28 thoughts on “Composing Analytic Webtext”

1. W 09-Mar hy­brid work

   Dis­cuss draft­ing Project Sec­tions (web­text pages, from your out­line) — dur­ing class time:
   1. Post (due 12pm, 2 sen­tences): “sta­tus up­date”
   — about which section/topics you’re draft­ing first; what topics/issues you’ve grouped to­gether (con­sid­er­ing au­di­ence & pur­pose); any key categories/issues still un­cer­tain about in­clud­ing or dis­cussing; and/or what is seem­ing like an over­all theme or idea at this time, to dis­cuss through­out (e.g. in­for­ma­tion, knowl­edge), in terms of dis­ci­pli­nary con­ven­tions of spe­cial­ized dis­course (“rhetoric of [dis­ci­pline]”).
   Fi­nally, you might also in­clude (op­tion­ally) any spe­cific ques­tions or con­cerns, to cover in Friday’s work­shop.

   
   2. class­mate re­ply (due 1pm, 1–2 sen­tences): pro­vide any feed­back about or­ga­ni­za­tion of top­ics, con­sid­er­ing au­di­ence & pur­pose of project; per­haps of­fer sug­ges­tions, even if just referencing/explaining your de­ci­sions for arrange­ment (sec­tions = mul­ti­ple top­ics, for web pages). You might also iden­tify help­ful re­sources you’ve con­sulted, like Pur­due OWL or the Notes/Outline Guide (Google Doc).
    
   » note: in both post & re­ply, be sure to dis­cuss rhetor­i­cal & com­pos­ing strate­gies for draft — espe­cially sections/topics (with ratio­nale) and address­ing imag­ined audi­ence (read­ers in the dis­ci­pline). etc.
    
   

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   1. 
      » (work­sheet) Notes to­ward Out­line G.Doc
      

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2. As I have be­gan some draft­ing I’m still find­ing it hard to sep­a­rate some of the top­ics, as much of them are hard to ad­dress with­out men­tion­ing an­other; which make it a lit­tle hard be­cause we are sup­posed to be pre­cise in this project. 

   so far I have these ten­ta­tive cat­e­gories for my web­page
   1. In­for­ma­tion and knowl­edge
   2. com­mu­ni­ca­tion con­ven­tions and dis­course com­mu­nity
   3. ar­gu­ment and re­search

   I have cho­sen to group these top­ics be­cause my ar­ti­cles each have dif­fer­ent el­e­ments of both, and I think it is in­ter­est­ing to look at my dis­ci­pline in that way. Now that we have taken a step back to look at our dis­ci­pline the cat­e­go­rize that I have cho­sen stick out to me the more that I’m do­ing my read­ings for my other classes in my ma­jor.

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   1. I com­pletely agree with the idea that it is re­ally dif­fi­cult to dif­fer­en­ti­ate dif­fer­ent top­ics, but I feel like your top­ics are well put to­gether such as when look­ing into ar­gu­ment, you are more of­ten than not need­ing to look into re­search.

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3. From my out­line my topic group­ings are:

   1. Argument-Evidence/Proof & Re­search [Most im­por­tant as­pect of pro­fes­sional writ­ing in my field of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions]
   2. Information-Knowledge & Dis­course com­mu­nity [Com­mon ba­sis of how pro­fes­sional writ­ing is pro­posed]
   3. Expertise-Communication con­ven­tion & val­ues stated or implicit/demonstrated [An­other val­ued as­pect that sup­ports pro­fes­sional writ­ing in my field]

   My out­line is set. I just need to start writ­ing my draft within the next two days.

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   1. I re­ally like that sec­ond group­ing and the di­rec­tion your go­ing with it. dis­course com­mu­ni­ties as­sume a cer­tain de­gree of knowl­edge in their read­ers and that af­fects what in­for­ma­tion they share and how they share it.

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   2. I think these are phe­nom­e­nal cat­e­gories as i too am do­ing Com­mu­ni­ca­tions as my field of study. More than the cat­e­gories i just like the names cho­sen, i was strug­gling to find ways to cat­e­go­rize these so broadly and you did just that with ease. Good luck on draft­ing!

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   3. I grouped the same top­ics to­gether but in a slightly dif­fer­ent way. The hard­est part was fig­ur­ing out what leads to what.

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4. Sta­tus up­date: I’ve de­cided to use these top­ics
   1. Au­thor, Au­di­ence, and Dis­course Com­mu­nity
   2. Im­plicit and Ex­plicit Be­hav­ior and Pub­li­ca­tion
   3. In­for­ma­tion, Ev­i­dence, Knowl­edge, and Ex­per­tise
   I feel as if there group to­gether very well be­cause they al­most fall into a domino ef­fect, es­pe­cially in num­ber three where I feel like in­for­ma­tion leads to ev­i­dence which leads to knowl­edge, which ul­ti­mately leads to ex­per­tise

   I’ve just started to put to­gether the out­line, and the only think I’m a lit­tle lost on is the for­mat in which this is present–the dif­fer­ent web­pages, and such

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   1. Your group­ing seem in­ter­est­ing mainly be­cause it is com­pletely dif­fer­ent than mine. What is your field? I just ask be­cause you in­clude pub­li­ca­tion in your group­ings, and that is not so rel­e­vant in mine.

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      1. My field is pub­lic health so I men­tion pub­li­ca­tion be­cause I feel like it is im­por­tant in this field to pub­lish things as soon as they hap­pen in or­der for so­ci­ety to progress in medicine–developing cures, find­ing out what hap­pen in an ill­ness, etc

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   2. I agree with you in that I am con­fused as to the ac­tual lay­out of the as­sign­ment. From what I gather, we are not sup­posed to be pre­sent­ing this in an es­say form, but rather like a web­site where vis­i­tors have the op­por­tu­nity to jump to ex­actly which parts of our texts they want to read.

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5. I have be­gun work on two of the top­ics I will be group­ing to­gether. I have found that for my spe­cific dis­ci­pline, group­ing to­gether ex­per­tise and in­for­ma­tion makes the most sense. I have also found that dis­course com­mu­nity, is able to creep its way into al­most all the other sec­tions. There­fore I will fo­cus on a spe­cific topic/s for every web­page and if needed, in­clude the dis­course com­mu­nity to fur­ther ex­plain my in­sight. I am work­ing on fo­cus­ing my thoughts rhetor­i­cally rather than sum­ma­riz­ing the in­for­ma­tion that I have.

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6. Thus far, I have an idea to weave 7 of the con­cepts from the out­line to­gether. Through re­search, ev­i­dence is gath­ered and be­comes cat­e­go­rized as sets of in­for­ma­tion. Ar­gu­ments are then de­vel­oped to ex­plain im­pli­ca­tions and pos­si­ble out­comes of the in­for­ma­tion. As ar­gu­ments are re­fined through fur­ther re­search, a knowl­edge base is formed that over time is shared within groups of like-minded and comparably-experienced peo­ple in dis­course com­mu­ni­ties, such as the Amer­i­can Phys­i­cal So­ci­ety (APS), who con­duct that fur­ther re­search, ei­ther con­firm­ing or dis­miss­ing the ar­gu­ments, bol­ster­ing the knowl­edge base in any case.

   Of course, if I fin­ish this and it’s ab­surdly long, I will cut out some sec­tions.

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   1. Also, the 7^th cat­e­gory that this suc­ces­sion leads to is, of course, ex­per­tise within the dis­course com­mu­ni­ties. Ex­per­tise in prac­ti­cally every sci­en­tific field is sim­ply a way of think­ing that fol­lows a proven method: the sci­en­tific method.

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   2. That’s some good stuff! Do you mind if I just copy and paste your post? 😉 Now that I’ve read this I wish I had con­sid­ered or­ga­niz­ing my page in this way. It’s log­i­cal and chrono­log­i­cal. I like it. It seems that you’ve de­cided the value implicit/explicit is some­thing you won’t dis­cuss. Per­haps you could fit it into your time­line some­where.

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   3. I like the struc­ture and thought of or­ga­ni­za­tion in your ” weav­ing” of seven con­cepts. I be­lieve it will re­sult in a flu­ent valu­able web text.

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7. My out­line:

   re­search & ev­i­dence:
   –spe­cific ev­i­dence in­tended to be ap­plied to cur­rent project/campaign
   –un­bi­ased re­search and neu­tral­ity

   in­for­ma­tion & ar­gu­ment
   –or­ga­ni­za­tion of ar­ti­cles
   –types of data

   ex­per­tise & knowl­edge
   –ex­pe­ri­ence amounts to ex­per­tise, to be an ex­pert you need a spe­cial skill
   –bal­anc­ing re­search with cre­ativ­ity and com­mon sense

   dis­course com­mu­ni­ties.
   –in­sti­tu­tions
   –work­ing to­gether as a field to make progress
   –work­ing with other pro­fes­sion­als in a team (pos­si­bly from dif­fer­ent companies/clients) copy­writer, cre­ative, client, pr, de­sign­ers

   I am find­ing good ev­i­dence for these points and go­ing to start draft­ing shortly.

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   1. I like that you are us­ing four group­ings, so far I am us­ing three but I might change this mov­ing for­ward to help the web text flow a lit­tle bet­ter. I also think the top­ics you chose to group will fit to­gether quite well.

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8. My topic group­ings will be:
   1. Author(s), Au­di­ence, Ar­gu­ment and evidence/proof (these may seem like they don’t fit to­gether but in eco­nom­ics au­thors col­lab­o­rate, state their idea, pro­vide ev­i­dence, and of­ten leave the ar­gu­ment open ended be­cause of the in­tended au­di­ence)
   2. In­for­ma­tion, knowl­edge and re­search
   3. Ex­per­tise, con­ven­tions and dis­course com­mu­nity

   I have an out­line and have be­gun draft­ing. I need to come up with more ideas for im­ple­ment­ing mul­ti­me­dia (links to videos, pic­tures, ar­ti­cles).

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   1. This sounds like the be­gin­nings to a 5-paragraph es­say, so I would be cau­tious with how you let your analy­sis play out, as a rhetor­i­cal analy­sis tends not to flow well within that par­tic­u­lar struc­ture. I would try to make sub­groups within your groups and have in­ter­me­di­ate con­clu­sion­ary para­graphs that tie their re­spec­tive groups to­gether be­fore try­ing to bring them to­gether as a whole in a con­clu­sion.

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9. I aim to write this web texted at an au­di­ence com­prised of peo­ple hold­ing power within the field of my in­ter­est, peo­ple to eval­u­ate my ex­per­tise, ar­gu­ment, and in­tel­li­gence. My field of in­ter­est is de­vel­op­ment eco­nom­ics mak­ing the imag­ined au­di­ence path the­o­rists and in­quiry sta­tis­ti­cians. So far I have com­pleted the google doc out­line: Ar­gu­ment be­ing the heart of my web text; I be­lieve ar­gu­ment is free­dom of ex­pres­sion that is grounded in re­search, in­for­ma­tion, and knowl­edge. Knowl­edge also re­lated to ex­per­tise is re­lated to value. Ex­per­tise is re­fined knowl­edge for­mu­lated in mech­a­nism, or mech­a­nized to form an ob­ject. This ob­ject could pos­si­bly be a re­fined ar­gu­ment. The com­mu­ni­ca­tion must be made as sim­ple and clear as pos­si­ble. In the the­ory of de­vel­op­ment per coun­try, there are widely ac­cepted the­o­ries, but the grounds of these the­o­ries can be­come ar­bi­trary, this is where con­cise sim­ple state­ments are nec­es­sary. The ac­cu­racy of each state­ment is ex­tremely im­por­tant, in or­der to avoid rep­e­ti­tion of thought and idea.

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10. So far my draft is com­ing along nicely, but I am slightly afraid that I have too much to talk about in my research/ ev­i­dence sec­tions and not even enough for pass­ing men­tion in my ar­gu­ment sec­tion in par­tic­u­lar. Ob­vi­ously there are two sides to this, as ar­gu­ments are es­sen­tially analy­sis of ev­i­dence in my field, but it leaves me pon­der­ing whether a sen­tence de­scrib­ing this is re­ally nec­es­sary, lead­ing me to want to omit ar­gu­ment as an idea en­tirely. Con­versely, I could break ar­gu­ment down as the counter to analy­sis in my re­search and use it in­stead as an an­tithe­sis to ideal re­search and com­mu­ni­ca­tion within the chem­i­cal dis­ci­pline. I’ll have to de­cide on that.

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11. Rather than de­cid­ing what to in­clude, I’ve ap­proached this by de­cid­ing what to ex­clude. There are so many rhetor­i­cal sim­i­lar­i­ties among sci­en­tific dis­course com­mu­ni­ties that it would be bor­ing, in my opin­ion, to talk about these sim­i­lar­i­ties. In­stead, I’m go­ing to cap­i­tal­ize on what I find to be unique in physics dis­course: Dis­course Com­mu­nity (we’re all on a big team — there’s no “I” in physics), In­for­ma­tion (dis­played in the form of pic­tures), Ar­gu­ment (al­ways math­e­mat­i­cal, spe­cial­ized lan­guage), and Evidence/Proof (Rig­or­ous, ex­haus­tive analy­sis of un­cer­tainty). I’ll at­tempt to or­ga­nize my page in this chrono­log­i­cal fash­ion, and dis­re­gard all of the other un­in­ter­est­ing, ubiq­ui­tous rhetor­i­cal con­ven­tions. I’ll as­sume my au­di­ence is just eng­lish speak­ing peo­ple, but I imag­ine the con­tent will be par­tic­u­larly in­ter­est­ing for other peo­ple in­volved in physics.

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    1. I think this is a great way to ap­proach your dis­ci­pline in the be­gin­ning, but sooner or later you will also need to ap­proach and in­clude the things that are highly fo­cus on your area of focus-where some­one from your field may not see. I rec­om­mend group­ing in­for­ma­tion, proof/argument and ex­per­tise to­gether to show how in­for­ma­tion is dis­played and de­picted in your dis­ci­pline. An­other group­ing can be ex­per­tise, knowl­edge and dis­course com­mu­nity to talk about how in­for­ma­tion within your field’s pro­fes­sional writ­ing re­volves around sec­ondary sources rel­a­tive from dis­course com­mu­nity and knowl­edge the au­thor ac­cu­mu­lates through­out time.

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12. I might be a lit­tle bit be­hind since i need to do some touch ups on my an­no­tated Bib and make sure that is up to scratch but i do have cat­e­gories cho­sen, how­ever they aren’t named as smoothly as i would like just yet. I do plan on try­ing to sched­ule a writ­ing guid­ance ap­point­ment to help me with the draft­ing process to­mor­row.

    The cat­e­gories i have iden­ti­fied go as fol­low:
    Topic/Argument (it holds what re­search has been done and what is be­ing stud­ied and why it is im­por­tant, any ex­per­i­ments or stud­ies done here, re­search, ect)
    Knowl­edge (ex­per­tise and con­ven­tions of com­mu­nity, where this in­for­ma­tion should go)
    Or­ga­ni­za­tion ( struc­ture and thought process of how these pa­pers are com­posed)

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13. » past­ing my Re­ply (edited) to emailed ques­tion about
    how to dis­cuss “con­ven­tions of the dis­ci­pline,” in terms of spe­cial­ized dis­course rhetor­i­cal and writ­ten (schol­arly articles/books, sup­port ex­am­ples):

    this is the broad­est level of the project, dis­cussing “the rhetoric of [dis­ci­pline]” in aca­d­e­mic pub­li­ca­tions:
    the field has “spe­cial­ized dis­course” unique to its way of writing/communicating within the dis­ci­pline, be­tween writ­ers & read­ers (dis­course com­mu­nity) rather than to other au­di­ences (pub­lic, non-specialist, etc.)

    The ways of think­ing and writ­ing spe­cific to the dis­ci­pline are ob­served in the “com­mu­ni­ca­tion conventions”—what we’ve been dis­cussing in terms of how the dis­ci­pline op­er­ates, ev­i­dent in aca­d­e­mic and pro­fes­sional pub­li­ca­tions. The jour­nal ar­ti­cles and books, as you men­tion about read­ing in upper-division courses, demon­strate the con­ven­tions ex­plic­itly and im­plic­itly: as class­mates have noted, cer­tain ways of re­search­ing and writ­ing (and think­ing) are agreed upon and prac­ticed whether for­mally or in­for­mally
    (in other words, maybe no one says di­rectly “this is how you must pub­lish an ar­ti­cle” but it’s what jour­nals and read­ers and in­sti­tu­tions ex­pect or want for their var­i­ous rea­sons).

    All that is quite gen­eral, partly be­cause the in­quiry is broad enough for every­one to ex­plore very dif­fer­ent fields/disciplines (con­sider all the ma­jors in our class); as well, be­cause the con­ven­tions rhetor­i­cal and writ­ten vary and are re­spec­tive to the dis­ci­pline (one way that it dis­tin­guishes it­self as a dis­ci­pline, even from closely-related ones). By now, you surely have many ideas about the var­i­ous cat­e­gories or an­gles I’ve sug­gested ex­am­in­ing the dis­ci­pline with
    → the strat­egy is to use this frame­work and lan­guage, but present in­sights spe­cific to your examination/analysis.

    A good ex­am­ple of this is “in­for­ma­tion”: one of our key themes/questions for the unit is what counts as in­for­ma­tion and how it is used in my dis­ci­pline. At the broad­est level, we’re ex­plor­ing the con­nec­tion of writ­ing, ar­gu­ment, and evidence—“the in­for­ma­tion par­a­digm,” a world­view sep­a­rate from “be­lief + story” (unit 1 fo­cus). Your ob­ser­va­tions, con­nec­tions, and in­sights on this point—what kind of in­for­ma­tion does [the dis­ci­pline] use or value? how does it get used? how does it re­late with knowl­edge or expertise?—all take up this is­sue of “dis­ci­pline con­ven­tions” un­der­stood from an­a­lyz­ing spe­cial­ized dis­course, which your read­ers will likely rec­og­nize
    (key goal, pur­pose of web­text, con­sid­er­ing au­di­ence)
     

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14. Sorry this is a lit­tle late; I didn’t get the email with Wednesday’s in­struc­tions un­til af­ter class.

    Any­ways, for my first sec­tion, I want to dis­cuss the as­sump­tions made in po­lit­i­cal sci­ence and what counts as knowl­edge. This is the stuff peo­ple in the field might take for granted (as we dis­cussed in class, it seems like an im­por­tant thing to cover). For my sec­ond sec­tion, I want to dis­cuss what is in­for­ma­tion and how it can be used as ev­i­dence for the­o­ries and pa­pers (i.e. in­for­ma­tion about a coun­try or event or some­thing like that can be used as the data to prove some­thing). Fi­nally, in the third sec­tion, I am go­ing to dis­cuss re­search, the rhetoric of the ma­te­r­ial be­ing pub­lished, and pos­si­bly the idea of ex­per­tise.

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