1

Tara Giri

Professor Valentina Fahler

Writ 2

26 Apr. 2020

Writing Project 1

Identifying and Comparing

Genre Conventions in
Academic Writing
IDENTIFYING AND COMPARING GENRE CONVENTIONS 2

Cover Letter

Overall, the writing process of this entire project went smoothly at certain times and was

very rough at other times. In order to plan my paper out, I first created an outline. In this outline I

created three tables that were each labeled “evidence,” “organization,” and “voice, word choice,

diction.” These tables were split in half with one article on one side and the other article on the

other side. On each of these sides, I answered many of the questions on the WP1 prompt in order

to visually see the differences and the similarities between the articles. I believe planning it out

this way strengthened the organization in my paper and gave me a boost in the beginning of my

writing process. While organizing my paper was quite easy, I struggled a lot with writing my

thesis. It was difficult for me to think of what exactly was my overall point in this entire paper

and I struggled with writing a thesis that encompassed all of my points and wasn’t a messy

run-on sentence.

I believe the main strengths in my paper are my organization and my usage of evidence

while my weakness is mainly my thesis. As I stated in the previous paragraph, I made an entire

outline for my paper which really aided me in keeping my paper’s main points organized and

tidy. As well as that, I believe I utilize much evidence from the readings as well as my articles

that help to strengthen many of the points that I made throughout the paper. However, I do

believe that my thesis may be lacking. As previously stated, I struggled quite a bit with coming

up with a thesis and while I eventually did create one, I do not believe it is phenomenal. I believe

it could be worded better and I could have dived deeper into how these genres represent the

disciplines.
IDENTIFYING AND COMPARING GENRE CONVENTIONS 3

Although a genre is commonly thought of as a type of book, movie, or other media, it

actually has another definition that is not very widely known. A genre can also be defined as a

specific style of communication that is reoccurring in response to a situation. Different academic

disciplines oftentimes utilize distinct genres because they must serve various purposes. The two

disciplines, biology and archaeology, both take advantage of contrasting genres that contain

many differences and a few similarities. The biological article, “The Diseases of Ancient Egypt,”

by Klaus O. Fritsch et. al. analyzes ancient Egyptian mummies to determine if they had any

orthopedic conditions. The archaeological article, “Linen in Ancient Egypt,” by Dr. Rehab

Mahmoud Ahmed Elsharnouby discusses the ways in which ancient Egyptians crafted linens and

dyes. These two genres reveal that the two disciplines of biology and archaeology differ in the

type of evidence they utilize, the content that is present in their sections that share the same

heading, and the amount of jargon. Discourse communities are very effective for myself as a

reader because they aptly utilize different methods and pieces of evidence to present many

varying aspects of one single subject.

While the biological article presents its evidence through lab tests and CT scans most

likely because that is the type of evidence that is most common to STEM fields, the

archaeological article presents its evidence through paintings because ancient remnants are the

most common type of evidence in archaeology. The orthopedic article’s evidence consists of CT

scans and lab tests of the Egyptian mummies that the researchers were focusing on (Fritsch et.

al., 2015). The CT scans are shown as pictures of the mummies’ bones with arrows pointed to

the specific areas that contain injuries or disease. The researchers most likely chose to utilize this

because it is an advanced type of technology that would provide more accuracy on the effects of
IDENTIFYING AND COMPARING GENRE CONVENTIONS 4

these diseases on the Egyptians’ bones rather than using observation with the naked eye.

Evidence like this also tends to be a genre requirement in the community of biology which is

another reason as to why it was used. As Johns (1997) states, “texts should comply with the

genre requirements of the community…” (p.572). If a biological article does not comply with the

genre requirements of the biological community, then the audience that is reading it may become

confused as to what discipline that article belongs to. The entire focus of the article is then

muddled due to this. The archaeological article differs in many aspects. Rather than CT scans

and lab tests, the researcher’s evidence consists of renditions of the paintings found on ancient

Egyptian walls (Elsharnouby, 2014, p.20-22). These paintings include images of the many steps

that the Egyptians took to craft linen. While archaeology does take advantage of lab tests as

evidence sometimes, this is not the case for this particular article because that type of evidence

does not help to answer the author’s question. There is nothing to test in a lab to determine the

process by which linen is made. This is why the author turned to other sources, which were the

paintings found on walls inside of the structures built by the ancient Egyptians.

The content in some sections of the articles differ because the goals and information that

each discipline wants to convey is quite distinct. The biological article contains an abstract,

methods, results, limitations, and a conclusion. As for the paratexts, there is a publication history

and information about the funding (Fritsch et. al., 2015). The publication history is present so

other orthopedic researchers can understand if the information in the report is outdated. Publicly

presenting who provided the funding for the report to the audience may also indicate how the

article’s research was affected by those organizations. Oftentimes an organization may only

provide funding if the direction taken in the research is to their liking. Similarly, the
IDENTIFYING AND COMPARING GENRE CONVENTIONS 5

archaeological article is also divided into numerous sections. Both of the articles have a section

that summarizes the content of the article although these are labeled differently. While they both

have a conclusion, the biological article uses this section to speculate what the evidence means

for ancient Egyptians and the archaeological article simply restates content from the article

(Elsharnouby, 2014, p.15-16; Fritsch et. al., 2015). The main paratext in this article is a statement

at the end written in Arabic that simply restates much of the information present in the report

(Elsharnouby, 2014, p.19). Thus, this was most likely put in because part of the researcher’s

intended audience may be those who are of middle-eastern descent and so their main language is

Arabic. Each of the pages in the article also have a heading in Arabic which further strengthens

this theory (Elsharnouby, 2014, p.1-22).

The biological article uses more jargon than the archaeological one most likely because it

is aiming towards an audience composed of specialists while the other article is aiming towards a

more general audience. Throughout the biological article, the authors name numerous diseases

and types of bone fractures that are not commonly known by the average person, such as

“glenohumeral joint OA changes,” or “juvenile aseptic necrosis” (Fritsch et. al, 2015). As

Lunsford et. al. (2016) states, this amount of jargon is an indicator of the researchers’ intended

audience which most likely is other orthopedic professionals or biologists in general (p.387). The

use of jargon helps the authors efficiently bring their point across because they do not need to

take the time to explain concepts that are familiar towards their intended audience. As for the

archaeological article, there is very little jargon used. Much of the language present in the report

consists of words that are very widely-known and not used often in one particular discipline

(Elsharnouby, 2014, p.1-22). The author goes so far as to explain many terms to his audience,
IDENTIFYING AND COMPARING GENRE CONVENTIONS 6

such as when he defined “Linum” as “an annual herb with alternating lanceolate leaves along the

entire length of the stem” (Elsharnouby, 2014, p.3). Again, Lunsford et. al. (2016) indicates that

the author likely intended for his paper to be read by a general audience because that type of

audience is unable to understand a paper littered with jargon (p.387).

These two academic communities utilize completely different evidence, ideas, as well as

the number of words associated with that specific field’s terminology. The effect of discourse

communities greatly aided my comprehension of both of these texts because they took very

different directions to explain the same subject: the lives of Ancient Egyptians. The biological

article’s use of CT scans is much more useful for helping the reader understand the bone diseases

possessed by the Ancient Egyptians and the archaeological article’s use of paintings improved

my ability to understand the process of creating linen. These types of evidence were so different

because they are common to the authors’ respective fields. Without those fields, the authors may

have thought to use completely different pieces of evidence which would have made their points

much more difficult for the reader to comprehend. Although many people fail to realize it, genres

are extremely common in our everyday lives. We utilize them to communicate with each other,

to work, and to function overall. Once people begin to learn the lesser-known definition of genre

and start recognizing the genres that they use on a daily basis, they can take advantage of those

genres and use them more effectively to respond to situations.

IDENTIFYING AND COMPARING GENRE CONVENTIONS 7

References

Elsharnouby Ahmed Mahmoud R., (2014). Linen in Ancient Egypt. ​Journal of General Union of

Arab Archaeologists, 15(​ 15), 1-22.

Fritsch K. O., Hamoud H., Allam A. H., Grossmann A., El-Din A. N., Abdel-Maksoud G.,

Soliman M. A., Badr I., Sutherland J. D., Sutherland M. L., Akl M., Finch C. E., Thomas

G. S., Wann L. S., Thompson, R. C. (2015). The Orthopedic Diseases of Ancient Egypt.

Anatomical Record, 298(​ 6), 1036-1046.

https://doi-org.proxy.library.ucsb.edu:9443/10.1002/ar.23136

Johns, A. M. (1997). ​Discourse Communities and Communities of Practice: Membership,

Conflict, and Diversity. ​Cambridge, New York: Cambridge UP.

​ oston, New
Lunsford A. A., Ruszkiewicz J. J., Walters K. (2016). ​Everything’s an Argument. B

York: Bedford/St. Martin’s.