MAINTAINING HEALTHY RELATIONSHIPS

Maintaining Healthy Relationships: Genre Analysis of a Poster and an Online Article Robert R. Thompson University of Texas at El Paso

MAINTAINING HEALTHY RELATIONSHIPS Approximately fifty percent of all marriages will fail. People of all adult ages will suffer and fight over their children, their possessions, and even their paychecks with a person that they once swore they loved more than anything. The topic of this genre analysis is Maintaining Healthy Relationships. There will be two genres, a typography and an iconography, analyzed and compared throughout this analysis. The typography is a website (http://drbenkim.com/howto-keep-your-relationship-healthy) with an article named Six Ways to Keep Your Relationship Healthy. The website is a breakdown of six ways to keep a strong relationship with your partner. The iconography is a poster from Kansas State University titled Healthy Relations Starfish. The poster is a fish stuck in the sand at the beach with writing in red letters stating maintaining healthy relationships in red letters. The genres will be discussed in detail. Purpose and Audience

The online article by Dr. Kim is intended for his personal audience and fans of his website. Dr. Kim has a website geared towards natural health of all sorts. Some of his most notable topics are water fasting, preventing osteoporosis, and overcoming chronic depression. So his target audience is people who are interested in natural health. In this particular article, Dr. Kim states, I thought it would be helpful to create a post where our readers can chime in with thoughts on how to sustain a life partnership once you're all in. That statement narrows his audience for this piece to not just couples, but couple that are committed and intended to be together until death do us part. The audience is likely to know and have some experience on the subject. This article is just meant to give different points of view on the same topic from several experienced couples. At the end of this essay, the audience is expected to know some basics of how to maintain a healthy mature relationship. His audience is expected to spend about 15 minutes on this essay. The purpose of this essay is to give his readers some alternate ways to approach their relationships after they have decided to fully commit to their significant others.
2

MAINTAINING HEALTHY RELATIONSHIPS Hopefully this essay can save someone heartache and a ton of money in legal fees. The poster is intended primarily for couples, but can also attract single people that are looking to improve future relationships. The intended audience is revealed through the use of the word maintain on the poster. Maintain gives the impression that the creator is referring to something that already exists. Also, the appearance of two starfish stuck in the sand gives the impression that the couple is elderly. Starfish appear to be wrinkled and not very mobile, just as a stereotypical elderly couple that has been together for fifty plus years. The poster has an easier chance to push its message on someone that is not actually seeking counsel or advice for relationships only because it is easier to accidently absorb the message from a picture than it is from an article. In order for a person to read the article, they must first be interested in the title or topic of the article. The audience is likely to know and have some experience on the subject, but as this is a topic with many viewpoints and levels of knowledge, the majority of the viewers will most likely be amateurs at best. After studying the poster, the audience is expected to have a visual understanding and have a deeper meaning of what it truly means to be in a serious relationship. The class is expected to spend about 5 minutes really observing every aspect of the picture. The purpose of this picture is to give the class some alternate ways to approach their relationships when they are ready to settle down and get married. The poster shows the selflessness required to maintain a strong relationship. It also shows that relationships will always have problems, but as long as the couple puts each other first, everything else is not so bad. The poster and the website have two different audiences. The audience for the picture appears to be broader, because the audience for the article is just for his website viewers and people in committed relationships. But with the narrow audience, the information is more targeted and specific. His purpose is given to you word for word as opposed to the interpretation of the picture. The message of the picture is a little harder to catch at glance. The picture does take less time to absorb the point, and has a better chance of passing its message to an unintended audience. Anyone can stumble across the
3

MAINTAINING HEALTHY RELATIONSHIPS message in the poster, but a person would have to seek out and devote time and energy to receive the message from the online article. Rhetorical Issues: Ethos, Pathos, Logos

The poster has no real credibility. It is from an accredited University, but there is no way to know that by just looking at the poster. The poster will invoke different emotions to different people through their experiences. The poster was meant to invoke loving emotions and be closer with the person they are in a relationship with. The logic behind the poster is seen in the timing of the actual picture, the timing helps bring out the purpose of the photo. The starfish are stuck in the sand, giving an appearance that they are waste high. Both starfish appear to be reaching for one another. The one on the left looks as though it can leave without the other but refuses to most on without its partner. In the background, you can see a wave coming in. Anyone that knows anything about the beach can then assume that any progress they have made is going to be disrupted by the incoming waves. As to say that life will always bring new challenges, but couples must stay together and always focus on their commitment to each other in order to make it through the biggest challenges. The online article is written by a married man who has a doctorate in chiropractic medicine. His wife, who helps with his website, is a psychologist with a background in marriage therapy. The emotions drawn from the article is sympathy, due to the fact that even the doctor speaks of his own personal issues and brings an understanding that whatever problems you may think you are having are all common issues. The author's logic behind his writing is to draw in people in relationships that are seeking knowledge or advice. The author uses references from other professional books, such as The Five Love Languages and His Needs Her Needs, to support his statements. This validates a lot of his statements and beliefs. The poster and the online article differ in ethos, logos, and pathos. The poster is more one dimensional in its delivery. No background or references are contained in the picture. There is no
4

MAINTAINING HEALTHY RELATIONSHIPS introduction or conclusion. What you see is what you get. The online article states the following in its introduction, let's discuss strategies that have worked for us. Things that we have found to be helpful in healing wounds, preventing wounds, fostering genuine fondness, earning respect, and just plain old surviving life with your significant other. This shows a multidimensional approach to maintaining relationships. The article gives more than just a point of view like the poster. It gives steps to improve in each aspect of the relationship.

Structure The timing of the photo on the shore makes the poster very relevant. Had this picture been taken while there was no tide, the photo would loose a lot of it's meaning. The article is basically timeless, it would have been appropriate a hundred years ago and will still make since in the next hundred years. The timing is a contrast because the poster needed to be taken at a specific time to make sense, but the article was good to go whenever they wrote it. Style and language The poster is informal with big red writing in the corner of the poster. That is a very good choice of font color considering red is a color that is mostly associated with love. Red is also associated with stopping so the words can actually make you pause and read the poster. The words on the poster state Maintaining Healthy Relationships. It is a statement that makes the viewer feel as if there is more to go along with the picture, or that the picture is so profound that nothing else needs to be said. The article is informal, with no special features, written in verdania, which seems to be a lighter, softer, less formal style. He could have used that font because he wants his audience to relate to the poster on a more personal level. In Dr. Kims article, he refers to his own relationship several times throughout his writing, so a softer font and more personal language would be more appropriate. The two genres are similar when pertaining to style and language. Both of them are personal, but the words used in the poster seem to be less
5

MAINTAINING HEALTHY RELATIONSHIPS personal. The language is more focused toward the picture. The language is more directed towards the audience in the article. The author speaks in first person and speaks out to the second person. The language is very personal in the article. Conclusion The genres discussed in this analysis have a very similar message, but the message is sent by different channels, one in the form of a poster and the other in an article. The poster does a great job of sending its message to whoever lays eyes on the poster for even a few seconds. The poster does have the opportunity to reach a wider audience, but the exact meaning of the poster can be lost in interpretation. The article is focused. The author says exactly who his audience is and what he expects the audience to get from his article. Unlike the poster, the article gives a more multifaceted block of instruction on how to maintain a healthy relationship. The article is more effective because it is more straightforward that the poster. The picture does say a thousand words, but the article gets the brain moving and thinking about how to best approach our relationships. I also believe the picture are easier to forget than reading a step to step essay on what to do to live a long life with a lifelong partner.

MAINTAINING HEALTHY RELATIONSHIPS References Emotional Health and Well-Being. (2012). Six Ways to Keep Your Relationship Healthy. Retrieved September 11, 2013, from http://drbenkim.com/how-to-keep-yourrelationship-healthy. Kansas State University. (2010). [Illustration Maintaining Healthy Relationships Poster June 2, 2010]. Healthy Relations Starfish. Retrieved from http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https://www.universitylifecafe.kstate.edu/_media/uploaded/images/2010/HealthyRelationshipsStarfish.jpg&imgrefurl=htt ps://www.universitylifecafe.k-state.edu/bookshelf/maintaining-healthyrelationships/&h=332&w=500&sz=139&tbnid=gUV0v34sFOeeMM:&tbnh=90&tbnw=1 36&zoom=1&usg=__rbyj8MFHKTV4B61nN5KUhiw368U=&docid=IB0EipyrMNWJ6 M&sa=X&ei=Ed1IUrTMJ_GG2wXt_YDgCw&ved=0CC4Q9QEwAA