PB2A

            When analyzing a scholarly academic publication, it is important to first ask the question of “What is this article asking?” Once you discover what the article is asking, you can begin to get an idea of what the article will be about.  The publication that I will be analyzing is “The Logic of SETI: 20 years later “Where do we go from here?” The focus of this article is asking the fundamental question “Is there intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, or are we, the denizens of Earth, alone?”  SETI is the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.  SETI has been funded by NASA at points in the 1990s and is a group of people that examine different aspects of the universe and break down the question of whether extraterrestrial life exists elsewhere in the universe.

            In this scholarly publication, it begins with a short quote from a book.  The reason for this is to catch the reader’s attention and make them want to read the article.  It is interesting because it reads “I only wish I had such eyes to be able to see Nobody! And at that distance too!”  and that relates to the discussion of questions relating to the actual question of whether extraterrestrial life exists.  After the quote, it talks about the history of the human interest in the possible existence of extraterrestrial intelligence.  The purpose of doing that is to give the reader an idea of how long the question of ET intelligence existing has been around.  It is attention-grabbing because the article gives examples of ET in pop culture and organizations created because of exactly that question.  For example, the article points out the box-office success of the Star Wars Trilogy and the award-winning series Cosmos. 

            When specifically looking at the structure and layout of the article, is it clearly broken down into different sections.  As I previously mentioned, the beginning is started by giving a background on interest in SETI.  It is then followed by breaking the article down into sub-categories.  For example, sections are broken down into “The Logic of SETI,” “Using the parable, inserting doubt” and “True or false.”  This allows the article to have its ideas structured in a way that is comforting to the reader instead of intimidating and confusing the reader.  The article also has diagrams throughout which appeals to the reader because the reading is accompanied by pictures instead of just having straight writing throughout the entire piece.  For example, the article discusses the classical Aristotelian study of logic using four categorical propositions.  To illustrate those four examples, the author uses the example of all cows being herbivores.  In discussing the nature of logic of that statement, diagrams to the left of the writing express what the writing is saying with color and pictures.  This concept is operationalized by strictly outlining the study of logic and the meaning of it with the help of pictures. 

            A convention that is very specific to scholarly academic publications is the use of citations.  Citations are spread throughout the entire piece.  Citations are used in these publications because the author pulls in a lot of outside information.  The reason for doing so is to incorporate other’s viewpoints and knowledge into his own argument.  Outside knowledge can be anything from opinions to statistics done by other researchers. 

            Regarding the author’s argument, I believe that the author’s argument is the most important aspect of the scholarly piece.  Not always does the author’s argument seem to be an argument exactly, but it may seem to be just the main focus of the article being discussed.  For example, in this academic publication, the main focus (or argument) is that of SETI and the fundamental question of extraterrestrial intelligence existing outside of Earth.  Is is clearly stated to the reader that this is the most important idea of the entire piece.  It was easy to see that because the author used the key word ‘fundamental.’  Knowing that that question is fundamental allows the reader to pick up that the question of extraterrestrial intelligence existing is vital to the piece’s coherence.   

Works Cited

Chauvin, Michael. "The Logic Of SETI: 20 Years Later "Where Do We Go From Here?." Planetarian 44.1 (2015): 18-29. Academic Search Complete. Web. 31 Jan. 2016.  

Thlog #4

TGIF!....Finally it is the weekend but before it actually begins I would like to sit down and write down my thoughts (not busy work this time)!  So, this week has been pretty hectic and a lot has been going on.  From being assigned 3 different math homework assignments to finishing our WP1 to writing for sexinfoonline.com for the SOC152C with the Baldwins.  Writing WP1 and just being in writing 2 with Zack has already been quite an experience.  Zack teaches the class with such passion and I really admire that.  Although it is a required class and most people seem to not love it, Zack definitely makes it better than probably all other writing 2 classes.  The way the class is run really helps to keep us engaged.  For example, the class activity we did Wednesday "murder!" was really interesting.  It allowed us to be creative and work in groups while also incorporating the the material we wanted to learn.  I really enjoy being able to write in 1st-order thinking because I've never truly been able to do that for required work in a class.  I really don't want it to seem like busy work myself because it genuinely is a nice way to just write about what's going on but also relating it back to class.
       Coming into office hours on Wednesday was very nice.  I went in there seriously struggling with my thesis and not knowing what to do with it.  I was getting very frustrated because I just couldn't figure out what to do with it in order to make it a strong thesis statement.  You really helped me on taking a step back and breaking it apart.  I realized that I really need to have a working thesis statement because whatever my paper was written about (even if I didn't have a thesis at that point), that is what my thesis needed t one describing.  Thanks again for that Zach!
     Well, it has been a wild ride so far in winter quarter 2016 but I am looking forward to what has to come and everything in store within this class as well as out of it.  PB2A will be interesting for sure and I look forward to seeing what I can do with it.

Peace out ya'll..

       -R. Kelly

Thlog #3

3 weeks down, 7 to go!  Wow this quarter is already flying by.  We only had a single class this week and we were peer reviewing.  I honestly have never focused so much on peer reviewing my classmates papers before I have this week.  In a lot of the previous writing classes I took, we would basically be given a prompt and it's all up to us to make a draft, revise, and turn in the final draft.  But in our class, we focused on peer reviewing a lot.  The reading "Responding to Other Student's Writing" was very interesting because it taught me that I need to be able to give positive feedback to the writer.  I often criticize much more than giving positive feedback on other's papers so it was nice to be able to help other students and let them know exactly what good writing they are doing.  I also liked the groups we were put into to.  It allowed us to branch out the the other classmates and get to know them a little better; I mean we are a very open class.
As I began to revise my own paper, I realized that I needed to work on my thesis a bit.  I do believe it passes the arguability test because you can put a "no" or "does not" in the thesis.  I am arguing that human interest articles do indeed tell some sort of story or a struggle that is overcome.  With saying that, you can stick in a "human interest articles do not contain some sort of struggle or conquering an obstacle."  I think that I did pretty well for the first writing project.  I really did not enjoy it that much though because I enjoy writing about more personalized papers.  With this, we mostly analyzed our genre and discussed that so I am excited to see what the next writing project has in store for us.

Thlog #2

Hello,

Week 2 of writing 2 and we are already moving along quite quickly.  Two project builders written and now time to write writing project one.  As we discussed in class, we really want to break down and begin to analyze our own writing.  Before starting writing 2, I never really analyzed my writing too much.  I would usually just write papers based on a general structure and format that the teacher would outline for us and it was pretty easy to follow.  With this class, we are going into much more depth than I have before.  I remember going over rhetoric very briefly in high school but never into it that much.  Even when I was taking AP language and composition in high school, I don’t believe rhetoric was ever brought up even though it was an AP course.  Looking back at it now, I think it was kind of ridiculous how little we analyzed the writing we were doing (considering we wrote A LOT for that class).  Honestly, this class is challenging me and my writing ability.  I truly believe that by the end of the course, I will definitely be a better writer and be able to better understand myself and my own writing.  I wont follow my subconscious guideline that has been imprinted into my head my whole life, but I will be able to have a freer form of writing.  Noting that, it allows me to be able to think about and categorize my writing into first and second order thinking.  Like I am doing now, first order thinking gives me the ability to write my thoughts down and truly carry that over into a more structured form of writing – second order thinking.  I sincerely am excited to see myself grow as a writer this quarter, regardless of how tiring all this writing can be.  I hope I am a changed ‘author’ by that time!

-R. Kelly

PB1B

Genre generator websites allow the possibilities of creating a genre in the click of a button.  Whether it is coherent enough to make sense or not, it is still producing the genre in front of our very eyes. 

Furthermore, SCIgen is a prime example of exactly that.  SCIgen is a genre generating website that generates random computer science research papers.  All you have to do is enter in author’s names (which can be anything) and click generate.  After doing so, you find yourself in front of what seems to be exactly what the website tries to do: a scholarly science research paper.  At first glance, I didn’t believe that the paper was a phony because it looked so well put together and even reading a sentence or two seemed very academically inclined.  But when looking closer at the specific conventions of a computer science research paper, I was able to understand why the genre generator was able to have its readers believe that they were indeed scholarly papers.  The conventions that drew me in were the structure, syntax, and semantics.  Every paper was very well structured and included categories such as an abstract, introduction, methodology, etc.  Also, graphs were included which made the paper look cohesive and interactive.  Another important aspect that made it believable was the syntax and semantics.  The wording was very academic and a lot of the time I didn’t even know what half the words meant.  In my experience, although I didn’t know what the words meant, I brushed them off and believed they made sense even if they didn’t to me.  SCIgen is a very good example of how and why a genre generator works. 

Another genre generator is Pandyland, a random comic strip generator.  With comic strips, I believe it is a bit easier to create a genre generator because most people are familiar with comics and what they contain.  With saying that, comics often have the conventions of boxed images, speech bubbles, and corky, satirical humor.  Pandyland also has these conventions which make it a great genre generator.  Saying that, a lot of the time the speech is completely random and not connected, which in my mind kind of makes it funnier because you don’t know what to expect every time you click generate.

Additionally, memegenerator is a very common genre generator in today’s world.  Memes are posted by people all over social media because they are meant to be odd but also wildly hilarious (which most of the time they are).  Memes take popular people, photographs, or cartoons and create captions alongside them.  These captions relate to the facial expressions usually which make them very funny.  A lot of the time on picture or cartoon has hundreds of different captions because the facial emotions of that picture can be relatable to a number of different phrases or circumstances.  The conventions that make up a meme are a photograph or cartoon with a caption or sentence.  Also, a lot of the times they use a play off words.  For example, a meme may be a picture of the guy that does Dos Equis commercials with a caption saying “I don’t always plan to overthrow the government, but when I do, I always bring snacks.”

A genre that I found among the vast interweb was a music genre name generator (http://jbdowse.com/genres).  All you have to do is click the link to the page and a random and fake music genre pops up in the middle of the page.  Some genres contain real musical genres attached to another genre that I have never heard of before.  For example, two genres I came across were “2-step Euroobscuro click-funky” and “e-ambient ragtime-funk.”  As you can see by those genres, this genre generator has conventions of actual genres but also includes random words that could possibly be a genre if you were to think about it.

When you think about what is happening in the websites, you are able to understand and get a better grasp on genre.  When you look closely at the conventions of a genre generating website, you begin to recognize what and how the website is able to do this.  You investigate how that genre becomes that genre.  Piecing together different similarities between different memes or different comic strips allows you to cognize the genre much more thoroughly.