Genre Analysis

Amanda Cintron
The Dawn Gurus

Background
Genre analysis has been a topic of much discussion among
scholars in the English discourse community. The common, everyday
definition of genre is that of a simple classification of texts. Amy
Devitt, an associate professor at the University of Kansas and director
of freshman-sophomore English, invites us to think about genre in a
new way. In her newly defined concept of genre, the writing process
isnt separated from the text itself. Genre is both the product and the
process that creates it (580). Process and content are one. This
means that through genre analysis we can determine whether a genre
set is meeting its goals. We can do so by learning about the writing
process, the audience, and the reason for certain features of the text.
Something important to look at is the recurring situation that drove the
genre to be created.
Genre set:
Double-Blind, Placebo Controlled Clinical Trial
(Medical Journal Article)
One of the definitions Devitt provides of genre is a dynamic
response to and construction of recurring situation, one that changes
historically and in different social groups, that adapts and grows as the
social context changes (580). The recurring situation of conducting
research and presenting methods, results, and interpretations give rise
to the genre set of scientific journal articles. Medical journals are a type
of scientific journal that publish articles relevant to the medical
community. There are many types of medical journals and they publish
many different types of studies. However, while browsing for medical
studies, I learned from my dad, a physician, that the most important
were the double-blind, placebo- controlled studies. It is one of many
different types of studies in the medical discourse but according to the
NYU Medical Center website, they are the most trustworthy source of
information on whether a medical therapy really works.

There are several reasons why these types of studies are considered
the most trustworthy. The NYU Medical Center website provides several
factors that might give misleading results and then explains how the
double-blind, placebo-controlled study design solves these potential
problems:

Observer bias
o Researchers tend to observe what they expect to observe.
By not knowing who belongs to the treated group and who
belongs to the placebo group, the observations are more
valid.
Rosenthal effect
o Observers expectations can influence patients behaviors
by behaving how they are expected to
Reinterpretation Effect
o Patients want to please physician and say what they think
they want to hear. Reinterpret their experience by stressing
improvements and downplaying problems.
Placebo Effect
o If you think you are being treated and you will improve,
you do improve through the power of the mind. The power
of suggestion actually improves your health.
Memory Distortion
o People remember either great successes or horrible failures
Cognitive Dissonance
o You believe that what you are doing really works.
Natural Course of the Disease: Illusion of Agency
o Diseases run its course and improve on their own
Study Effect
o People being studied feel motivated to take better care of
their health
Study Dropout
o Participants with bad results tend to drop out, leaving only
the people with good results in study and being biased to
positive results.

By being double-blind, placebo-controlled trials, they have more

credibility because they eliminate many of the factors that might give
misleading results.
Goals of Journals:
The three different journal articles I chose were studying the
effects of different drugs.

 The Lancet:
The lancet belongs to a family of medical journals with different
specialties:
The Lancet, The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology, The Lancet
Infectious Diseases, The Lancet Neurology, The Lancet Oncology, The
Lancet Psychiatry or The Lancet Respiratory Medicine
They stated in their website that they publish high-quality clinical
trials, they strive to be innovative in the medical practices and they try
to cover research and analysis from all over the world. Their intended
audience is health professionals and students: Whether clinical
specialist or student doctor, all health professionals will find something
at The Lancet online medical journals of interest to them.
They only publish clinical trials.
Neurology
This journal is specific to diseases and conditions pertaining to
the nervous system.
As stated by its website, The journal's purpose is to advance the field
by presenting new basic and clinical research with emphasis on
knowledge that will influence the way neurology is practiced.
Intended audience are neurologists, people that are concerned with
conditions of the nervous system, and students. Not all medical
journals do so, but this journal presents only research too.
JAMA Journal of the American Medical Association
(Arch Intern Medicine)
This journals website stated several objectives:
Its key objective is to to promote the science and art of medicine and
the betterment of the public health.
Critical Objectives
1. To maintain the highest standards of editorial integrity
independent of any special interests
2. To publish original, important, valid, peer-reviewed articles on a
diverse range of medical topics
3. To foster responsible and balanced debate on important issues
that affect medicine, health, health care, and health policy
4. To provide physicians with continuing education in basic and
clinical science to support informed clinical decisions and
ongoing career development
5. To enable physicians to remain informed in multiple areas of
medicine, including developments in fields other than their own
6. To improve health and health care internationally by elevating
the quality of medical care, disease prevention, and research

7. To inform readers about the various aspects of medicine and

public health, including the political, philosophic, ethical, legal,
environmental, economic, historical, and cultural
8. To recognize that, in addition to these specific objectives, JAMA
has a social responsibility to improve the total human condition
and to promote the integrity of science
9. To achieve the highest level of ethical medical journalism and to
produce a publication that is timely, credible, and enjoyable to
read
10.
To use technologies to drive innovation and improve the
communication of journal content
This journal differs in that they publish articles pertaining to the
medical field, but unlike the first two journals, it does not solely publish
research. They have a broader range of topics but still share similar
goals.
All of these journals have in common the goal of contributing findings
and knowledge to the discourse community. They publish clinical
studies of medical therapy and aim to provide readers with findings
they consider original and important. Even though they might be
different fields they want to improve public health and strive for
innovation.
Accessibility:
Some medical journals are free. Others, like these, are not. From
their mission statements and objectives we can see that they are
directed towards healthcare professionals as well as students. Even if
they would not have stated it in their websites, one could assume that
they are targeted to health professionals and students because some
level of knowledge of medical terminology is needed to understand the
articles. The Lancet wrote on their website as a tip for people who were
submitting writings:
Whatever you have written, remember that it is the general
reader whom you are trying to reach. One way to find out if you
have succeeded is to show your draft to colleagues in other
specialties. If they do not understand, neither, very probably,
will The Lancet's staff or readers.
This means it is for intended for people that are familiar with
terminology and common medical knowledge, but dont have to
necessarily be specialists in the topic. That is why students are
included with the healthcare professionals.

Limitations
In addition to the barrier of medical literacy there are factors that
affect who can access these texts. By making them online in addition
to print, they are accessible to more people and cited often than if they
were only in print. However, these people are restricted to generally
students or people in the medical field because they would have the
resources that give them access to these databases. Since the goal is
to connect researches all over the world and strive for public health,
some of these journals give free access to developing countries. For
example, The Lancets website states that access to their journals are
free or very low cost to developing countries as defined by the UNDP
Human Development Index, via the recognition of geographical-based
IP addresses (Geo-IP). Even though, they might be free in developing
countries, to gain benefit people would have to have Internet access
and speak English.

Who participates
As previously stated, the medical journals have a target
audience of people familiar with medical subjects: physicians,
students, healthcare workers, etc. Sometimes the terminology used in
methods, study design or statistical analysis are difficult to understand
if you are not familiar with the subject. Vision Learning, an educational
website, gives an explanation as for why this language is needed in
scientific journals: An explicit, technical description of materials and
methods provides a means for other scientists to evaluate the quality
of the data presented and can often provide insight to scientists on
how to replicate or extend the research described. It would be very
hard to write a journal article that has scientific validity while using
everyday language for the general reader.
An even more specific audience would apply to the double-blind,
placebo-controlled clinical trial findings of medical therapy since they
would be hard to understand without an education in science and/or
medicine. However, before the researches write to the readers of the
journals, they address their writings to a peer-review board. They
make sure that the study is ethical, relevant, original, and accurate.
Each journal also probably has its own set of requirements to be
published.
Journals and peer review processes have the power and
determine who has access to the medical discourse community and
who contributes to it. Genres, as perceived and used by individuals,
become part of their regularized social relations, communicative
landscape, and cognitive organization (Bawarshi 552). This genre set
establishes the roles of the members of the discourse communities.

The peer reviewers must approve what they publish and they decide
who gets to contribute. If someone wants to be published and
participate in that genre set then they are required to meet the criteria
and goals of the journal as well. Some people may want to publish
articles with goals in mind that are different from the journal (such as
credibility or experience), but they all want to become a member of
that discourse community.
Just as genres construct situations and situations construct
genres, discourse may construct communities and communities
construct discourse. Thus rather than looking at human
membership to define community, perhaps discourse
membershipsthat is, genre setscan better define the nature
and constitution of a discourse community, just as the
community better defines the nature of the discourse (Devitt
582).
By having certain requirements to participate in this genre set, it
defines the community. To become a member of the medical discourse
community one generally has to have medical knowledge and
credibility, which is shown with credentials and high quality research
findings. In this way, this genre set creates a discourse community,
where to be a member you must have certain qualifications.
By identifying the goals and audiences, we can answer questions
about the texts, such as why the content is presented a certain way,
how is the text written and revised, or why a specific tone is chosen.
Some of the longstanding (and often unspoken) questions about
writing processes can be addressed through considering genres role
(Devitt 581). Genre analysis will help provide explanations on how
certain textual features can help meet the text meet its goal.
Features in articles:
There are certain features and a general structure that science
journals have. Peer review is not just for sciences journals but it is a
feature that they all share. It keeps their content up to their standards.
They wouldnt want to publish something that didnt help them achieve
their goals or would ruin their credibility. That is why they go through
extra measures to make sure that what they publish is accurate.
A main characteristic of modern day scientific journal articles is
the impersonal, objective language. This is used to avoid sounding
biased, which takes away validity. The highly structured genre set of
scientific journal articles attempt to be impersonal, not appealing to
the emotions, and focusing on only the results. Another feature that

the scientific journal articles have is that the authors are listed right
under the larger title, and they are listed in order of who contributed
the most. Since many of these studies involve many people, they
usually order the names in this fashion to know who deserves the most
credit. For medical journals, all or most of the authors are MDs.
Sometimes the authors are with a group and they are listed next to the
names. For example, the article from The Lancet list the authors and
on behalf of the MATCH investigators. The smoking cessation study
list the authors and for the General Practice Tobacco Cessation
Investigators Group. This is important because it acknowledges
affiliations and sponsors. Also, sometimes those groups are so big that
there are too many people to list under the title and they are listed
later on in the appendix.
Another important part is the abstract. The abstract for The
Lancet is labeled as Summary and is divided into Background,
Methods, Findings, and Interpretation. They each contain a 3-5 line
summary of the pertinent section. The abstract from Neurology is
labeled as Article abstract and is divided by a line from the rest of the
text. The different parts listed in the first abstract are not divided and
labeled but are all there as one paragraph. The article from Arch Intern
Med is similar to the first one in that it is divided in sections. They are
labeled Background, Methods, Results, and Conclusion. This abstract
wasnt labeled as abstract or summary either. The main function of the
abstract is to give the reader a small but complete summary of the
trial and findings. Since the articles are so long and there are so many
journal articles that exist, this provides an efficient way to skim over
different articles to see if there is something you are interested in or is
relevant to you. Also if people want to be read the articles just to stay
updated on recent findings, this would provide a highlight of the main
points without spending so much time in the complicated details.
The Materials and Methods section is separated from the
Results and the Discussions/Conclusions. The description of the
methodology is important because other people can see exactly what
the researchers did and would be able to conduct their own takes on
the experiments if they desired. It shows exactly how they got their
results and shows that it wasnt made up data. The description of the
process is very important especially in these kinds of clinical trials
because the methods used (double-blind, placebo-controlled) are what
make these studies so trustworthy. Results are separated from the
Conclusion/Discussions because the results are just data and the
discussion is what they interpret of it. It is important that the objective
and subjective is separated and people can interpret the results the
way they see best and choose whether or not to take the same
interpretation. The results usually have visual representations of the

data such as graphs and charts. The discussions/results is where the

researches apply their previous knowledge and experience.
Scientific journal articles tend to contain many references. The
ones I chose had from 15-33 references. In contrast to MLA, it is listed
in numbers, and by order that they are referenced to. This is done so
people can follow your line of thinking and can find where you got
every idea stated. Authors can also show that they have done research
on the subject and establish credibility. Since science is very focused
on innovation and credibility, and people want to show original
findings, they have to be very careful to always give credit to every
single idea that is not yours. This is important because you can
determine whether the information cited is current or up to date or if
the authors are biased.
Double-blind, placebo-controlled studies also contain features
specific to them. First of all, since these are the most trusted studies,
they are always labeled as such at the top, with the title. This
immediately gives the article more validity than one without that label.
Other things particular to these studies is a section with the
profiles of the tested subjects in the study. This is very important
because this is how you demonstrate the different risk factors in the
subjects, that it was randomized and there are no factors favoring an
outcome. Double-Blind, Placebo-controlled studies also contain
different sections in which the outcomes are measured statistically.
These features include: primary and secondary outcome measure,
evaluations of statistical significance and statistical power.
These features give a mathematical analysis to the results so if a claim
is made, it is as objective as possible.
Evolution of Scientific Writings
Even though today we use very structured genre set to describe
scientific findings, that has not always been the case.
The following is a scientific writing by Isaac Newton:
I shall without further ceremony acquaint you, that in the
beginning of the Year 1666...I procured me a Triangular glassPrisme, to try therewith the celebrated Phenomena of Colours.
And in order thereto having darkened my chamber, and made a
small hole in my window-shuts, to let in a convenient quantity of
the Suns light, I placed my Prisme at his entrance, that it might
be thereby refracted to the opposite wall. It was at first a very
pleasing divertissement, to view the vivid and intense colours
produced thereby; but after a while applying my self to consider

them more circumspectly, I became surprised to see them in an

oblong form; which, according to the received laws of Refraction,
I expected should have been circular. (Newton, 1672)
One of the definitions Devitt provides of genre is a dynamic
response to and construction of recurring situation, one that changes
historically and in different social groups, that adapts and grows as
the social context changes (580). The way that research and findings
are presented have changed as time has progressed. We have learned
the most efficient and effective way to present and organize this
content. Early scientific writings like these contained all the sections
and content that modern day journal articles contain but in different
writing styles. This narrative-like description of his findings are very
relative and opinion based. He uses the phrases small hole, pleasing
divertissement, vivid colors. He also uses the word I a lot and describes
what he felt. This looks very different to a present day journal article
and perhaps would not considered valid today because it does not
meet the criteria we have been taught that gives the research validity.
Genres embed and enact a groups purposes, values, and
assumptions, they can illuminate a communitys discursive behaviors
(Reiff 553). We can see how the genre set of scientific journal articles
manifest the values of the discourse communities that use these genre
sets. Objectiveness, impersonal tone, results separated from
conclusion, methods to assure accuracy, abstract for efficiency, etc.
What we value today is not here. It had validity before because it was
one of the first scientific writings of its kind. Back then it might not
have been a problem, but today there are too many publications to
keep track of without and abstract and the organization we have today.
This also demonstrates the concept that Devitt explains about
how genre creates discourse and rhetorical situation , not just the
other way around. The scientific journal article and the double-blind,
placebo-controlled trial findings provide a template. It also provides a
way for communication among the medical discourse community. It
paves the way for future discourse. Through this genre set, more
research arises because people build on the past texts. Past studies are
used as a base for new experiments and this can only be accomplished
through genre sets.

References:

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3. "Why Does This Database Depend on Double-blind Studies." NYU
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