Rhetorical Analysis of Academic Journal

Journals are a huge genre in any field of academia. For my major specifically though, the most common genre of writing seems to be the journal article. Below, I will do a rhetorical analysis of one of the journals, The Journal of General Physiology.

Author/Speaker

• Sharona E. Gordon- professor of physiology at the University of Washington

• Elke Bocksteins-professor at the University of Antwerp

• Victor De La Rosa-department of physiology and biophysics at Commonwealth University

• Esteban Suarez-Delgado-more information could not be found :(

• Gisela E. Rangel-Yescas-professor at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico

• Leon D. Islas-professor at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico

• Franklin M. Mullins-physiologist and journal contributor

• Richard S. Lewis-professor of molecular and cellular physiology at Stanford University

• Kevin Michalski-graduate student at Cornell University

• Toshimitsu Kawate-lab director and researcher at Cornell University

• Violetta V. Kravtsova-affiliated with St. Petersburg State University

• Alexey M. Petrov-professor in the Dept. of Physics and Astronomy at Wayne State Univ.

• Vladimir V. Matchkov-Dept of Biomedicine at Aarhus Univ.

• Elena V. Bouzinova-Neuroscience, Physiology, and Women and Politics at the Univ. of Aarhus

• Alexander N. Vasiliev-specialist in the field of condensed matter physics

• Boubacar Benziane- integrative physiology at the Karolinska Institute

• Andrey L. Zefirov-pathology and gastroenterology at the Kazan Federal University

• Alexander V. Chibalin-Karolinska Institute

• Judith A. Heiny -professor and researcher at the Univ. of Cincinnati

• Igor I. Krivoi-researcher at St. Petersburg State Univ.

• Eric N. Senning-physiology expert, Univ. of Washington

• Teresa K. Aman-researcher, expert on cell biology, physiology, and neuroscience

• William N. Zagotta-professor at the Univ. of Washington, dept. of physiology and biophysics

• Moshe T. Gordon-director of undergraduate research, Univ. of Washington

• Mika A. Munari-research scientist at the Univ. of Washington

The authors of the articles in the journal are all professionals who are highly qualified to be writing about what they are writing about. For the editorial pieces, the authors have more of a voice and are portrayed as more "human" and less robotic than in the research pieces, where they hardly have any voices and are portrayed as just professionals who happen to be experts on the particular topics.

Audience

The audience for a scientific journal can be extremely broad. Each article has an abstract, which is designed so that anyone can read it, whether they have scientific background or not. Then there is the full article, which can sometimes be much more complicated and intended for a much more scientific audience. So, theoretically, anyone with an interest in the article can read the abstract, however the main article may be much harder to read and comprehend for just anyone. 

Context

• This journal was published in February of 2016.
• The particular journal is found online, but there is probably a print version as well. A journal found online is going to be very similar to the one found in print. A journal found online would still have the same conventions that a journal found in print would have. Among these conventions are multiple articles, a table of contents, multiple authors, and full size articles as well as simplified abstracts. 
• Contemporary events, such as the introduction of new scientific techniques, etc. may change the author's views on what he or she has written. The audience's views may change depending on their own personal knowledge about the topic, or the credibility of the author. 
• This journal has to do with modern experiments and reviews in science, so any of the topics that are covered in the journal could possibly be a hot topic in social media, however, due to the audience of the scientific journal, it is unlikely that the science involved in the journal would be related to a social movement.  
• The background of the primary audience is probably going to be someone with a high degree of education, most likely in a science field, who is interested in what is in this particular magazine. The secondary audience may just be any person, like myself, who does not have the education to understand everything in the article, but still has a little bit of an interest in the topic.
• This journal is published in the United states, so it focuses primarily on topics that are relevant to scientists and physiologists in the USA.
• I would say that any journal that contains similar articles would be a supplement to this text, however, I don;t think that this particular text is a reaction to any of those texts. Because of the nature of a scientific journal, it is more about facts rather than opinions and reactions.

Message

The message of this journal is the information that is covered throughout the journal.

Purpose

The purpose of this journal is to educate the audience on the topics covered in the journal. The author of each article wants to explain the research to the reader and explain how it is important.

Report on My Interviews

The interviews with professionals were extremely helpful in getting an inside look into genre conventions. I learned about different genres that I wouldn't have expected, and I learned about genres that I already knew about. In this blog post, I will talk about all that I learned while conducting my interviews.

Pasquini, Laura. "Curating Job Interview Questions" 08/14/2006 via flickr. Attribution, non-commercial, share-alike license.

1. The three main genres that I learned about in my interviews are research articles, public presentations, and Youtube videos.
2. All three genres are different in the way they are presented. For example, the research article is written, the presentation is live, and the video is recorded. The content of a research article is going to be much heavier than the content of a Youtube video for the general public or a presentation made at a conference. The purpose of all of these genres is to educate the reader, so they have that in common. The message of all  of these genres could potentially be the same, as each is just a way of delivering information. The audience is going to be different for each. At a conference you may have a different audience than the audience that is going to read a research article. The audience that is going to watch a Youtube video is also going to be different, than say, the audience that is going to read a serious scientific research article.
3. From my interviews I learned that the most challenging part about the genre of the research article is making sure that the audience known exactly what you're talking about just by reading the abstract. For the presentations, I learned that a large part of the difficulty in giving them is making sure that the content can be understood by all the viewers that are going to be present at that particular presentation. For example, if the presentation is a lecture in a college course, then all of the college students who are not professionals should still be able to grasp the information being presented. 
4. Based on my interviews, finally getting through the peer review process and finally getting published for a scientific research article is extremely exciting for the author. I also found out that it's extremely exciting for an author or presenter of information to be told that their work is either an inspiration or a fascination to someone who has viewed their particular medium of presentation. 
5. I found a lot of examples of articles on a website called "PubMed." I found this website using a simple Google search. If you looked up the specific topic of the video that you wanted to watch, you could easily find it on Youtube as well as Google. 

From Academia to Social Media

As with anyone in the professional field, it is important for authors of scientific journals to have some presence on social media, but to keep it very professional, as it is often easy to find them. Below I will search for further information on one of the authors featured in the Journal of General Physiology.

Eric Senning

• I found Eric on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.
• Eric Senning is very private on social media. All of his accounts are set to private, with the exception of LinkedIn, where only his professional information is shared. 
• In the article, Eric has a very professional voice and uses language that is complicated and scientific, but in his social media, at least from what I can see of his twitter profile, he seems like a normal guy. His profile picture is of him holding a baby, which is actually adorable. 

Open Clipart Vectors "Twitter, Tweet, Bird, Funny, Cute, Messaging" 06/08/2013 via Pixabay. Public domain license

Academic Discourse and Genre

In the scientific journal that I have chosen to analyze, there seem to be three different genres of articles. In my blog post below, I will discuss each of the three different article-types.

The Editorial

• Is written in a first person form
• Uses a casual tone
• Tries to connect to the reader
• Uses language that is meant to be easily understood

View an example from the Journal of General Physiology here.

Based on my research, I would say that an editorial is an article that is meant to give the author's view on something, as well as to connect with a larger variety of readers on a more personal level than say, a scientific article.

Kelly, Erin. "Couple Reading Books" 03/30/2012 via flickr. Attribution license.

The Review

• Is an explanation of something that happened/happens
• Is much more scientific
• Is written in a very formal, methodical way

View an example here.

Based on the above information, I would say the the review is a summary of a process that is explained in a very technical way for a much more educated, technical audience.

Research Articles

• Includes 7 main parts: abstract, introduction, materials/methods, results, discussion, acknowledgements, and references.
• Apart from the abstract, is written in very technical language
• Is written to explain a process

View an example here.

Based on the information above, my definition of a research article would be an article that explains the entire process of a research project or an experiment that the author has been a part of to experts on the topic, or people with a particularly scientific background.

My Major

Because this project is about how professionals in our intended field of study communicate, it's important to reflect upon what exactly it means to be a physiology major. I will do that in the following blog post, about m major.

Physiology

• Generally, students in my major learn a variety of sciences that all have to do with the processes that the human body goes through. This involves anatomy and physiology, chemistry, biology, and physics. 

• Usually, someone with a physiology degree would go on to med school or to get a PhD and do research in the field. 

• I wanted to be a physiology major because ever since middle school, I have wanted to be a doctor. It's something that I've known that I wanted to do for a very long time, and I'm so excited to continue to learn more.

Wellcome Images "Illustration of Skeleton Standing" 1801 via Wikimedia Commons. Creative Commons Attribution License.

Famous Physiologists

Linda B. Buck

• Linda Buck is a physiologist and a recipient of the Nobel Prize. Along with her partner, Richard Axel, Linda won the Nobel Prize for discovering that rats and humans share nearly the same sense of smell, and using this information to determine how the olfactory senses work.
• Linda Buck's website can be viewed here.

Dr. Kirsten Sanford

• Dr. Kirsten Sanford is a neurophysiologist who is most known for her mass media communications involving science and physiology. 
• She has been on many radio and TV programs that help to educate the general public on many scientific matters that they might otherwise remain ignorant about. 
• Dr. Sanford's website can be viewed here.

Dr. Raymond Heimbecker

• Was a surgeon who had studied in the field of physiology. Was the first person to complete a successful heart valve transplant and contributed greatly to many medical procedures and techniques that we have today.
• Unfortunately, Dr. Heimbecker passed away in 2014, but his memory lives on in his work.
• His accomplishments can be viewed here.

Physiology Journals

Physiological Reviews

• Is published in the USA by the American Physiological Society.

Physiology

• Is published in the USA by the American Physiological Society.

Journal of General Physiology

• Is published by Rockefeller University Press in the USA.

My Interviewees on Social Media

Social media is an extremely large part of the professional world in this day and age. Everything that goes on social media can be seen by the entire world, so it is extremely important for professionals to keep their professionalism on social media.

I'm going to cyber-stalk both of my interviewees in order to try and learn more about them via social media.

Dr. Bailey

1. I was able to find Dr. Bailey on Facebook only. 
2. Dr. Bailey has a very small social media presence. Her profile is set to private, and her profile picture is a picture of a large rock. I would say that Dr. Bailey has set her profile to private in order to keep her image professional. 
3. I would say that even though Dr. Bailey's social media presence is extremely small, based on what I could see, she seems much more laid back on social media than she does in her professional writing. On Facebook, you can see her interacting with family and friends, where in her writing, she is interacting with colleagues, peers, and other professionals. 

Zifan, Ali. "Facebook Logo" 07/03/2015 via wikimedia commons. Public domain license.

Dr. Wilkes

1. I was able to find Dr. Wilkes on Facebook only.  
2. Dr. Wilkes also has an extremely small social media presence. However, as I am friends with her daughter on Facebook, I was able to see a little bit more of her profile than I would've seen had we not had a mutual friend. Like Dr. Bailey, most of Dr. Wilkes' Facebook posts were about family and friends, and she shared very little that was not private. 
3. Unlike her professional persona, Dr. Wilkes seems much more family-oriented and much more like a normal person on her social media. For example, people wished her happy birthday and she responded in a very warm and friendly manner, unlike in her journal article, which was very professional and impersonal. 

My Interviewees As Professional Writers

Dr. E. Fiona Bailey

Dr. Bailey's primary form of writing is in the form of scientific journals and articles based on the research that she does here at the University of Arizona.

• Here is an article she wrote on respiratory function.
• Here is an article on electromyographic function in adults.

The Scientific Journal

Both of the above documents are in the genre of scientific journals. What makes the scientific journal it's own unique genre is the fact that it includes certain conventions that other pieces of writing doesn't include. The conventions are listed below:

• An abstract, or a summary of the journal
• The method for the experiment being written about
• Tables or charts, featuring data collected in the experiment
• Results for the experiment
• Discussion about what the results of the experiment mean
• Very scientific language

StFX "StFX Physical Sciences Lab" 03/28/2005 via Wikimedia Commons. Public Domain Dedication license

Context

The context of the two journals is extremely important in understanding what they mean for the reader of them. Below is an assessment of the context surrounding the journals.

• Both of the above articles are recent, one published in 2014 and the other in 2015.
• The articles are given in the format of a scientific journal or article, which the conventions for are listed above. 
• Both of the articles are written from a very objective point of view, so I would say that it is possible that the author didn't have a specific view on the topic. It's not really something that someone would have a view on, as it is mostly just factual information.
• Both of the articles are related to human health, so I would say that both of the articles and the research that they are based on, are sort of a response to some of the health concerns that we have here in America. For one, it is the analysis of how hypertension can be cured, and for the other, it's about a certain bodily process that occurs in healthy adults.
• The primary audience for these pieces would be anyone who is interested in physiology, who is interested in the experience, who is maybe a physiologist themselves, or someone who the found information may affect. Obviously these people would have to have some sort of scientific background, as the articles are extremely complex. 
• This particular article was published in the Journal of Neurophysiology.
• These particular texts stand alone, as they are both separate experiments that were done by the research group. They do not depend on any other texts or relate to any others.

Message

The overall message of the piece, I would say, is just to inform a particular audience about something that was discovered or researched in a laboratory setting. I decided this based on the information that was present in each of the articles, as well as based on the abstract included in each of the articles which clearly states the purpose of the experiment. Also, in each of the pieces, there is a discussion of results, and I feel as if the discussion in both of these really talks about what the information found in the experiment means.

Purpose

The purpose of each of these pieces is to discuss in detail the process of an experiment and what the experiment means as far as the results go. Based on the information that is present in each of the scientific journals, we can see this, as each has the experimental process and the results as well as a discussion of what the results means.

Dr. Margaret Wilkes

Dr. Wilkes's primary form of writing is in presentations, which she said she will link me to during our interview on Monday. However, until then I have found a scientific journal that she was a part of writing.

• The scientific journal can be viewed here.
• Once I receive the links for the presentations, I will link them here.

The Scientific Journal

The conventions for the scientific journal are listed above in the titled section under Dr. Bailey's name.

Presentations

The conventions of the presentation are a little different than those of the scientific journal, as the nature of the two genres are completely different. 

Unlike the journal, the presentation is something that happens live, and with less review. The journal must be reviewed to be published, but the presentation can be given without as strict of peer review. 

Often, the presentation would be given based on the results that were explained in a journal, so in that way, they are related. 

In a presentation, it is likely that the author would explain in more detail the results of the experiments and how they will affect things. 

Context

• The article was written in 2005.
• This article was published in a scientific journal.
• Because this article gives specific details as to how a particular medicine helps the treatment of an illness, the audience would probably have had an excited response to it. Because the experiment was successful, I would also imagine that the authors of the piece may have had more of a positive view on it.
• This article is about treatment of a particular lung disease, so historically, it is ground-breaking for the people who suffer from this particular disease. 
• The main audience of this piece would be someone who either has an interest in medicine or rheumatology, or has a scientific background and is interested in the particular topic being covered.
• This article was published in Arthritis Rheumatology, a journal dedicated to the practice of rheumatology.
• Any other journal or anything that is related to the topic of healing this particular lung disease would be related to this text. This journal however, stands alone. It is not a reaction to other papers, but rather a stand-alone study that someone else might have a reaction to.

Message/Purpose

The message and the purpose of this particular article are similar. This article was intended to inform an audience about how the treatment of a particular disease was done experimentally, and about how whether or not it worked. The reason that this is the purpose of the article is that the whole entire article is completely dedicated to stating the experiment itself and the results of it. 

My Interview Subjects

A central part of our our Project 2 are interviews with professionals in the field of study or the profession that we would like to go in. For my interviews, I will be conducting two, one with a doctor, and the other with a researcher so that I can get a broader view of the kinds of communications that professionals in medicine deal with.

Dr. E. Fiona Bailey: Interview #1

Associate professor, University of Arizona

Adjunct assistant research professor, Speech and Hearing Science

Assistant Professor, Evelyn F. McKnight Brain Institute

Attended undergraduate in Australia

Receive PhD from the University of Arizona

How many years has she worked at U of A?

Our interview will be held on February 23, 2016 at 3:15 pm in Gittings Rooms 113.

Image via physiology.arizona.edu

Dr. Bailey's website for her research can be found here.

Her U of A physiology page can be found here.

Questions:

• Research is obviously something that you do a lot of? Can you explain what you do with research exactly? How would you describe your job? 

• The most recent journal that you worked on, according to the U of A library, was about respiratory training in people with hypertension. When you write an article like this, what is your writing process? How do you go about writing something like this?

• What’s the most common genre of writing that you do? Have you ever done any sort of non-text based communication, like YouTube videos? Or speaking at a conference?

• Does social media and communicating/writing that way ever play into your job? If so, how? (Could you lead me to some examples of these ways of communication?)

• What kind of internal audience do you find yourself mostly writing for or to? Internal, as in people from your work.

• What kind of external audience do you find reads your work.do you communicate with?

• Has there ever been a particularly intimidating audience that you’ve had to write for? How did you prepare this writing differently, if at all, than the others?

• From start to finish, from planning your project, to publishing it, about how long of a process is this? 

• Do you have any sort of peer review process for publication?   

• How do you approach time management for your projects?    

Dr. Margaret Wilkes: Interview #2

Rheumatology specialist, Rheumatology Specialists of South Florida

Attended the University of Pennsylvania

Did residency at Jackson Memorial Hospital

Fellowship at the University of Health Center of Pittsburgh

Has been working for 18 years.

Our interview will be held Monday, February 29, 2016 at 3 pm via phone. 

Photo via Rheumatology Associates of South Florida.

Dr. Wilkes' bio from her office can be found here.

Questions:

• Can you describe what exactly your job entails?

• As a practicing doctor, the genres of writing that you do are going to be a lot different than someone, in say research. What would you say that your primary genre of writing is?

• Thanks to the internet, I was able to find an article that you wrote with some other people about treating a specific type of lung disease. Would this be an example of a typical type of writing that someone in your field would do?

• Have you ever done any sort of writing that is not text based? Like a presentation or a series of Youtube videos, etc.?

• Do you ever use social media with your job? (Could you point me towards some examples of this social media?)

• What kind of internal audience do you find yourself writing for?

• Do you ever write for the general public? How does this writing differ from your more professional writing?

• When you publish a paper, from start to finish, about how long does it take?

• Do you have any specific ways of managing your time as far as writing goes?

• What is the review process for your writing?