42 thoughts on “Specialized Discourse”

1. ** Please read (and feel free to ref­er­ence) the A-Bib As­sign­ment Page, in­clud­ing the sec­tion Re­search Tips, be­fore post­ing.**

   
   → Re­search Por­tal: CU Li­braries — Find Ar­ti­cles / Browse Data­bases

   
   » Wednes­day 17-Feb Ac­tiv­ity

   — dur­ing class time, post brief com­ment about process & sources (found & seek­ing)
   re­quired as attendance/participation

   * this is a re­search process “sta­tus up­date,” briefly dis­cussing:

   • what you’ve found/read al­ready, specif­i­cally

   • the sources you’re ten­ta­tively us­ing (and why), and/or still need to find

   • your ap­proach — “sub-field”/narrowing; spe­cific topics/areas (In­for­ma­tion, Knowl­edge, Ex­per­tise, Ar­gu­ment, Proof/Evidence); or,
   seek­ing pub­li­ca­tions to show trend or de­vel­op­ments for ex­am­ple (see Re­search Tips)

   • also, if ap­plic­a­ble, any dif­fi­culty or con­cerns about sources.

   
   » class­mate com­ment:
   of­fer feed­back or rec­om­men­da­tions, whether about classmate’s spe­cific re­search strate­gies or ref­er­enc­ing your process/results
   — you might also ad­vise about pro­duc­tive & ef­fi­cient strate­gies of search & browse us­ing par­tic­u­lar li­brary data­bases.
   re­minder: bonus par­tic­i­pa­tion credit for mul­ti­ple replies (2 max.)
    
    

   Reply

   1. I have been us­ing google scholar to search for ar­ti­cles. I am look­ing at po­lit­i­cal eco­nom­i­cal ar­ti­cles. I found one: Rights, Eco­nom­ics, or Fam­ily? Frame Res­o­nance, Po­lit­i­cal Ide­ol­ogy, and the Im­mi­grant Rights Move­ment. This ar­ti­cle de­bates what hu­man rights re­ally mean and whether or not il­le­gal cit­i­zens should have the same hu­man rights. We are all peo­ple right? I do not be­lieve I will use this spe­cific ar­ti­cle, but I aim to find more ar­ti­cles that ask these types of ques­tions.

      Reply

      1. You should make sure that in your search you don’t get too many phi­los­o­phy ar­ti­cles be­cause I think that that ar­ti­cle in spe­cific sounds more like a philo­soph­i­cal ap­proach rather than pol­i­tics. Not that pol­i­tics aren’t framed around ide­olo­gies

         Reply

      2. I think that you should also look at Chi­nook to look for schol­arly articles/sourcs for your as­sign­ment. Within your re­search also try to for­mu­late your dis­ci­pline to help nar­row your re­search on your field of study within phi­los­o­phy. Last re­mark, keep in mind that our main fo­cus for this as­sign­ment is look into how knowl­edge, ex­per­tise, argument/proof, etc. are shown within our own dif­fer­ent ma­jor.

         Reply

      3. I think google scholar is a great data­base for po­lit­i­cal and eco­nomic ar­ti­cles. I feel that cred­i­ble jour­nals and news­pa­pers such as The Wall Street Jour­nal, and cer­tain sec­tions of the New York Times could also serve as valu­able places to find in­for­ma­tion.

         Reply

      4. I agree with Jhead­eaux that it will be im­por­tant to find more po­lit­i­cal ar­ti­cles. If you do choose to use Chi­nook like Kather­ine sug­gested some­times eco­nomic jour­nals be­come po­lit­i­cal be­cause of their ar­gu­ments in how po­lit­i­cal pol­icy ef­fects eco­nom­ics.

         Reply

   2. So far, I’ve found a sig­nif­i­cant amount of chem­i­cal data, his­tory and ap­pli­ca­tion of older ma­te­ri­als. Most of the re­search pa­pers I’ve read/skimmed how­ever out­line a refinement/enhancement of an older tech­nique. Per­son­ally, while in­clud­ing that as a ma­jor area of fo­cus, I’d pre­fer to fo­cus on the ground­break­ing re­search right now, where chemists are ex­plor­ing new ideas and new ap­pli­ca­tions and new ways to do things rather than en­hance the re­fine­ment side of things. I think, as I am a bio­chem­istry ma­jor, I’ll try to nar­row the fo­cus of my as­sign­ment down more to­wards the or­ganic side of chem­istry, which may prove daunt­ing as much of the new re­search is un­der­taken by com­pa­nies that would rather not see pa­pers di­vulge their se­crets.

      Reply

      1. 
         → here’s an ex­am­ple of “trend” in research/publication, like I’ve men­tioned, spe­cific to a dis­ci­pline:
         “to fo­cus on the ground­break­ing re­search right now,” how that is pub­lished.

         Such a fo­cus might be help­ful for each of us, al­though not re­quired; ex­am­in­ing types of ar­ti­cles that have this pur­pose will gen­er­ate more spe­cific in­sights about the rhetor­i­cal & writ­ten con­ven­tions — within the broader “rhetoric of chem­istry writ­ing” scope (our main top­ics).
          

         Reply

   3. I am do­ing the topic of com­mu­ni­ca­tion. For this as­sign­ment i have been search­ing for a good use of ar­ti­cles to help ex­plain to a lay­man the sig­nif­i­cance and im­por­tance of com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Typ­i­cally Chi­nook is my search en­gine of choice due to it be­ing a great re­source for en­rolled CU stu­dent. Two good ar­ti­cles for a start­ing point are Em­brac­ing cul­tural sim­i­lar­i­ties and bridg­ing dif­fer­ences in sup­port­ive com­mu­ni­ca­tion, and An Overview of Speech Acts in Eng­lish. Both of these are great start­ing points for why speech and cul­ture, two every­day things, fac­tor in heav­ily for com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

      Reply

      1. 
         → re: ” to help ex­plain to a lay­man the sig­nif­i­cance and im­por­tance of com­mu­ni­ca­tion.”

         *cru­cial point of clar­i­fi­ca­tion, im­por­tant for every­one even at this early stage: the au­di­ence for project 2 (An­a­lytic Web­text) is peo­ple in the field — ad­vanced un­der­grad­u­ates, early-career pro­fes­sion­als, per­haps grad­u­ate stu­dents… (so, not “lay­man” read­ers)

         The pur­pose of the project is not “to help ex­plain” the dis­ci­pline; rather, we are pre­sent­ing in­sights about con­ven­tions of spe­cial­ized dis­course — how peo­ple think and write in the dis­ci­pline (the rhetoric of com­mu­ni­ca­tion), ev­i­dent in schol­arly writ­ing like re­cent jour­nal ar­ti­cles. These give good glimpse of trends as well as the con­ven­tions, which we’ll ar­tic­u­late af­ter an­a­lyz­ing con­cern­ing our key top­ics.

         » ICYMI: Screen­cast Overview (video)
          

         Reply

   4. I have a Neu­ro­science text­book I am us­ing to show an ex­am­ple of ex­per­tise and in­for­ma­tion in the field that has been com­piled from many years of re­search that has been ac­cepted as truth at the mo­ment in the sci­en­tific com­mu­nity. I have also gath­ered a cou­ple ar­ti­cles from neu­ro­science jour­nals as ex­am­ples of pri­mary sources of ex­per­i­men­tal re­sults which have been peer re­viewed and thus ac­cepted by the sci­en­tific com­mu­nity as valid knowl­edge. In ad­di­tion, I have a few ex­am­ples of pa­pers I have been as­signed to read dur­ing my classes which are pri­mary sources(experiment pub­li­ca­tions), reviews(summaries of many pri­mary ar­ti­cles over a topic), and more in­for­mal “sci­ence daily” style (a web­site which re­leases news in the sci­en­tific com­mu­nity) ar­ti­cles which are sum­maries of the im­por­tant re­sults and con­clu­sions in a less struc­tured form for a more gen­eral au­di­ence. This will give a to­tal rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the types of writ­ing used in the neu­ro­science com­mu­nity. The jour­nal ar­ti­cles can nor­mally be found through google scholar or chi­nook, how­ever I have al­ready been as­signed them from pre­vi­ous classes.

      Reply

      1. 
         — re: “types of writ­ing,” good ap­proach compiling/sorting the gen­res of pub­li­ca­tions:
         “pri­mary sources(experiment pub­li­ca­tions), reviews(summaries of many pri­mary ar­ti­cles over a topic), and more in­for­mal “sci­ence daily” style (a web­site which re­leases news in the sci­en­tific com­mu­nity) ar­ti­cles”

         → for now, for A-Bib, maybe fo­cus on one like “ex­per­i­ment pub­li­ca­tions” to closely ex­am­ine trends in this type of writ­ing — con­ven­tions rhetor­i­cal and writ­ten in neu­ro­science for pub­lish­ing new re­search…?
          

         Reply

2. Through the re­search por­tal, I was able to im­me­di­ately find ar­ti­cles per­tain­ing to “re­al­ity” and the quan­tum realm. Par­tic­u­larly, “Quan­tum weird­ness is re­al­ity” by Ja­cob Aron, pub­lished in New Sci­en­tist (9÷5÷2015), talks about sev­eral key dis­cov­er­ies made through­out the 20^th cen­tury which led to our cur­rent un­der­stand­ing of re­al­ity. My goal here is to uti­lize sev­eral dis­ci­plines to ex­am­ine the ques­tion, “What is re­al­ity?” In ad­di­tion to this source, I have around 200 books in my col­lec­tion and I plan to search a few by physi­cists Brian Greene and Mi­chio Kaku and pos­si­bly some philo­soph­i­cal works by Plato, Aris­to­tle, and oth­ers to find ex­am­i­na­tions of what this is that we are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing. It’s a fas­ci­nat­ing topic that we are ex­am­in­ing through­out the se­mes­ter in one of my other classes called Fic­tion and Re­al­ity.

   Reply

   1. I think that will be re­ally in­ter­est­ing read. It sounds like you have a lot of the­o­rists and ex­per­i­ments to help de­fine what is knowl­edge and ex­per­tise in your field.

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   2. I agree with Jhead­eaux. It does sound like you have pretty great sources to base your topic on, but I think you should nar­row your re­source of 200 books to a cou­ple of sources that will be most rela­vant to your theme of “what is re­al­ity.” I think some of the dif­fi­cul­ties in an­swer­ing this topic will deal with how cred­i­ble your sources will be and pro­vid­ing how we (hu­mans in gen­eral) try to un­der­stand in­for­ma­tion such as what the ex­perts (physi­cians) pro­vide.

      Reply

   3. Cool topic. I just fin­ished a class called His­tory and Phi­los­o­phy of Physics in which we dis­cussed re­al­ity quite a bit. I’ve got a book we used called The­ory and Re­al­ity by Pe­ter Godfrey-Smith that was fairly com­pre­hen­sive that you’re wel­come to bor­row if you’d like. Just let me know in class. Also, it may be use­ful to look at Kant, Hume, and “Model-Dependent Re­al­ism” (Hawk­ing and Mlodi­now).

      I’m afraid it ap­pears you may have con­fused the goal of this unit, though. You say your goal is to “ex­am­ine the ques­tion,” but I be­lieve (and I could be wrong) that we’re sup­posed to an­a­lyze how peo­ple com­mu­ni­cate in our dis­ci­pline, and what con­sti­tutes things like ex­per­tise, proof, and ev­i­dence. For ex­am­ple, you may want to fo­cus on what is con­sid­ered ev­i­dence in this realist/antirealist de­bate, or what the con­ven­tions are of com­mu­ni­cat­ing in this sub-discipline of physics. I think the ar­gu­ments made in this sub-field are typ­i­cally ex­trap­o­la­tions from re­sults of var­i­ous ex­per­i­ments, like the Stern-Gerlach ex­per­i­ment, the Bell In­equal­ity Ex­per­i­ments, or the Schrodinger’s Cat thought ex­per­i­ment.

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      1. 
         → “an­a­lyze how peo­ple com­mu­ni­cate in our dis­ci­pline, and what con­sti­tutes things like ex­per­tise, proof, and ev­i­dence.”

         Right: every­one should fo­cus on their (one) dis­ci­pline, to ex­am­ine and dis­cuss con­ven­tions of scholarly/professional com­mu­ni­ca­tion. “Phi­los­o­phy of Physics” might be a pro­duc­tive ap­proach, al­though still a bit broad; maybe ex­am­ine “sub-discipline,” as Charles notes, or like “schools” or trends — how cer­tain peo­ple seem to compose/argue, “dis­ci­pline rhetoric” so to speak.
         This is a good point of fo­cus for every­one, at this time.

         Reply

3. I will fo­cus on a sub-field of In­ter­na­tional Af­fairs, I’m think­ing of pick­ing a gen­eral topic of nat­ural dis­as­ters be­cause as IA is a dis­ci­pli­nary ma­jor within the Col­lege of Arts and Sci­ences, I can look at this topic through many lenses with what is con­sid­ered to be a form of cred­i­ble re­search com­ing from a place of ex­per­tise.
   I de­cided to stick with schol­arly ar­ti­cles as they eval­u­ate other the­o­rists and ref­er­ence other ar­ti­cles deal­ing with the same top­ics. But also, they take on their own form of re­search ei­ther by dis­cussing a key the­ory, or us­ing the sci­en­tific method. 

   My cur­rent sources are: 

   Us­ing nat­ural dis­as­ters to in­sti­gate rad­i­cal pol­icy changes — the ef­fect of Fukushima nu­clear power plant ac­ci­dent on nu­clear en­ergy poli­cies (2013) — deal­ing with ge­og­ra­phy and po­lit­i­cal sci­ence

   Can In­ter­na­tional norms pro­tect us from nat­ural dis­as­ters? (2014) — in­ter­na­tional law 

   Trac­ing the im­pact of me­dia re­la­tions and tele­vi­sion cov­er­age on U.S. char­i­ta­ble re­lief fundrais­ing: an ap­pli­ca­tion of addenda-setting the­ory across three nat­ural dis­as­ters (2013)

   … etc. these are the few re­cent ones that I have found

   I’m hes­i­tant with look­ing at a broad topic just be­cause In­ter­na­tional Re­la­tions is in­ter­dis­ci­pli­nary and I don’t want to take on too much, this is just what I’ve came up with since our dis­cus­sion in class on Mon­day, I’m not set and stone with any of these ideas yet.

   Reply

   1. This will be fas­ci­nat­ing in­deed! That very first ar­ti­cle you cited, “Us­ing nat­ural dis­as­ters to in­sti­gate…”, pretty much sums up our society’s view on prob­lem solv­ing: Wait un­til a prob­lem is out of con­trol, then try to hap­haz­ardly fix it; i.e no pre­ven­ta­tive mea­sures. Also, the bil­lions of dol­lars that go through “char­i­ties” and the per­cent­ages of that money that ac­tu­ally goes to­ward the “causes” are in­trigu­ing as­pects of dis­as­ter re­lief.

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   2. That sounds like a very in­ter­est­ing topic to read about, and one that could be taken many ways. I per­son­ally think that an analy­sis of the “act now” mind­set that the first ar­ti­cle brings to mind could be a fas­ci­nat­ing dis­cus­sion of the ten­dency for pol­i­cy­mak­ers to take an ac­tion while still ac­cu­mu­lat­ing data (or some­times with­out any data at all) and the consequences/repercussions of such pol­icy ver­sus a pa­tient and well-researched ac­tion taken later than the ini­tial knee-jerk law­mak­ing that is very com­mon in the US and I pre­sume be­yond.

      Reply

   3. 
      Key is­sue about the “in­ter­dis­ci­pli­nary” field, good ap­proach here:
      se­lect­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tive ex­am­ples, the types of writ­ing and per­spec­tives that are in­cluded
      (and, im­plic­itly, what is ex­cluded) — get­ting com­pos­ite por­trait of how peo­ple think and com­mu­ni­cate in In­ter­na­tional Af­fairs, this way.

      Choos­ing a topic or trend in re­search is help­ful to show these per­spec­tives, too
      (not that you need to an­a­lyze the topic it­self; rather, just how each dis­ci­pline views/treats and con­tributes to the Rhetoric of IA Com­mu­ni­ca­tion…)

      Reply

4. From Chi­nook, I looked into what dis­ci­pline I will be fo­cus­ing on for this spe­cific as­sign­ment and I think I will have Ed­u­ca­tion as my dis­ci­pline for my Ma­jor of Com­mu­ni­ca­tion. I think this dis­ci­pline will be most fit­ting to the sub topic/areas we will be look­ing at (In­fo­ma­tion, knowl­edge, ex­per­tise, ar­gu­ment, proof/evidence). With most peo­ple, learn­ing about how to com­mu­ni­cate seems to be use­less as we are peo­ple who in­ter­act through var­i­ous forms of com­mu­ni­ca­tion. The fact I stated above seems to be a com­mon theme that is taken ad­van­tage of when it comes to peo­ple who truly do not un­der­stand the del­i­cate and ver­si­tile way of how com­mu­ni­ca­tion works and how it is un­de­stand. I will also be us­ing a schol­arly ar­ti­cle we are us­ing in one of my classes. The ar­ti­cle is “Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Cul­ture: Is­sues for health and so­cial is­sues” by Deb­o­rah Cameron will be a good source for topic as shows re­search on how com­mu­ni­ca­tion is rel­e­vant, un­der­stood, and made sense to give stu­dents in­for­ma­tion and form some type of knowl­edge to a very spe­cific the­ory such as the article’s fo­cus.

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   1. Your topic seems very in­trigu­ing. I’ve yet to take a comm class, but it’s hard not to no­tice how im­por­tant it is to pay close at­ten­tion to the way you com­mu­ni­cate with oth­ers if you are to yield your de­sired re­sults. Many peo­ple don’t even think twice about this topic, be­liev­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion to be com­mon sense. But I feel there are so many lev­els in how our so­ci­ety com­mu­ni­cates with each other and how his­tory has shaped our modes of com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

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   2. I think ap­ply­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion in re­gards to that in Ed­u­ca­tion is an ex­tremely in­ter­est­ing topic. In every level of ed­u­ca­tion there are dif­fer­ent ways in which com­mu­ni­ca­tion is both suc­cess­ful and un­suc­cess­ful. Re­search­ing how peo­ple com­mu­ni­cate is an ex­tremely vi­tal part of the ed­u­ca­tion process as a whole.

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   3. I too am work­ing with com­mu­ni­ca­tions and this is a re­ally in­ter­est­ing way of ap­proach­ing the sub­ject at hand. It is hard to find a way to ex­plain just how im­por­tant and com­pli­cated com­mu­ni­ca­tion is un­less you study it it and have an ex­pressed in­ter­est in it

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   4. 
      — re: ar­ti­cle men­tioned and the Ed­u­ca­tion (?) fo­cus, not sure how these fit to­gether…?

      Has your re­search so far (new jour­nal ar­ti­cles) looked at Comm Ed­u­ca­tion?

      If that is the topic/focus, then you’ll want to ex­am­ine trends in schol­arly writ­ing (past 2–3 years) about this is­sue. Oth­er­wise, leav­ing out Ed­u­ca­tion and fo­cus­ing in­stead on a sub-field within Com­mu­ni­ca­tion might be more stream­lined for ex­am­in­ing con­ven­tions ev­i­dent in ar­ti­cles
      (how Com­mu­ni­ca­tions pro­fes­sion­als think and write)…

      Reply

5. Since I am fo­cus­ing on my cre­ative writ­ing dis­ci­pline within my Eng­lish ma­jor, there is a lot of room to work with when choos­ing my sources. So far I have been brows­ing through a va­ri­ety of dif­fer­ent types of sources. I have been look­ing on­line for ar­ti­cles from sources like Harper’s Mag­a­zine and New Yorker that might dive into cre­ative writ­ing as a full ca­reer. I’ve also been look­ing for sources con­tain­ing quotes from famous/popular cre­ative writ­ers re­gard­ing sim­i­lar­i­ties or dif­fer­ences in their cre­ative processes. Lastly, I feel it’s nec­es­sary to in­clude parts of fa­mous cre­ative lit­er­ary works, so hope­fully I will end up us­ing quotes from our country’s most pop­u­lar fic­tion nov­els or plays.

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   1. 
      — re: types of sources you men­tion: this is a tricky area, as the dis­ci­pline op­er­ates across aca­d­e­mic, pro­fes­sional, and public/commercial spheres.

      For now, for pur­pose of the as­sign­ment, im­por­tant to start with schol­arly ar­ti­cles about cre­ative writ­ing — vs. “quotes from famous/popular cre­ative writ­ers” (let alone the pri­mary works them­selves, which can/should be omit­ted here).
      We’re try­ing to get glimpse and then ar­tic­u­late in­sights about con­ven­tions of spe­cial­ized dis­course, rhetor­i­cal and writ­ten (how peo­ple in the dis­ci­pline think & write, in­clud­ing types of ar­gu­ments) — and this is cer­tainly seen at level of train­ing (think MFA Pro­grams) and the dis­course around/about cre­ative writ­ing…

      Reply

6. I have de­cided to fo­cus on the topic of “Ex­per­tise” and have found it very use­ful to read ar­ti­cles and PDF files that the CU Li­brary has, as well as in­clud­ing spe­cific ar­ti­cles that my Pro­fes­sors have cho­sen for me to read through­out the se­mes­ter. I have found a com­mon theme of seg­mented re­search within my field of ad­ver­tis­ing and have cho­sen to ex­pand on this topic. I have read over and over again about suc­cess­ful fo­cus groups and ob­ser­va­tion tech­niques that have led to fur­ther un­der­stand­ing of how a cer­tain de­mo­graphic be­haves and re­acts to cer­tain things. I am in­ter­ested to know if there is an ar­ti­cle, PDF I can find that talks about fail­ures within this field. I feel that com­par­ing the two could sur­face in­ter­est­ing thoughts and in­sights.

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   1. 
      — re: re­search ap­proach, ” if there is an ar­ti­cle, PDF I can find that talks about fail­ures within this field”:

      this might be a bit nar­row to start; al­though, look­ing at “re­search within ad­ver­tis­ing” could be pro­duc­tive, choos­ing 3 ar­ti­cles (ul­ti­mately) to dis­cuss our sev­eral top­ics (not just Ex­per­tise).

      Reply

7. I’m sure many of you have heard of the re­cent de­tec­tion of grav­i­ta­tional waves last Thurs­day, it’s a pretty big deal. As a physics ma­jor, it couldn’t have hap­pened at a bet­ter time! I found the ac­tual sci­en­tific ar­ti­cle by LIGO (Laser In­ter­fer­om­e­ter Gravitational-Wave Ob­ser­va­tory) and I plan to use it as my pri­mary source for our up­com­ing work in this unit. It con­tains every de­tail I plan to point out about com­mu­ni­cat­ing in my dis­ci­pline, like who the as­sumed au­di­ence is, use of pic­tures, con­ven­tions, etc. I found two other sources from on­line pub­li­ca­tions that are about the same dis­cov­ery, but they are in­tended to be read by non-physicists, so they pro­vide some other char­ac­ter­is­tics of writ­ing in physics that will be use­ful for me. I ac­tu­ally hap­pen to have just fin­ished mak­ing an in­ter­fer­om­e­ter for my Ad­vanced Lab course, so it seems the uni­verse had a plan for my Project 2 😉

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   1. Sounds like a re­ally in­ter­est­ing project! I’m in­trigued on how dif­fer­ent the com­mu­ni­ca­tion lan­guage and tone dif­fers from an ar­ti­cle meant for the gen­eral pub­lic, who know very lit­tle physics, and an ar­ti­cle meant for other spe­cial­ist in the field. I can imag­ine that the dif­fer­ences are pretty ex­treme con­sid­er­ing all the knowl­edge that physi­cists take for granted and how sim­ple an ar­ti­cle might sound to a physi­cist that is meant for an out­sider. Re­gard­less in your field it is im­por­tant to be able to com­mu­ni­cate in both ways to ed­u­cate the pub­lic as well as mak­ing progress as a field in gen­eral.

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   2. 
      — good dis­tinc­tion of au­di­ence and types of pub­li­ca­tions, as we’ll dis­cuss Fri­day in terms of “dis­course com­mu­ni­ties.”

      Quick re­minder, at this stage need­ing sev­eral jour­nal ar­ti­cles for the A-Bib: these could be trends or types of pub­lish­ing (e.g. re­port­ing new find­ings, propos­ing the­o­ries) in all 3, or dis­tinct types of ar­ti­cles. As you men­tioned ear­lier, we’re ex­am­in­ing con­ven­tions rhetor­i­cal & writ­ten in your dis­ci­pline — schol­arly ar­ti­cles by and for physics professionals/scholars.

      Reply

8. I’m a Strate­gic Com­mu­ni­ca­tion ma­jor with an em­pha­sis in ad­ver­tis­ing and I have two books on build­ing and main­tain­ing a Brand im­age and one on ac­count plan­ning. I have also found eleven other sources from the cu li­brary data­base. A large ma­jor­ity of these sources are mar­ket­ing re­ports with a lot of fac­tual in­for­ma­tion about a cer­tain product/service cat­e­gory and are filled with charts that show the com­pe­ti­tion, mar­ket share, and dif­fer­ent qualities/benefits that dif­fer­ent com­pa­nies bring to the mar­ket. A dif­fer­ent source that I am con­tem­plat­ing in­clud­ing is Ted videos that re­late to mar­ket­ing and/or ad­ver­tis­ing and can be both ed­u­ca­tional and in­spir­ing be­cause the mar­ket­ing in­dus­try re­quires en­ergy and ex­cite­ment to­ward the project your team is work­ing on. Dif­fer­ent cat­e­gories of in­for­ma­tion that I am de­cid­ing on which to fo­cus on are Brand equity/personality,
   Max­i­miz­ing prof­its v so­cial re­spon­si­bil­ity, Know your mar­ket (who, what, when, where, why), Solve prob­lem / Sat­isfy need, and how your cho­sen ca­reer path is what leads to your ex­per­tise through ex­pe­ri­ence in that spe­cific category/industry (ex­per­tise). My top sources right now are 10. Busi­ness In­sights : Global, Mintel aca­d­e­mic, Ad­spender, and The SRDS. I am still search­ing for an ar­ti­cle from some­one that has been through the in­dus­try and demon­strates a typ­i­cal ca­reer path or ideal ca­reer path for my per­sonal in­ter­ests.

   Reply

   1. 
      — sounds like a pro­duc­tive ap­proach and process! As you note about fo­cus­ing on type of pub­li­ca­tion, “these sources are mar­ket­ing re­ports with a lot of fac­tual in­for­ma­tion about a cer­tain product/service cat­e­gory…”
      → if this type of re­port seems too nar­row for our pur­poses, maybe good to in­clude 1–2 other sources like a book chap­ter or a schol­arly jour­nal ar­ti­cle. (not that the sources must be schol­arly only, if they are pro­fes­sional; but the rhetoric of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, con­ven­tions for dis­ci­pli­nary writ­ing, might be more ev­i­dent by con­sid­er­ing books and ar­ti­cles. jour­nals es­pe­cially give good glimpse of field, es­pe­cially trends of re­cent years — in terms of con­tent and com­po­si­tion.)

      Reply

9. Be­cause of my fo­cus on Pub­lic Health, I will be dis­cussing cer­tain epi­demics in the near present, such as the Zika Virus and other rare con­di­tions such as the Al­ice in Won­der­land Syn­drome. I will look into schol­arly sources, such as peer re­viewed jour­nal ar­ti­cles, al­though this may be dif­fi­cult, due to the fact that Zika is a very re­cent out­break. I am still on the search for schol­arly ar­ti­cles for my an­no­tated bib­li­og­ra­phy.

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   1. When it comes to epi­demic dis­eases I am in­ter­ested in how the dis­ease is created/formed, how early and how doc­tors go about find­ing a cure/antibiotic for a fu­ture dis­ease, and the typ­i­cal life cy­cle of one of these dis­eases. With an ever grow­ing in­ter­na­tional econ­omy and a quickly grow­ing world pop­u­la­tion I see this in­dus­try as be­com­ing more and more vi­tal to en­sur­ing a high qual­ity of life/health, which is al­ways in high de­mand and be­cause these dis­eases are al­ways chang­ing it is a very se­cure ca­reer path.

      Reply

   2. In­ter­est­ing topic! I’m cu­ri­ous what con­sti­tutes proof and ev­i­dence in this field, like how one can ar­gue two events are causally con­nected or only cor­re­lated. It’s un­clear to me whether Pub­lic Health is a so­cial sci­ence or a nat­ural sci­ence. Per­haps you could clear that up by ex­am­in­ing the ar­gu­ments, and see­ing whether or not they make use of the sci­en­tific method. I’m also cu­ri­ous if schol­ars in this field work in large teams (like in physics), or if re­search is done at a more in­di­vid­ual level.

      Reply

   3. 
      → key clar­i­fi­ca­tion, im­por­tant re­minder at this time:
      al­though choos­ing a topic is up to you, it’s in­ci­den­tal to our purpose/objective of rhetor­i­cal analy­sis (we’re not com­pos­ing a re­port “on” the topic, re­mem­ber).

      So, you might ad­just your fo­cus slightly, con­sid­er­ing scholarly/professional pub­li­ca­tions con­cern­ing epi­demics (if you choose) and us­ing 3 ar­ti­cles (min­i­mum) for our pur­pose: rec­og­niz­ing the con­ven­tions of Pub­lic Health dis­ci­pline, rhetor­i­cal and writ­ten, for in­sights about our main top­ics.

      As we’ll dis­cuss Fri­day in terms of “dis­course com­mu­ni­ties,” Kirby and Charles re­spec­tively iden­tify dis­tinct rhetor­i­cal sit­u­a­tions by pro­fes­sion­als in this dis­ci­pline: jour­nal ar­ti­cles demon­strate spe­cial­ized com­mu­ni­ca­tion within/among the field; while other pub­li­ca­tions com­posed to/for pub­lic read­ers might not demon­strate the spe­cial­ized con­ven­tions quite so clearly.
      This is a great ex­am­ple of an an­gle for all of us to con­sider, as “Rhetorics of Pub­lic Health” vary dis­tinctly by audience-focused pub­li­ca­tions and com­pos­ing — per­haps a key point to con­sider for ap­proach, but prob­a­bly not nec­es­sar­ily at this early stage.

      Reply

10. Im am fo­cus­ing on the topic of eco­nomic growth within my eco­nom­ics ma­jor. There many fac­tors that go into cal­cu­lat­ing and an­a­lyz­ing growth, so the sources are every­where. The stock mar­ket is a great source but not a spe­cific ar­ti­cle or opin­ion. Where I would go with this is thought­ful ar­ti­cles from The Wall Street Jour­nal as many of these are writ­ten by econ­o­mists. My main fo­cus how­ever will be to track down schol­arly jour­nals that per­tain to this field of eco­nom­ics. When an­a­lyz­ing these jour­nals it will be im­por­tant to note that many econ­o­mists dis­agree on why an econ­omy is grow­ing (or not) and if it will grow (or not). This is be­cause gov­ern­ment pol­icy has a no­tice­able im­pact on when and by how much an econ­omy changes. Know­ing the po­lit­i­cal stance of an au­thor will be im­por­tant. The­o­ries on eco­nomic growth are al­ways chang­ing so my of the jour­nals may be ad­jur­ing each other.

    Reply

11. 
    (F 2/19 Dis­cus­sion)
    » Links about “dis­course com­mu­nity” framework/perspective:

    Wikipedia page

    Wikipedia: Aca­d­e­mic Writ­ing — Dis­course Com­mu­nity

    “What is a dis­course com­mu­nity?” @ UCF page

    De­f­i­n­i­tion: “Dis­course Com­mu­nity” @ Pur­due page

    Is­sue Brief: Dis­course Com­mu­ni­ties @ NCTE

    “Re­search­ing Dis­course” @ U.Cincy Li­braries

    
    Slideshare
     

    Reply

12. Cur­rently still de­cid­ing which ar­ti­cle I want to fo­cus on for my rhetor­i­cal analy­sis. I am lean­ing to­wards an ar­ti­cle that tries to ex­plain the dif­fi­cult process of teach­ing cre­ative writ­ing which ex­plores whether or not it can truly be taught. If I was to choose this source, I would fo­cus pri­mar­ily on the author’s ar­gu­ment that cre­ative writ­ing ac­tu­ally can­not be fully taught, but rather “en­cour­aged”, and the way in which he presents the points of said ar­gu­ment. He presents his ar­gu­ment al­most as if it were fact, and I want to delve into the ef­fects that are cre­ated by ap­proach­ing his ar­ti­cle in this man­ner.

    Reply