WP2: Analyzing genres across academic pieces and non-academic pieces

Commented [ZD1]: No name, course, or title?

Put

this info, always, in all of your papers!

Today, oil prices fluctuate from two dollars per gallon to four dollars per gallon. Almost
everyone can see how this phenomena shocks people on a day-to-day basis, but few people know
the reasons for the change in oil prices and the results of oil price changes. I found two academic
papers that focus on the oil prices from the UCSB libraryForecasting Crude Oil Price
Movements With Oil-Sensitive Stocks (the Forecasting) and The United States And Iraq: Making
Sense Of The Oil Factor (the Factor). I also found a non-academic piece of news that focuses on oil
prices from the LA Times, Chevron Profit Falls 43% On Falling Oil Prices (the Chevron). These
three works explore the oil prices from different perspectives. While the Forecasting analyzed the
oil price from an economic perspective, the Factor studied the oil price from a political aspect and
the Chevron looked into the oil price from the sight of a news-editor. In other words, the genre of

Commented [ZD2]: Well stated.

the Forecasting is technical-economic paper; the genre of the Factor is academic-politics paper;

the difference between the three main sources youll be

the genre of the Chevron is news. It is important to learn about how all these three articles work

Commented [ZD3]: Generally, its not a

This give me a

clear understanding of what this paper is all about and

analyzing.

commonly-accepted convention to use 2 semicolons in

because Learning about genres and how they function is more important than mastering one

one sentence for this genre.

particular genre. (Dirk 32) Although every genre works in the same way by defining purposes,

Commented [ZD4]: I like how you weaved this quote

finding audiences, and writing in particular rhetoric, one can observe that academic pieces and
non-academic pieces cannot play the roles of each other because they show information to
different audiences in different ways. Academic papers give specific formal explanations of
why things happened to persuade the well-educated professional scholars while the

into the intro.

non-academic papers just show the common people what happened concisely in casual
Commented [ZD5]: Man, this is so close to being a

language.

thesis statement that I absolutely love.

I think the

second part---show the common people what happened

After identifying the genres and disciplines of these three articles, one may wonder:

in casual languagemight not be doing it enough for

me.

what decides the genre? The words you choose for an argument help define its style.(Style,

Is there a way to tie this into answering the so

what? question.

Can you raise the stakes a bit more?

Commented [ZD6]: Cool move here, Chaothe

311) In other words, the rhetorical features and conventions of a paper define the genre of

rhetorical question as a topic sentence.

Its

unorthodox, but it works.

the paper. Because the Forecasting and the Factor are both academic papers, they share
several similarities. For instance, both authors choose fairly formal language. What is more,
there is a big headline of each paragraph and a topic sentence in the beginning of every
paragraph.

Additionally, there is an introduction to each paper. Compared with the

academic papers, the news Chevron is much shorter, claiming the thesis directly without an

Commented [ZD7]: OK, but so what?

important?

Why is this

How does this contribute to your

argument?

introduction before the content, a thesis statement or a title of each paragraph, or even
using specific formal evidence. Furthermore, the author of the Chevron uses less formal
words. To be more specific, formal language means preciseness, while the author of the
Chevron uses many ellipses. For example, the last paragraph of the Chevron is a single
sentence Revenue fell 35 percent to $34.56 billion in the period. Whose revenue fell?
When is the period? Although it is not too hard to find out that this sentence means the
Chevron Companys revenue fell thirty-five percent in the first quarter of this year, the
diction of this sentence is definitely casual.

Commented [ZD8]: Textual support = evidence.

Good!

After finding the rhetorical features of each genre, one would ask why do academic
Commented [ZD9]: Be careful of using always too

papers always sound formal and news always sounds informal? Rhetoric is what allows

often

the best academic writing doesnt

over-generalize.

you to write appropriately for a given situation, one [situation] that is determined by the
Commented [ZD10]: Id advise you to refrain from

expectations of your audience. (Janet 57) The words that a writer chooses are determined

using free-floating quotes (ie, sentences that start and

end with a quote).

by what the audiences expect and the audiences are determined by the purpose of the

is it relevant?

writer.

The reader is probably going to be

left wondering, Who is saying/citing this, and how/why

Wheres it coming from?

Try to

introduce the quote and give it context.

The author of the Forecasting aims to explain a delicately financial-mathematic model

based on the oil-sensitive stocks that can predict the oil price. As a result, his audiences are
well-educated people with knowledge of economics and mathematics who may have a
chance to understand his model or find the mistakes of the deductive process. In order to
persuade the well-educated audience, the author of the Forecasting uses many terms, like
ACWI, AMEX, EM, HAC. Furthermore, he lists a series of complicated mathematic equations
called In-Sample Predictive Regression Models. Additionally, he shows figures of the crude

Commented [ZD11]: I think youre missing an

opportunity to explain the significance/style of these
types of words.

What sets these words apart from any

other words that the authors use?

oil prices, AMEX Oil Index and S&P 500 Index, and tables of the predictability of the crude
oil price and test results, etc. The professional evidence is prepared for his well-educated
audiences because the author believes his audiences are professional as well, requiring
specific and correct statistics to examine his models.

Next, in the Factor, the author intends to illustrate the true reason for the fluctuation of
the oil prices is the politics. The audiences of the Factor are the people who have related

Commented [ZD12]: Nice.

knowledge of history and politics about the war between USA and Iraq. Otherwise, one will
be confused right from the first paragraph that introduces the Iraq oil policies after World
War II to the last paragraph that explains how the oil policies of Iraq in 2004 formed.
However, unlike the financial model based on the data from stocks, politics cannot be
represented by statistics. As a consequence, the author cites many quotes from government
officials like Franklin D. Roosevelt and other significant oil-entrepreneurs to back up his
argument.

Commented [ZD13]: True, but this is a bit casual.

Remember: this paper/assignment needs to be tailored

to an academic audience, which means it needs to be
formal and scholarly.

Lastly, in the news Chevron, the author just gives a simple description about the

nerd-verbs in there.

Make sure to get your

Look at isnt a very formal

choice.

decreasing profit of the Chevron due to the falling oil price, instead of giving specific and
Support or enhance might be better fits.

sourced evidence like the authors do in the Factor and the Forecasting. The reason for this
simplicity is that the purpose of the author is to inform people of some basic information
concisely because most people would not spend time reading news all day. The audiences
of the news only expect to know what happened; they do not care about detailed questions
such as why or how. For example, the news that profits of Chevron fell due to the falling oil
prices would cause people to sell the stocks of the Chevron or to buy a car of Chevron.
People do not expect the reasons behind the news because they expect it to provide concise
information without unnecessary details. News is supposed to be short-and-to-the-point so
people can read it easily while they do other tasks. Therefore, the author of the news

Chevron gives a bold and big headline Chevron profit falls 43% on falling oil prices and
uses very simple and explicit diction in the context.

Comparing the ways in which academic pieces and non-academic pieces work, one can
say that academic pieces are more persuasive because they provide more specific evidence.
However, persuasiveness does not mean effectiveness. Sometimes, people only need
effectiveness when it is unnecessary to know why. For instance, when people read news
Chevron, the big headline Chevron profit falls 43% on falling oil prices has already relayed
the core informationChevron is losing money because of the falling oil prices. It is not
necessary at all for a common person to figure out why Chevron is losing money. Therefore,
the news Chevron seems to work more effectively than the academic pieces do because
people can receive the latest information about the oil prices in a shorter time. In other
words, non-academic news can satisfy the expectation of audiences of news faster.

Commented [ZD14]: Solid textual evidence and

explanation.

Work Cited
Web. 4 May 2015.
<http://web.b.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=bc47182a-5466-4b88-92d5-768e12
70c698@sessionmgr111&vid=32&hid=101google>.

Web. 4 May 2015.

<http://web.a.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=13912ff0-4468-4230-9c6f-5b3a89a
4b070@sessionmgr4002&vid=8&hid=4206>.

Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles Times. Web. 4 May 2015.

<http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-chevron-earns-20150501-story.html>.

Commented [ZD15]: You need to work on this.