news more often right when they get off of work in the evening. It is also a efficient way to get the information across. The older audience can just sit there and watch the news report. They would be more attracted to this medium because they can still do other things while watching the news report since they are very usually very busy people as mentioned before. A news report would be more effective in appeal an older audience than an scholarly academic journal.

PB2B

            Each and every writer has their own moves that they incorporate into their writing to be more rhetorically effective. These moves show the author’s own personal style into their writing while also having some kind of rhetorical effect. How a writer choses to approach a topic and put it into words can really help us understand the purpose of a piece of writing. Using “Murder! (Rhetorically Speaking)” by Janet Boyd and “Backpacks vs. Briefcases: Steps toward Rhetorical Analysis” by Laura Bolin Carroll, We can compare and contrast the rhetorical moves used and see exactly how effective they were.

            Since both articles were meant to teach students about writing better, the main audience of the articles are mainly students, who were usually young teenagers in high school and/ or college. In order to appeal to this audience of young students, both Boyd and Carroll wrote in very casual and conversational tones throughout their articles. “Murder! (Rhetorically Speaking)” is mostly in second person and uses “you” a lot to engage the audience into the writing while “Backpacks vs. Briefcases…” uses a lot of “I” statements, keeping it very casual. A lot of slang and informal language was used throughout both pieces. For example, at the end of her article, Boyd said, “… you are already in possession of the rhetorical skills necessary for mastering the genre of academic writing and that you need only apply them, I wasn’t just feeding you a bunch of bull”. She writes as if she is speaking in person to the reader and also uses slang to end off her article. This tone is able to successfully appeal to a younger audience because it makes it easier for these students to understand and follow all the information given. It would also keep the student more interested and into the topic.  

Another move, both writers use, is listing things out with bullet points and numbers. Boyd used bullet points once to list out a series of questions that help her explain a point she is making. Carroll uses this several times in her article in addition to numbered lists. This move makes it easier to provide a lot of information without overwhelming the reader. If all the information listed were placed into a paragraph instead, it would look very clustered and long. This move allows writers to give a lot more examples while still keeping their article very organized and easy to follow.

In addition, both writers further explain themselves through the use of parentheses, dashes and colons. Carroll uses parentheses and dashes to elaborate more on whatever she was trying to prove and provide even more examples. Boyd also uses both of these in her writing, but more for side comments. She also asks a lot of rhetorical questions to guide her readers the way she wants them to go. In addition, Boyd also adds in many italics to put emphasis on certain words especially important vocabulary. All of these moves are intended to aid the writers in effectively proving their arguments. However, Carroll was more successful in using the parentheses and dashes in her writing because they added more depth and insight to what she was trying to say. Some of the things Boyd put in parentheses were unnecessary and the essay could do without it. She did do a good job in italicizing important words so that they stand out to the readers. These moves still add to both of the writer’s style.

Even though both pieces are on the same topic, the two authors use different approaches to explain their arguments. Carroll would explain one point and then follow with examples to further prove that point. However, Boyd took a different approach and did the opposite. She made the audience do an activity before she explained the point and used that as her examples. This made her article a lot more interactive since she made her audience essentially participate in her writing. Boyd’s approach was a little more successful in teaching the audience since she make the audience create an example and then she would explain what the significance of it was. Carroll’s way was more of the traditional way where a writer would explain something and then follow it up with examples. The way the writers presented their examples shows how different moves can be used.

There are many different types of moves these writers could have incorporated into their writing, but I have only pointed out a few. Moves allow writers to create their own flare to their piece while still having some kind of rhetorical purpose that will appeal to their audience. While both “Murder! (Rhetorically Speaking)” and “Backpacks vs. Briefcases: Steps toward Rhetorical Analysis” were trying to teach aspects of rhetoric, they used different moves to accomplish this goal. Both pieces were able to use moves successfully, proving their main argument.

PB2A

            Scholarly academic publications and computer science research papers have many similar features, but they each have specific rhetorical features and conventions that are unique to each that make it up. Looking back at the computer science research papers from the “SCIgen” genre generator, it creates random research papers when you input a number of authors. Each output creates a paper on a different paper, but they all have the basic elements of a computer science research paper. For the scholarly academic publication, I searched up on the UCSB library database for an academic journal relating to economics. I ended up finding the research article, “Economic stress or random variation? Revisiting German reunification as a natural experiment to investigate the effect of economic contraction on sex ratios at birth” by Sebastian Schnettler and Sebastian Klüsener. There are many similar features in both of these pieces of writing especially both are academic-related, but there are still certain aspects that make it it.

             The biggest similarity between the two pieces of writing is that both use almost the same format to organize all their information in their papers. Both the scholarly academic journal and the computer science research paper have sections that divide up and organize all the information from their experiments. The method is very useful since both papers were intended to explain the findings of their experiments. Both papers had a abstract to give insight into the paper, but the abstract for the academic journal was much more in depth than the research paper. The research paper only had a couple of sentences, while the academic journal had the subsections: background, methods, results, and conclusion with a paragraph for each. Each had different titles for the each respective section, but they have the same idea, where they explain how they did the experiment and their findings after doing the experiment. Both also has tables and graphs to physically display their data. A reference page is also present in both to cite the sources they used. Both has numbered their sources and ordered them in alphabetical order based on author. However, the academic journal has bolded the title or each source, which makes it a lot easier to read and locate the source.

            Although both papers have a lot of physical similarities, the rhetorical features are very different since they are each appealing to different audiences. They need to write in a specific way to attract the audience they want to read their papers. The computer science research paper was intended for people very knowledgeable in computer science because it uses a lot of terms and concepts that only these people can understand. On the other hand, the academic journal appeals to a wider audience because it uses very broad terms and is on a topic that everyone can relate to. The purpose of the two is pretty similar in that they both explain their experiments from their methods to the results of the experiments. The context of the academic journal is to discuss the effect of economic contraction on sex ratios at birth, which can be affected by anyone. The context of the computer science paper is focused on trying to come up with a synthesis of congestion control using a lossless model. The computer science paper is a very specific experiment understood only by experts in that field, while the academic source is a much broader topic that can be universally understood. The style of both papers is almost the same, where there are sections with titles, telling the audience exactly what that paragraph is about. Both are academic-related papers in that they both have a academic and professional tone. They both give a lot of information and is intended to teach the audience something new. Each author uses different rhetorical elements to cater their writing to appeal to their intended audience.

            Both the computer science research paper and the academic journal are in a similar format to achieve their purpose of explaining their experiments. However, the pieces of writing each had different contexts that appeal to different audiences. The research paper can mostly be understood by experts in computer science, while the academic journal had a much broader topic, appealing to a wider audience. Other than that, both pieces of writing had a similar style and tone to it, where it was both written in an academic tone and is very informational. The academic journal and research paper had many similar features, but still had significant differences that define each genre.  

PB1B: Inspecting Genre Generators

            The “genre generator” websites work by applying a fixed pattern of conventions to each piece no matter what you plug into them. Each genre has a very specific set of conventions that make it up. A genre can be defined by its conventions so it is important to be able to identify them in a piece of writing.

            In the SCIgen generator, it creates a computer science-related research paper when you enter one to five authors at random. Each and every research paper may be different in topic, but they all consist of very similar conventions. Each paper starts off with the title of the paper in big letters and underneath it is the authors that you have entered in. The first part of the paper is the “Abstract”, which gives a brief introduction and their goal of the experiment. The next convention is the table of contents, which includes six parts with short paragraphs expanding on it. The six parts include the introduction, related work, methodology, implementation, evaluation, and conclusion. All of these are typical of a research experiment so it not surprising to find them as conventions of this research paper. Also, at the end is a list of references, citing all the sources used to write this paper. The references are numbered and in MLA format. In addition to the paragraphs describing the experiment, there are also graphs and figures to further describe the experiment by displaying the data.

            The next generator is a comic strip generator, creating various comic strips. There is a certain set of pictures displaying one scene and the generator will randomly order three of them into a comic strip even if they don’t make sense. Each picture displays a situation between the two characters, Simon and Finlay, where some kind of action or conversation is occurring. The speech bubbles coming out of each of the characters mouth display conversation between them. All of the comics have a purplish blue background with a grey ground. The dialogue between them is quite vulgar and harsh with a lot of profanity said. The tone of these comic strips is intended to be funny because of the things they say and the randomness of the scenes. The randomness of the comic is the biggest convention to this comic strip generator.

            The meme generator allows you to create your own meme by picking one of the general meme pictures and writing your own captions to it. A meme is usually a funny picture that is very popular among internet users and universally known by them. The biggest convention of a meme is the image being used. This image is usually a person from pop culture with a reaction that is related to the caption. Some examples of the characters used in memes are Willy Wonka, Bad Luck Brian, and the Forever Alone potato. The captions of these memes are usually on the top or bottom (sometimes both) of these pictures. These captions are usually very funny and witty while expressing a relatable thought or a realization.

            After using these websites, it can really help you to understand genre because the generators all have a specific formula they follow to create a certain type of genre. The generators take all the conventions of a certain genre to create an example of it. When you play around with these websites and create a couple pieces, you will start seeing the patterns the generators use. For example, in the computer science research paper, all of them have an abstract, table of contents, and references. These are some of the conventions that make up this genre of research papers. All of these generators show the similarities in a certain type of genre, distinguishing them from other genres.

PB1A

A textual genre that I am very familiar with is a tweet especially since I am on Twitter on a daily basis. I go on Twitter and read tweets pretty often everyday. Occasionally, I would tweet out my own or retweet other people’s tweets so I am fairly familiar with its rhetorical features and conventions. Twitter is one of the biggest social media sites in connecting people with each other from all around the world. It is popular for features that are unique to only Twitter unlike other social media sites such as Facebook.

Twitter includes many rhetorical features such as audience, purpose, and context. The audience of a tweet is usually a person’s followers. This can include friends and acquaintances from real life or over the internet. Tweets can be seen by anyone or a person can set their profile to private so that only people following can see the tweets. The purpose of a tweet is to spread and share information to their audience. This can include inner thoughts, special events, and promotions. The context of a tweet can be anything related to someone’s personal life or business-related. For personal use, people usually tweet about things going on in their life and it is very spontaneous. For businesses, tweets are probably planned and well-thought out for promoting certain products or deals. Generally, twitter has a very casual style and tone. Many tweets are formatted in ways very similar to the way people usually text.  Tweets usually consist of slang, abbreviations, and emojis, all of which are used when texting. The style of a tweet depends entirely on the person tweeting. Some people use correct grammar and punctuation when others will misspell and be grammatically incorrect. Similarly, the tone will be also based on the person, depending on the mood they are currently in. Whether a person is sad or happy, a person can convey this either explicitly stating it or they can implicitly imply it by tweeting out, for example, sad song lyrics. Some conventions of a tweet are the username, timestamps, trending topics, hash tags, favorites and retweets. The username is also part of the url to your twitter page followed by “twitter.com/”. Each tweet has a timestamp on it indicating how many minutes or hours ago you posted. A unique feature of Twitter is the ability to favorite and retweet a tweet. When you favorite a tweet, it just goes into your “Favorites” tab while retweeting posts someone else’s tweet on your twitter profile. Another convention of Twitter is your homepage, the timeline of all the tweets from everyone you follow. Your timeline is constantly updated as people are tweeting. New tweets will pop up and there is an endless scroll that allows you to see past tweets continuously. A tweet is a tweet for the fact that it is a short and quick message. A tweet can consist of at most 140 characters, which can really restrict all the things you want to say at once. However, you can also send out as many tweets as you want. A tweet allows people to connect over the internet through short messages.

About Me

My name is Sandy Hoang and I’m a first year economics and accounting major. I am from Rosemead, a small city in LA County. I am part Chinese and part Vietnamese.  I can speak the languages Cantonese and a little bit of Mandarin, but not Vietnamese at all. My parents both know Vietnamese, but never spoke it with me. My mom was pregnant with me when she was still in China after marrying my dad. Then one month later, my dad sponsored her to immigrant over to the United States and they met up in New York. My dad had already come over to the US since he was able to do so legally, but not my mom. My parents stayed there for a couple of months and were debating on whether to stay in New York or move to California, where most of my mom’s relatives were. They ended up choosing California because they thought it would be a better place to live and a couple months after that I was born. My mom ended up giving birth to me exactly on Thanksgiving after dinner. From then on, I grew on in Rosemead and finally graduated from San Gabriel High School. In high school, I was on the swim team for all four years. Before joining, I did not know how to swim at all, but I really wanted to learn so they taught me. It was very difficult learning all the four strokes and diving, but I pushed through and put all my effort into it. Through a lot of hard work and time, I ended up swimming varsity my junior and senior year. My best stroke was breaststroke and a little of freestyle. I really loved swimming and being in the water all the time. It has really motivated me both physically and mentally in life.