Zuleyka Zevallos’ “The March for Science Can't Figure Out How to Handle Diversity,” talks about how the political aspects of the Trump administration differ from those within the science community. The main issues the article focused on were climate change and immigration. This particular case speaks to issues relevant in our course. For example, the article backs itself up with tweets from sources that don’t seem to be very credible. Twitter is certainly no way to back up your claims, however I understand the point the article is trying to make. Another example is the irony of the science march getting on President Trump’s case about not using science to back up his claims and appointing people to positions in which they don’t belong, while the march itself wasn’t very inclusive. This leads to the “political arguments” taking president as opposed to an actual solution to the problem. The actual solution would be done through scientific research and discovery.
I believe the best way to apply this to the final project would be to make certain there is a careful review of all of our sources. In this way, we will be presenting Gloria Gemma with pure fact and very little opinion. That will ensure that they understand all of our unbiased research to the fullest so that they can use it how they deem appropriate. In my opinion, this is the only way to complete this project successfully and successful completion of this project is the ultimate goal.
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After reading Graham Smart's "Discourse Coalitions, Science Blogs, and the Global Debate Over Climate Change," I found it to be very insightful. He talks about Climate Change and the mess it has become in society today. He takes a look at the advocates, eco-optimists, and skeptics and how they interact with each other along with how they interact with the public. He eventually finds that each of the three groups provides some science knowledge to the public, however each group seems to get lost in the debate. This causes the public to get “lost” in everything that’s going on and also take a side with little fact involved. People are then not able to create opinions off of anything, so they are essentially almost arguing just to argue.
I think this is an interesting take on Climate Change. The author seems to blame the scientists for the entire argument, saying they are not educating the public properly and instead are more focused on just arguing their side. This has certainly created plenty of political drama the last several years. As long as this continues, it will more than likely be the same story moving forward. I think Smart’s findings are relevant too my own final project because I am also researching studies that have been done on my topic. Moreover, it is probably more appropriate to explain my topic to my audience (Gloria Gemma) in a way that is fair and understanding. In this way, they will be able to generate their own opinions on the topic rather than be influenced by my own. The other benefit in keeping my own thoughts out would be that future employees at Gloria Gemma can look back on the archived document at any point in the future and be able to do the same thing. The article I read is called “Inflammation and cancer: Why your diet is important.” It was about the link between inflammation in the human body and cancer. However, the article mostly focusses on diet. It gives specific examples of the types of foods that should be eaten to reduce inflammation. The article lastly mentions that there is an inverse relationship between inflammation and cancer risks and other chronic diseases. Therefore, eating the recommended foods is a great way to stay healthy and reduce the risk of these diseases at the same time.
When considering Montgomery’s chapter 19, it is easy to see some of the techniques displayed in this article. The beginning couple sentences are both intriguing and a preview of the entire article. In particular, the sentence directly underneath the table which says, “Prolonged inflammation can damage your body's healthy cells,” is a little of both in my opinion. After reading that sentence and the title, I felt as if I should keep reading to find out the steps that can be taken to reduce inflammation. Sure enough the reader centered article was very friendly in informing me of the foods that should be consumed to reduce inflammation. This leads into another one of Montgomery’s techniques which is simple language. The author makes a conscious effort to keep the language simple and easy to understand. This is necessary in science writing when considering the complexity of many science topics. However, the author does not have any issues with confusing writing. In fact, the article can be read by almost anyone. One thing that definitely helped the articles clarity was its organization. It can easily be scanned for information and has clearly labeled headings to ensure the reader can easily sort through and find the necessary information they are looking for. https://www.mdanderson.org/publications/focused-on-health/may-2014/inflamation-cancer-diet.html The article I chose for this assignment was, “Everything Worth Knowing About ... Black Holes” by Sarah Scoles. This article was about black holes and starts out simply by detailing what they are. It then goes on to talk about some professors and academics and their research on the topic. The most notable of these people is the late Stephen Hawking. The article further talks about movies that have tried to explain black holes and even notes the accuracy of these movies in relation to what science has already discovered.
In chapter 5, one of the things Montgomery talks about is transitions. The one thing this article does extremely well is transition between topics. She uses headings as a way to introduce new topics and does so very effectively. This helps with the spacing of the article and make it much easier to read. As the reader, I felt as if these effective transitions really helped me to focus and better understand what she was talking about. Some science articles tend to jump around from topic to topic and can lead to further confusion. Another technique this article employs well, is the phrase directly below the title which say, “Get sucked in!” This phrase, while a little corny, helps the reader, such as myself, to feel at ease and as if I will not be confused by the article later on. It is actually a similar feeling to the one I had reading Kean where it you feel like it is written for a wide audience and not a discourse community. The use of examples such as spaghetti is very similar to how Kean used stories. These two aspects were done very effectively by the writer making it more likely she can grab the audience’s attention. After all, when writing for Discover Magazine, grabbing attention is ultimately the author’s job. http://discovermagazine.com/2016/jul-aug/black-holes In the book, Caesar's Last Breath: Decoding the Secrets of the Air Around Us by Sam Kean, he starts out by talking about the Earth’s atmosphere. He goes into detail about the history of the atmosphere and how it has changed over time. In doing this, it appears he expands his audience to include a wide range of people with various backgrounds seeing as the stories provide a greater understanding of the topics at hand. Furthermore, this enhances the entertainment value of the book.
In my opinion, Kean’s purpose is to enlighten a wide audience about the topic at hand. Touching on what I previously talked about, I believe he does this effectively through the use of his stories. Again, this allows people with little background knowledge to be able to understand what Kean is talking about despite the rather advanced subject matter. Throughout the reading Kean has a seemingly inherent ability to “dumb down” these difficult concepts and express himself in laymen’s terms. I feel that one of the moves I can steal from Kean is his ability to write clearly for everyone to understand. In a professional document for a client, clear writing is perhaps the single most important aspect of the document other than the ideas themselves. Relating to one of my other classes, writing for business organizations, we are taught to write in a manner that leaves the audience with no questions. Therefore, it is easy to see that Kean’s element of clear writing is particularly relevant to our project. A question I may have to ask Kean in his visit is his actual intended purpose. I speculate my interpretation of his purpose is not far off, however it is impossible to truly know without asking him. I feel as though he may have potentially had a greater purpose in writing this text. We looked at the discourse community of business and the genre of business writing. When looking at articles, we decided to take a look at the genre of business letters that Michael Burry and Warren Buffet send to their investors/shareholders. These letters were to educate their investors on the process they went through when looking at the Stock Market. Burry’s business letters show rhetoric throughout by persuading his investors to think the way he thinks when investing. Burry uses the appeal of logos and ethos when writing his letters to investors to, which makes his writing more effective. In the letters, Burry uses certain vocabulary to address his audience in the proper tone of business writing. Also, he writes his letters in a straightforward way to make his point come across clearly. Burry used analytical tools like social facts and speech act theory when presenting numbers in his letters showed the social facts he had on the Stock Market. Similarly, Buffett also uses certain styles, deliveries, and genres when getting information across to his investors. He must use these effectively to instill confidence in his shareholders and justify his trading. Together, they both communicate to their messages to their audience, but perhaps in different ways.
Questions: How can we go about comparing and contrasting Buffett and Burry's business letters? How can an interview with our business writing professor enhance our paper? How can we cut this paper down so that it is more concise to our audience? After reading Bazerman’s “Patents as Speech Acts and Legal Objects,” he uses analytical tools to better communicate with his audience. One of these tools is summarizing long documents in a manner the reader can understand. For example, in the section “The Typification of Patent Form,” Bazerman summarizes a 90-page pamphlet and even quotes some of the main ideas of the pamphlet. Another thing Bazerman employs well is direct examples. When talking about “double references,” Bazerman immediately uses an example of Edison. In fact, simply by stating how Edison went about this, it is easier to get a clear understanding of what he is talking about. Whereas, if he explained it without the direct example, it could be confusing.
When conducting my own analysis, one thing I can surely take away from Bazerman is how he gets his points across. The big things Bazerman was good at were using examples and short summaries of larger, more confusing documents and terms. While I go about my project, I believe some of the fundamental questions I should be asking my professors are what short cuts do they take so as not so overwhelm students? I feel as if a lot of professors tend to take the Bazerman approach of using real life examples and summarizing so as to get the major point across before providing too many details. However, if this is not what the professor(s) use, then what tools or methods do they use when trying to communicate information across the discourse community? Furthermore, does the genre of the material impact or limit what the examples the professor(s) can use? Or does a summary work better than an example or vice versa based on genre? Bazerman does a great job in his analysis and it is helpful to study the way he goes about it to gain a better grasp of things I should be studying in Major Assignment 1. After reading, “Speech Acts,Genres, and Activity Systems: How Texts Organize Activity and People,” by Charles Bazerman, I feel as if I have a better understanding of Major Assignment 1. When Bazerman says, “The analytical approach of this chapter relies on a series of concepts: social facts, speech acts, genres, genre systems, and activity systems. These concepts suggest how people using text create' new realities of meaning" relation, and knowledge” (Bazerman, 309). By using this as a guide, I will be able to better uncover how particular genres are shaping the scientific discourse in the finance community. I feel this will give a better understanding of how to effectively communicate in this discourse community. It will also help in perhaps learning what genres are effective in enabling my own learning, not just simply the effective communication of others.
Moreover, I will be looking questioning finance professors as to where they get their material and how they feel it better shapes a student’s understanding of finance as a discourse community. I will also further question how they narrow down exactly which topics they choose to focus on and for what reasons. This will then lead into my discussion on exactly what Bazerman was talking about. By analyzing these material, coupled with the background provided by Bazerman, it will be clear exactly how these genres create meaning, relation, and knowledge to the members of the discourse community. These can also be sorted by various things not just simply genre. As Bazerman discusses in the chapter, the materials will also belong to various social facts, speech acts, genre systems, and activity systems. This will be able to provide me with a more thorough analysis of how scientific discourse is carried out in the discourse community of finance. The article I chose to read is called “The efficient market 53 hypothesis: problems with interpretations of empirical tests” by Denis Alajbeg. As far as background information goes, the efficient market hypothesis is an investment theory that basically says it is impossible to consistently beat the market because the market is too highly efficient. Therefore, there is no sense in investing in instruments other than index funds such as the S&P 500.
The author makes a clear appeal to logic (logos) throughout the text. He really attempts to just reason out a lot of his thinking. This makes sense considering that the efficient market hypothesis is a logically based theory. Alajbeg contends that because the market is so efficient, there is no point in simply wasting time and resources to try to beat. Instead, index funds require no maintenance and have very small management fees. Therefore, he argues to put the efficient market hypothesis to work and sleep comfortably at night. All logical thinking. The author has a very unique style of explaining things through other discoveries and works he has read about. “Difficulties with early interpretations of market efficiency theory were revealed by Grossman and Stiglitz (1980). They pointed out that Fama’s efficient market must “implode” as it cannot exist without sophisticated traders.” (Alajbeg, 57). This is an example of how he inserts other works and uses them to help make his own point stronger. He also structures his article somewhat chronologically so it is easy for the reader to follow along with how the theory and his thoughts on it developed over time. The author does not use any unique styles as far as wording goes. He mostly gets right into his points without much “fluff.” Lastly, the author delivers his thoughts very logically by constantly proposing a problem and rationally solving it or proposing a solution and poking holes through it. All in all, the author does a fine job delivering the material to the reader. One persuasive document in my discourse community is the syllabus for International Finance. According to Selzer, a persuasive document must, “…attend to: how an idea should be shaped and presented to an audience in a particular form for a specific purpose (Selzer, 281).” The idea of providing a syllabus and how it’s shaped for the intended purpose is always a crucial and persuasive document for any class. In particular, this syllabus is appropriately shaped for a business syllabus. At the top of the first page, it displays the university name, school name, class, and hours. It then, very concisely, displays the appropriate personal information of the professor to ensure students they have ample forms of contact with the professor. The document goes on to list the professor’s goal and the course description. Again, these are also very concise and straight to the point. It then goes over required texts and course objectives, while also outlining classroom policies and grading. It concludes with the course outline. All throughout this document, there is one reoccurring theme for all of the sections. This theme is that simple fact that the sections are clear, concise, and to the point. This document is written as a business document should be written and these adjectives all describe how the document is shaped. Additionally, the specific purpose of this document and for being shaped as such, has to do with the time restraints and efficiency that is required in the business world. By expressing this through the very first document received in the class, it lays out a clear understanding of how writing should be conducted in business. This can be further seen further through the use of emails which are especially important in the business world. Therefore, this document pertains to its discourse community extremely well because it passes the test of a brief rhetorical analysis.
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