Lydee Striplin

09/02/2020

ENC4404

Short Assignment #1- Deep Genre and Audience Analysis

The introduction to Virus Hunters by Maryn McKenna paints a gloomy picture of a

scientist in rainy Manhattan who knows what’s to come and can’t stop it. Even the illustration

accompanying the article is bleak and instills a sense of hopelessness and terror in the reader. A

legion of bats hang from the ceiling and one, with bloodred eyes, stand out from the rest. The

one outlier is symbolic of the sneaky threat that animal pathogens pose to humans. The subtitle

to the article reads as follows, “Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, scientists were searching for

potential human pathogens in wild animals. They’ve found thousands” (McKenna, p.56). The

subheading seems to suggest that coronavirus is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. It is a far

cry from the millions of articles circulating that attempt to downplay the seriousness of the

disease

It is worth noting that this article is in the featured section of Smithsonian. It is clearly

being prioritized within the issue. The article has clear exigence, it speaks on the global

pandemic we are currently facing in a timely manner, and it is clearly of general interest during

this time. It is also worth noting that the cover story is of scientific nature as well. It has to do

with researcher’s investigations into ape languages. Smithsonian is the official magazine of and
is published by the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C. Typically, their articles cover

anything from art, to culture, to science to history. This issue seemed to be particularly science

focused. Rather than focusing only on coronavirus, the article drew attention to the works of the

scientists mentioned that they were doing prior to the pandemic. They emphasize the importance

of their work and give it a sense of urgency. Only if these scientists continue their work, they

say, will we be able to prevent a pandemic like this from happening again. The article uses easy

to understand language without oversimplifying or distorting statistics or facts. It even includes

an infographic about encountering past infectious diseases to make the info more easily

digestible. The article emphasized the importance of the work of these pathologists so much that

I wondered whether it would help them get research grants. All of the pull-out quotes were

ominous in way that makes readers understand the relevance of disease ecologists work even if

pandemics are uncommon. Throughout the article the idea that the next pandemic could be right

around the corner loomed.

The article ends with a call to action, “We have to be more prepared. We have to

understand this risk better” (McKenna, p.67). The message here is clear; if we don’t fund

programs like Predict, we won’t have the foresight to prevent global pandemics caused by

animal pathogens, as a result lives will be lost and money will be wasted. One excerpt in

particular stands out from Fahnestock’s Accommodating Science, “scientific accommodations are

overwhelmingly epideictic; their main purpose is to celebrate rather than validate. And

furthermore they must usually be explicit in their claims about the value of the scientific

discoveries they pass along” (Fahnestock, p. 279). Virus Hunters certainly celebrates the value of

its scientific discoveries over and over. It is absolutely an accommodation of science, informing
the general public that this work is important and it needs to be done. Its deontological approach

connects the research mentioned in the article to an issue everyone can understand, has

personally affected their lives, and they might be motivated to seek a solution for. However, the

argument here also has teleological appeal because it claims that the research has value because

it leads to preventative benefits for the future. It states that if we focus on these research

methodologies, a pandemic of this scale won’t have to happen again, and our lives won’t have to

be upended once more. This is an issue that needs to be, and can be, accommodated for the

general public because it’s extremely relevant.

The rhetorical situation of this article seems to be the COVID-19 pandemic. Who then, is

the intended audience? The publication assumes that readers know of that current situation but

possibly not the history of this particular sect of research. It seeks to inform readers of the behind

the scenes work these scientists do now and over the course of history. It seeks to assert to

readers that there is important work being done to protect them from this potentially happening

again. That is not to say that it is optimistic. It warns of the dangers of ignoring this research and

it uses an anxiety inducing situations to do so. Throughout the article the author reminds us

again and again of the gravity of the situation. It casts the scientists in a heroic light,

“Throughout the early months of the pandemic,” McKenna writes, “Anthony kept going to

work.”
 Works Cited

Fahnestock, Jeanne. “Accommodating Science: The Rhetorical Life of Scientific Facts.” Written

Communication, vol. 3, no. 3, 1986, pp. 275-96.

McKenna, Maryn. “The Virus Hunters.” Smithsonian, vol. 51, no. 4, Jul/Aug 2020, pp. 56-67.

https://issuu.com/smithsonianmag/docs/julaug2020_-_smithsonian_entire_issue_150dpi