PB3A Proposal for Genre Translation

I am really excited about my ideas for Writing Project 3. I am using the scholarly, peer-reviewed, academic journal article “Vegetarian Diet in Children” from Romanian Journal Of Pediatrics. The article describes vegetarianism along with its benefits and risks in children. It provides recommendations for how to safely eat the right amount of nutrients. There is a great amount of information to consider and process, but a lot of it can be included in different forms. Translating the ideas in a scholarly text means transforming the information into different genres. I really like the genres of comic strips and billboards so I am choosing to use those. The comic strip I am making is going to be directed towards a younger audience and the billboard I am creating is targeted for older audiences.

The comic strip will be aimed at elementary school children who have at least a basic ability to read. It will consist of a conversation of two young girls who are both vegetarian. They will be talking about how their mothers make sure they are getting enough nutrition in their food everyday and mentioning other vegetarian members of their families. Also, both little girls will ask each other questions about why they are vegetarians and about some of the foods they eat. The conventions of comic strips usually include thought and speech bubbles, at least one character, some kind of story line, and multiple parts of the scene. Mine will include all of these conventions.

The billboard will have a different approach. Instead of showing dialog between two characters, there will be a picture of a mother with three children, who are all different ages. Because the journal article warns against careful nutrition consumption in vegetarianism for children, the billboard will include this warning and contain various facts about necessary nutrition. On the bottom corner of the billboard, I think I will include a fake website link in order for people to search for more information. I recognize that when people are driving, they probably do not have a long time to be able to read everything on a billboard. The conventions of billboards are usually a single big image, a few sentences in a large font, and the advertiser’s name or sponsor. Billboards are used to persuade people to believe something or to purchase a particular product. In my case, I will be using the billboard to educate people about the article’s information about vegetarianism in children. I will be following these conventions and also tie in vegetarian information. Even though the audience potentially consists of mothers with children, it can still be aimed towards fathers, grandparents, caretakers, and anyone else who cares about vegetarian children’s diets.

I think my WP3 is going to be fun to make and interesting to analyze the affordances and limitations of transforming genres.

            Question for Zack: I remember that we talked about comic strips before in class, but is it all right if I still create one for my WP3? I have a lot of good ideas for it.

Works Cited:

Anton-Paduraru, Dana-Teodora, et al. "Vegetarian Diet In Children." Romanian Journal Of Pediatrics 63.4 (2014): 357-361. Academic Search Complete. Web. 18 Feb. 2015.

PB2B: "Moves"

I chose to compare and contrast Kerry Dirk’s Navigating Genres and Karen Rosenberg’s Reading Games: Strategies for Reading Scholarly Sources from the Reader. Both writers have a unique variety of “moves” that they use in their writings. These “moves” or writing styles allow the readers to better understand the authors’ main points and allows the authors to keep the readers’ interest and attention. Most of their “moves” that they made were successful, but there were a few that were not.

            First I will discuss Kerry Dirk’s “moves”. As I just demonstrated, the idea of starting paragraphs with using words like “I” or “You” commonly appears throughout her writing. For example, Dirk said, “When I started writing this essay, I had some ideas of what I wanted to say” (15). She probably does this because she wants her writing to feel more personal and conversational to the reader and she succeeds in this. Additionally, she opens her piece with a joke and briefly discusses it. This move allows the reader to relax, hopefully gain a positive first impression of what he/she is about to read, and grab his/her attention. This humorous hook is a “move” that other authors use and can be effective if the intended sentences are in fact funny. Arguably, Dirk’s writing is humorous. She also seems to enjoy inserting amusing examples that are typically relatable and relevant to the reader. For example, Dirk said, “I like examples, so here is one more. Many of you may be familiar with The Onion, a fictitious newspaper that uses real world examples to create humorous situations” (254). Also, as I have been trying to demonstrate in my own writing, Dirk uses lots of good transitions. This “move” allows the reader to ideally read her writing effortlessly and be able to follow the direction that she is moving in. She is successful in creating a steady flow in her article. Using bullet points is another “move” seen throughout. This is not always a good “move” to make because it can create choppiness and disrupt the writing flow. However, the bullet points give diversity to the typical paragraph structure of articles. She probably uses these to clearly separate and draw more attention to her writing. Her use of posing questions for the readers to ponder is an effective “move” because it can force the reader to stop and think about the article. Lastly, Dirk includes lengthy quotes from others, such as professors and rhetoricians. This “move” may validate her arguments, but these paragraph block quotes can be distracting and seem purposeless.

            In comparison, Karen Rosenberg has many different “moves” than Kerry Dirk. Rosenberg begins her article by saying, “During my first year in college, I feared many things: calculus, cafeteria food, the stained, sweet smelling mattress in the basement of my dorm” (84). She inserts background information about herself and stories in order to sound more personal. This is effective because it allows the readers to better understand the author and this can allow them to connect more with what she is saying. Her humor is similar to Dirk and is apparent throughout, such as when she describes a personal story about a peer’s elbow (85). This “move” gives a relaxing and interesting feel to her writing and is for the benefit of the reader. As with Dirk, she uses the words “I”, “me”, and “you” to also make the reader feel that she is talking directly to him/her and she is successful at this. However, a successful “move” that Dirk doesn’t make is when she writes with bold titles to clearly define the break-up of paragraph ideas. She also uses italics and bold face words to place emphasis on certain terms, which can sometimes be distracting. This can be an unhelpful “move” because the reader’s eyes tend to focus more on these words. However, she is successful with using this “move” because the words she focuses on seem to be important and it shows when she is moving on to discuss a new term or topic. Also, using contractions are a “move” and this adds to the casualty of the article. She repeatedly uses the “move” of asking questions in order to create interaction and engage the reader. In the conclusion, she gives a series of commanding sentences.

            Although Dirk and Rosenberg use many different “moves” throughout their writing, they have many similar “moves”. They use terms such as “I”, “me”, and “you” in order to make their writing more personal to the reader. This “move” is successful because it allows the reader to read the article more conversationally. They both incorporate humor, which is also successful because, at least for me as a reader, it caught my attention and kept me engaged in their writing. Overall, they both demonstrate the effectiveness of their “moves”.

PB2A: Comparing "SCIgen" and a Scholarly Source

As we have been learning in class, there are many different types of genres that can be exemplified by a variety of sources. The “SCIgen” genre generator program creates its own genre of made-up scientific papers. Another type of genre is made up of academic publications from a scholarly source, which are found from http://www.library.ucsb.edu. A specific example of a journal article is “Should Cats be Given as Gifts?”. Both writings come from different genres and possess many similarities and differences. These genres differ in their rhetorical features, such as with the audience, purpose, context, and style, and conventions. 

The audience for the scholarly source is made up of individuals who are interested in researching and learning more about a particular topic or experiment. The “SCIgen” website, even though the papers are fictitious, would have a similar audience because individuals read those papers intending to become knowledgeable about a specific experiment.

The authors of “Should Dogs and Cats be Given as Gifts?” published this academic piece to inform other scholars about their survey findings. The conclusion was that “receiving a dog or cat as a gift was neither significantly associated with impact on self-perceived love/attachment, nor was it associated with whether or not respondents still had the dog or cat in the home” (996, Weiss). This shows this particular paper was written about a specific researched finding, which is similar to the “SCIgen” genre generator program’s papers. Comparatively, “A Case for the Transistor” contains new discovered findings about a scientific topic. Both genres present detailed information and have similar audiences. Additionally, the purpose and context of both are for the authors to receive credit and acknowledgment for their work and for other scholars to read their work in order gain knowledge.

The formal style of both papers includes pronouns such as “we” and are both written in a straightforward manner. It is clear that the authors wish to relate their findings to the reader in a more personal manner, even though the publications are formatted in a proper way; they include the formal use of abstract, introduction, results and discussion, conclusion, and reference titles and sections. These make up the foundational organization of the writings.

Furthermore, there are conventions, which are expected elements that appear throughout particular genres and hold the genre together. They are patterns that may vary but, for the most part, are relatively consistent across the genre; they are assumed rules that traditionally are followed. For example, a recipe for food is unlikely to appear in a published scholarly academic work or a cartoon drawing in a scientific study. One convention is that both have tables mixed within the papers. However, the “SCIgen” genre generator program's work additionally has pictures and figures and the scholarly academic publication does not. There are extra titles in the “SCIgen” website such as “Framework” and “Implementation”. “A Case for the Transistor” has a summary section that the other does not have. The scholarly academic publication also includes a section each for acknowledgments and a statement about whether or not there is a conflict of interest along with a copyright statement. The generated scientific papers do not have these conventions. A similarity is that both number their references instead of having a formal works cited page. Lastly, because a website and a journal article from a PDF are being compared, the website does not include page numbers but the article does.

All in all, both the "SCIgen" genre generator program and a scholarly source are genres that are very similar, but they each have rhetorical features and specific conventions that are unique to only them. 

Works Cited:

Freeze, Sarah. "A Case for the Transistor." SCIgen. Web. 1 Feb. 2015.

Weiss, Emily, et al. "Should Dogs and Cats be Given as Gifts?" Animals (2076-2615) 3.4 (2013): 995-1001. Academic Search Complete. Web. 1 Feb. 2015.

PB1B Understanding Genre With Generators

PB1B

There are many different types of genres that are made up of many unique conventions. I explored a few types of genres through genre generating websites. These websites will create different varieties of a particular genre.  For example, there are websites that generate scientific research papers, memes, comic strips, and fictional plots.

The website, pdos.csail.mit.edu/scigen, generates scientific research papers about made-up theories and ideas. Each paper contains extensive paragraphs about resources and evaluations made along with a “related work” category. Near the end, there is a conclusion paragraph and a lengthy list of references on the last few pages. These papers use formal language and correct punctuation. Although the content itself is false, there is a structure that mimics real scientific papers. Because these papers are generated with those conventions in mind, they can easily be identified as this type of genre.

On another website, there are meme generators that take common pictures of various characters and attach a comical sentence on it. Meme pictures are used over and over again with different amusing statements. For example, memegenerator.net took a picture of “grumpy cat”, who is commonly used in memes because he is well known for his inability to physically smile, and attached the comical phrase “That look you get… when the last person in line takes the next open register”. This in itself is considered to be very funny and attaching a few words to the image adds to the hysterical element. In most memes, the sentence is broken up so half is at the top and half is near the bottom of the picture and one single image is used. Usually well-known characters are used and can be formatted so that about half of the memes have a cropped face of someone with color in the background instead of using an entire photo. Another convention is having the words written in a white bold font, which makes them easier to read.

Pandyland.net/random is a comic strip generator that has colorful drawings side-by-side in a group of three. These comic strips have funny dialogue between the characters. From this particular website, one character consistently has brown hair and the other one has yellow and they stay the same in personality and appearance. Additionally, sound words appear with actions, such as drawing a high five followed by the word “clap”. Other conventions are thought bubbles that appear whenever a character is thinking to himself and punctuation is not always used. Comic strips are expected to be funny and typically follow a general story.

I found a fictional plot generator from the website fictiongen.inky.me. It creates short story ideas that one could write extensively about. These are clearly fictional plots because the purpose of them is to inspire the reader to create their own writing and further ideas. Each plot line gives brief background details about the characters as well as a general outline of all of the action taking place throughout. Additionally, there is a short phrase about how the story will end, includes a title for each plot line, and the format consists of being a paragraph. Most plot lines contain these elements.

Each genre has the same conventions; conventions are something that appear throughout a particular genre. Conventions are expected elements of particular genres and act as the “glue”, which holds the genre together. For example, memes have a single picture with a sentence written on it which clearly differs from a scientific research paper. Conventions are patterns that, although they may vary, are relatively consistent across the genre. They are not official laws that are set in stone, but they are assumed rules that are traditionally followed. If one were to see and understand these patterns, one would understand the concept of genres better. Overall, this activity helped solidify in my mind the concept of a genre and gave me a clearer understanding that there are still many types of genres I am unfamiliar with.