Rodriguez 1

Jared Rodriguez

Professor Gardiakos

ENC 1102

18 September 2020

Genre Analysis and Intertextuality Final Draft

What’s the purpose of life if it doesn’t consist of happiness? Happiness, some

might say, is one thing that everyone should prioritize in their lives. It is something that everyone

should strive to have, as it can flip around one’s life, give it purpose, and make it enjoyable. The

academic article, “LIVING WITH CRIME: Does crime affect victims’ perceived quality of

life?” written by Valerie Moller and published in the academic journal of South African Crime

Quarterly shows research that revolves around happiness. The author of the academic article

takes part in quality of life research, specifically taking place in developing countries. Quality of

life research is research on people in developing countries on their happiness levels and the

factors that contribute to the certain happiness level they give. It is very fascinating to see

research on happiness on various people with different backgrounds as you can compare them to

one another.

With this academic article, the author had a goal of spreading the knowledge of

happiness. To be more specific, the meaning behind happiness, all of the factors that play into

making people happy and as well as the benefits that derive from being happy. After reading,

LIVING WITH CRIME: Does crime affect victims’ perceived quality of life? , a new

understanding on happiness can be made. An example of this found in the article is how

something as random as a democratic election can peak satisfaction within the whole entire

South African population. “Results are striking. Citizen satisfaction peaked in 1994 in the month
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after the first open democratic elections. Under apartheid, levels of life satisfaction and

happiness reflected the imposed racial hierarchy of power and privilege with whites mostly

satisfied, blacks mostly dissatisfied, and Indian and colored people falling somewhere in

between.” (Moller 303) This shows that something like politics can cause a whole entire

populations satisfaction levels to increase or decrease depending on their views and what is

occurring in the political world.

It is evident that the article, “LIVING WITH CRIME: Does crime affect victims’

perceived quality of life?” is an academic article because of its layout. An example of the layout

making it an academic article is all of the sources that the article pertains. According to the

sources listed, many of the information and research in this article is done by the author herself,

respectably. With that, the genre of the text is more developed, and the discourse community can

view the article as very reliable as compared to a writing that is about a topic the author is not

involved in. Since she has indulged and experienced in what she is writing about the readers

build a sense of trust with the author. The sources help out the discourse community that

indulges in the reading for multiple reasons. As discussed in James Porter’s “Intertextuality and

the Discourse Community” when sources are included in writings, it adds a sense of credibility

to the reader and gives the reader more of a reason to trust the author as the author has the

information included in the article is being backed up by information that is cited. On top of that,

the scatter plots that are included support the intertextuality and backs up the information that is

being discussed upon is another attribute of this academic article. The first scatter plot that is

used shows the happiness, and the life satisfaction of South Americans over the course of several

years. As stated previously, in 1994, after the first open democratic elections, the happiness and

life satisfaction peaked. This information is valuable to the discourse community as the readers
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information they are taking in doesn’t only consist of the reading and claims, but as well as

scatter plots with accurate information. Also, to add on to the layout that this article has, aside

from paragraphs and scatter plots containing the information, there are also lists of information,

and questions with answers that attribute to making it an academic article. The lists help out with

the information in the text the needs to be more descriptive as compared to other texts. The

question and answer section of the text helps out the readers with gaining more knowledge on the

information in a new approach. This discourse community can benefit from these two attributes

by gaining knowledge in creative and engaging ways aside from the traditional way in

paragraphs. Also, the language and word choice that was used in this article was very

sophisticated and intellectual. While observing the language and word choice, one could

hypothesize that this article is geared toward bright, intelligent individuals looking for a solid

piece of work. No mistakes were seen in the article, which only shows that a lot of time and

dedication was put into the article.

After reading “LIVING WITH CRIME: Does crime affect victims’ perceived quality of

life?” by Valerie Moller many things can be picked up on about the discourse community. Both

of the scatter plots that were used, the lists of information, and the questions and answers all

showed that the audience really valued the trustworthiness and credibility in the article. This

article wasn’t narrow with the information they included, but rather very diverse. This diverse

information educated the discourse community efficiently and made the learning process fun and

engaging for them. Also, the author doing her own research along with the other credible sources

that were included seemed to be of importance to the discourse community as much of the

information that was included was done by the author herself. Lastly, the layout of this academic

article was very easy to follow. The titles were accurate in what the paragraph(s) beneath it were
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about, it all followed a specific order that included an introduction, as well as an outlook on the

whole writing. There was an also scatterplots to have the discourse community visualize the

information that was being talked about, lists of valuable information, as well as questions that

had answers following.

The author of the article used very trustworthy sources that added valuable information to

the writing. Intertextuality is seen almost in every paragraph of this article. That means that a lot

of the information that is seen in this article is not technically original, and it derives from a

previous source. The first source that stood out involved the author of the academic author and

contained information that regarded the first scatter plot that was shown. (Moller, Dickow 1)

This information was very valuable as it helped contribute information that was used in the

scatterplot. Also, this source provided a lot of information on the “rainbow people”. The

rainbow people were a political symbol for their country, and they endorsed unity within another.

The rainbow people were one of the most fascinating parts of the academic journal, and that is

why the author included it in the article. This source backed up what the author, Moller is talking

about in the academic article. What is being discussed in the article is backed up by this source

as Moller used the source as information for the scatter plot on page 303. This source contributes

to the conversation by providing valuable information that was used in the scatter plot. One way

that the author could have utilized this source would be to include more background information

on the rainbow people. In the academic article, it was briefly said who and what they are, but in

the source, there is a lot of valuable information that is talked about.

There is another source that was a key element to the academic article. This source talks

about the quality-of-life studies that were done on various people with different backgrounds.

(Moller 1) What makes this source important along with the first is that the author of the
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academic article wrote this source as well. The author is very involved with her work which

makes it very credible. The quality-of-life studies played an important role because the whole

article basically revolved around it. The whole article is about happiness levels and the factors

that contribute to different levels of happiness. This source is totally on board with what the

author has to say in the academic journal. It basically backs up the quality of life studies and also

talks about the work that they have done and what it took to get the work done. More in depth

information in contributed by this source regarding the quality of life studies that was not

included in the academic article. This source is supportive of the author completely, considering

the fact that the author of the academic article is also the author of this source. What Moller

could have done a little differently when using this source, is to include more of the background

information regarding the quality of life studies as it was very fascinating to indulge in the

source.

This last source is the only source out of the three that the author, Moller did not

contribute to. This source was included because it contains a lot of valuable information on

happiness, quality of life, as well as wellness. This source gave Moller a lot of insight on what

the article is all about. The source talks about what all is needed to contribute to happiness, a

good quality life, and wellness in depth. It also helped her out with the experiments and gave her

information on what to expect because it talks about peoples living conditions and their

happiness just as it does in the academic article. (Michalos 4) The author used this source as back

up when discussing the terms of happiness, a quality life, and wellness, so it is not different from

the author. This source contributes to the conversation by giving more meaning behind the terms

that Moller uses in the academic article. It is very helpful as it clarifies any confusion with the

terms used. Also, the source is very supportive in what Moller has to say in the article as it backs
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up and gives more meaning to the terms that are being used. The author efficiently utilized this

source to its maximum capacity and really couldn’t use the source for any more information than

what was already pulled out of it.

This academic journal revolves around happiness and the factors that influence that.

There are many different factors that can play into an individual’s happiness. Some examples of

this could be if there is crime going on in their area, the political agendas going around, as well

as the quality of life for the individual. The key thing to take from this article is that happiness is

very essential in everyone’s life and that one should strive for happiness, as it makes the quality

of someone’s life so much better. This article educates the readers on what factors are played

into happiness levels and even shows scatterplots of experiments that were done on people in

South America. This experiment resulted in the realization that the happiness levels peaked in

1994, in which was the month after the first open democratic elections.

It is evident that this academic journal is catered toward discourse communities that

consist of highly intelligent individuals who are looking for educational, engaging content that is

trustworthy. Some of the factors that help contribute to this are the scatter plots, the lists of

information, the question and answers, as well as the layout of it all. All of those factors

combined helped the article be a trustworthy piece of information. On top of those factors, the

author, Moller, also included a huge list of sources. After looking at the sources, all of them were

very trustworthy and had reputable people behind the works. What makes this academic journal

very interesting is that the author, Moller, contributed to so many of her sources. This shows that

she was very interested in her work and very engaged with it. This gives the sources she used,

and her article so much more credibility as she was involved in her work. The discourse

community that was targeted in this academic article is politicians, and South American’s who
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want a happier life. Firstly, politicians are targeted as many politics like elections and agendas

going on in South America are being discussed in this article. Also, South Americans who want

to be happier can take so much from this article as this article shows the factors that contribute to

happiness. With that information, they can make a change in their life which hopefully results in

increased happiness.
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Works Cited

Moller, Valerie. “LIVING WITH CRIME: Does Crime Affect Victims’ Perceived Quality of
Life?” South African Crime Quarterly, Mar. 2016. https://www.researchgate.net/pu
blication/301275938_LIVING_WITH_CRIME_Does_crime_affect_victims'_perceived_quality_
of_life

Dickow, H. & V. Møller 2002): South Africa's "Rainbow People"National Pride and Optimism:
A Trend Study. Social Indicators Research 59(2), 175 - 202 . https://link.springer.co
m/article/10.1023/A:1016234504243

Glatzer, W. (ed.) ( 2002) and Poor: Disparities Perceptions, Concomitants , Dordrecht : Kluwer
Academic Publishers. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4020-2903-5_18

Michalos , A. C. (1991): Global Report on Student Well-being. Volume 1: Life Satisfaction and
Happiness, New York: Springer . https://www.oecd.org/site/worldforum06/38303200.pdf