Running

Head: SLEEP CONSEQUENCES

Sleep Consequences: Genre Analysis of a Website and a Video

Lucero L. Rojas Gallegos
University of Texas at El Paso

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Genre Analysis on The Consequences of Sleep Deprivation

Through the flow of time, generations after generations have come and go, caring
with them their traditions and practices. Therefore, the common customs of one
generation can change dramatically or even disappear from one generation to the next.
Throughout time since the first homo sapiens roamed the Earth to todays technology
advance culture the amount of hours we sleep and how we sleep has evolved. One
century ago before electricity was used people would sleep from sun down to sunrise
receiving approximately twelve hours of sleep every day. Now a days people are sleeping
less and less everyday, and sleep deficiency is becoming a health problem. (HHS, 2012)
Sleep deficiency is defined as not getting the amount of sleep that the body needs, which
is approximately about eight to ten hours of sleep every night, Although now a day
people sleep for approximately five hours or less every night. (HHS, 2012) Sleep
deficiency though, is not related to the side effects that a sickness or medical condition
can manifest.
Although these topic is discussed everywhere, it is one that most people dont
consider of high importance, since they keep pushing there bodies to the extreme without
giving it the proper rest it deserves. Sleep deficiency awareness has been discussed
through several different types genres, with some genres being more successful than
others. The website The Sleep Deprivation and Deficiency created by the National
Heart, Lung, and Blood institute and the U.S. Department of Health and Human
Resource, and the YouTube video What if you Stopped Sleeping? created by
AsapSCIENCE are two examples of different genres that have been used to bring
awareness to these growing issue. Through the examination of the genres purpose,

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rhetorical, structure, and language the effectiveness of which genre was more successful
will be determined.
Purpose and Audience
The website The Sleep Deprivation and Deficiency created by the National
Heart, Lung, and Blood institute and the U.S. Department of Health and Human resource
focuses mainly on audiences like teens and adults that can actively make and take
responsibility of their own lifestyle choices, or that are accountable for other peoples
choice. Examples are parents that are responsible for their little children, or people that
are responsible for the care of the elderly. Teens and young adults, on the contrary are
have more freedom to make their own choices, and are therefore some of the other
discourse communities that the website is directed toward. The audiences will most
probable already know that not sleeping or sleeping for a small amount of time
throughout the night does have a negative impact on the body. However, they may want
to know more about the extent of these effects, may want to know if there are other longterm effects of sleep deficiency, and if the effects may be catastrophic. For instance the
audience may know that sleep deficiency alters your mood but they might not know that
continued sleep deficiency can lead increased feelings of depression and suicide. (HHS,
2012) Therefore the purpose of the website is to promote public health by informing the
public of the effects sleep deficiency, and it would take the audience about twenty to read
the information.
Unlike the website that focuses on older audiences the YouTube video What if
you Stopped Sleeping? focuses more on younger audiences like children and teens. The
video is aimed at the discourse community of that sees or uses YouTube, and that enjoys

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short and simplified information since the video will only take three minutes of the
audiences time. The intended audience for the genre probably knows very little if
anything about the topic. Therefore the purpose of the video just like that of the website
is to inform the audiences about the consequences of not sleeping, but unlike the website
the video is also meant to entertain the audiences. Since the videos audiences are much
younger in order to maintain their attention the video must be able to entertain or catch
their attention. Keeping the audiences attention is something that the website has to been
concerned about too much since its audiences are older.
Rhetorical Issues: Ethos, Pathos, and Logos
By being a governmental website and by being created by two well know federal
agencies (The National Heart, Lung, and Blood institute and the U.S. Department of
Health and Human Resource) the website successfully establishes its credibility.
Therefore to give the audience the feeling that its information is accurate and based on
facts, the website must have a very formal structure and appearance. The website
therefore does not include pictures, fancy fonts, or wild colors to try to evoke feelings
from its audience. Since its main goal is to give objective information, it instead uses
basic standard colors like white for the background, black and blue for the text (red only
to highlight certain heading) and uses the standard font Verdana. The website describes
the physiological processes that happen in the body to explain the side effect that sleep
deficiency has, using good use of the logos rhetoric.
The video on the contrary has a list of its sources, which includes the website
above and other similar websites to establish its credibility. Another way that the video
establishes its credibility is by its author. The author has scientific name like

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AsapSCIENCE and a YouTube channel with other videos that are either scientific
and/or informative to build its credibility as a scientific channel. This therefore builds a
feeling reliability and confidence in the audience just like the website. Unlike the website
though, the video does have a lot of pictures and colors and tries to evoke a variety of
feelings throughout its presentation. For instances, to explain why sleep evolved since
laying unconscious and dormant for hourswhile predators lurk around hardly seems
advantages (AsapSCIENCE, 2013) the picture of a man sleeping while having a snake
on top of him is shown. This is intended to make the audience feel alarmed and scared.
After a few seconds though to make the audience lighten up and maybe even laugh a
predator (from the movie Aliens vs. Predators) appears next to the man sleeping. To
establish logos the video uses drawings to show the step by step of the effects of sleep
deprivation from day one ending to death if a person doesnt get any sleep at all, unlike
the website that describes the effects with texts instead of pictures.
Structure
The website organizes its the information into ten different tabs that have different
information about sleep deficiency, this facilitates the websites purpose by making it
look very well organized making the information both easier to read and find. For
example, if you only want to know what are the symptoms of sleep deprivation then you
would go to the tab that reads Signs & Symptoms. Although this genre has very few
limitations since almost anything can be incorporated into a website like videos, pictures,
and other genres, it does not make full use all the advantages and structures, and as a
result it only uses text.

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Although the genre of a video doesnt have all the advantages that the genre of a
website has, the video does make take advantage of all its structures. Unlike the website
that was organized into ten sections the video was organized into three section sections
the talked about the purpose of sleep, and the effects and past studies of sleep
deprivation. Since the videos structure was short, easy to understand, and to follow it
accomplished its goal to keep its audience undivided attention. In the view of this though
the information in the video was very limited and broad, and was not very specific or
detailed. Contrary to the websites that talked about more topics and went into greater
depth.
Style and Language
The language used in the website is formal to maintain its serious and
professional appearance; some minimal medical and scientific language is also used. For
example, this language was used to describe the physiological process that occur that
signal our body to go to sleep, When it gets dark, your body releases a hormone called
melatonin (mel-ah-TONE-in). Melatonin signals your body that it's time to prepare for
sleep, and it helps you feel drowsy.(HHS, 2012)
Although the language throughout the video is mainly informal it does also use
one or to physiological terms like the website. For example, to describe what happens
when people stop sleeping for twenty-four hours the video explains that the ..lymphatic
system becomes stimulated and dopamine runs rampant this may actually trigger some
extra energy (AsapSCIENCE, 3013)
Conclusion

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This analysis shows that the website is more effective in bringing awareness to
these public health problem. The website is more effective in its purpose because when
researching the effects of conditions people tend to rely on websites that are reliable like
the governmental websites. In these scenarios people try to find information that goes
into depth and is reliable and they dont worry about the time it will take them to read or
know the information. Therefore, they would most likely use the website The Sleep
Deprivation and Deficiency and not the video What if you Stopped Sleeping?, that
although its reliable it most likely wont offer all the information that someone might be
looking for.

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Reference

AsapSCIENCE (2013, September 22). What if you stopped sleeping? Retrieved from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNhDkKAvxFk
U.S. Department of Health & Human Services [HHS] & National Institute of Health
[NIH] (2012, February 22). Sleep deprivation and deficiency. Retrieved from
http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/health-topics/topics/sdd/