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Running head: TERRORISM BEFORE AND AFTER 9/11

Terrorism before and after 9/11


Alfredo Beltran
University of Texas at El Paso
Mr. Vierra
English 1312: Research and Critical Writing

TERRORSIM BEFORE AND AFTER 9/11

Terrorism before and after 9/11


One of the genres that I will be using is a Newspaper Article from the New York Times
titled, On 9/11 Anniversary, Looking back and ahead by two Authors named Tatiana
Schlossberg and Marc Santora. The second Genre is a Scholarly Journal titled Terrorism before
and after 9/11, by Mark Selden. As for the first genre, disagreeing with it can be quiet simple
because of the fact that it had to do a lot with emotion and it lacks information. For the second
article it is a bit more changeling because it deals with events that the United States was
involved with in the past and it gives a lot of facts and statistics. The newspaper article is just
trying to grasp the audience attention with the use of emotions, at the beginning it could work
but after reading the newspaper article the audience notices that it lacks information. Its
obvious that the Scholarly Journal does a better job at conveying knowledge than the
newspaper article. The genre that does a better job at conveying knowledge or information is
the Scholarly Journal because the author does a better job of connecting ideas from his
research to help him favor his argument.
Audience and Purpose
The purpose of the first genre which is a newspaper article is to entertain and slightly
inform. The reason is because if you read the newspaper article it does not give you any kind of
statistics on what happened on 9/11, it is basically entertains the audience on how families that
lost people on 9/11 keep living without those family members. Audience can be hard to
determine because it is a newspaper article from a worldwide recognize newspaper, the
audience has to be people that read the newspaper daily or people that have been doing any

TERRORSIM BEFORE AND AFTER 9/11

kind of research on what happened to families that lost someone on 9/11. People all over the
United States know about what happened on September 11 because it was all over the news.
Students at schools all over the country the next day took a minute of silence to remember all
of the fallen people that died on said date.
The author of the newspaper article is trying to get his point across the audience with
emotions because the primary sources that the newspaper article have which are the family
members that lost someone do a really good job at making you feel those emotions. The
newspaper article is giving you a sad story about how families till this day still suffer the loss of
their love ones in the tragic day that was September 11. The article states, I want to protect
my family and everyone else, he said. I cant lose any more family to this. (Santora ,
Schlossberg, 2014) With this type of quote the author of this newspaper article is trying to get
everyone to get an emotional attachment. This type of quote gets the audience to keep
reading and feel the pain of someone that lost a family member due to the attacks on The
World Trade Center. The newspaper article is trying to target the discourse community of
people that didnt lose someone in the attacks on The World Trade Center.
The second genre purpose is to inform and entertain because it is full of stats and
events that favor the authors purpose which is to prove that the United States has taken bad
decision and killed innocent people. One of the events stated on the scholarly journal is in
Afghanistan it states how the U.S. has deployed technology that is designed to take the lives of
civilians to great scale. This is one event that shows how the United States is guilty for killing
innocent people from other countries, how it has taken war to other countries. Lets not forget

TERRORSIM BEFORE AND AFTER 9/11

that the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing
thousands for innocent people.
The second genre is targeting the discourse community of people that believe that
America is all good and never do anything bad to anyone when this is not true. America has
always been involved in other countries business for years to get something good out of a bad
situation. The second genre states, What give the nation that dropped the atomic bombs on
Hiroshima and Nagasaki and that has waged war far from its shores throughout the world on an
unprecedented scale and with unprecedented destruction of lands and peoples, the
prerogative to define global norms of absolute good and absolute evil? (Selden, 2002) This
quote is directed to people that believe that America is always the good but that is not the
case. America just like all other countries have something to hide that dont want the general
public to know. For the second genre people are not likely to know most of the information
presented because the author of the scholarly journal spend lots of hours doing research and
connecting his sources to his thoughts .
The time that audience is typically going to spend reading and trying to understand on
the first genre is not going to be that much because its really easy to comprehend. Not a big
portion of the audience that this newspaper article is directed to is going to re-read it because
its an article that states the message that is trying to convey at the beginning. The second
genre is a little more complicated to read because it has events and content that it discusses
like could be shocking to many and this might cause them to re-read the article a couple of
times. The scholarly journal has information that is meant for convincing the audience to

TERRORSIM BEFORE AND AFTER 9/11

change its perspective that America is all good and not bad at all. Both of the genres have a
formal style of writing, any person that reads both of these articles could easily comprehend
and understand the point of both of the genres. The style of writing was a very good choice by
both of the authors because anyone could understand the purpose of the reading.
Ethos
Even though the newspaper is not trying to persuade the author to do
something it does have credible sources, the family members that lost someone on 9/11 could
be used as a primary source. The purpose of this newspaper article is to entertain and it did
entertain because of all of the emotions that were put into the article. The scholarly journal is
credible because it has a lot of references that come from a different places that support the
argument the author is trying to make, it explains the information by referencing to it on the
journal. The purpose of the scholarly journal is to inform readers and it does a really good job
at doing so. Both of the genres have credible sources but the scholarly journal does a better job
at referring to them to prove his point.
Pathos
Both of the genres provoke emotions even though they are different emotions it makes
sense because the genres are different. The first genre does a better job at conveying emotion
by using quotes that the family says to demonstrate the pain of losing someone. The
newspaper article main purpose is to show emotion and it does by putting quotes of people
that lost someone on 9/11. The second genre doesnt fall far behind it because the thought of
innocent people including children is something that can make the coldest heart person feel

TERRORSIM BEFORE AND AFTER 9/11

compassion. The newspaper article does a better job at using emotions because 9/11 marked
everyone in the United States.
Logos
Like in ethos the first genre is not really trying to persuade you to take any different
decision. Its main purpose is just to entertain the audience and make them feel a different
kinds of emotions. For the second genre the persuading techniques that it uses the right ones
because its really hard to convince a person that America is not as great as we think, that the
country has taken bad decisions and have also killed innocent people.
Structure and delivery
Both of the sources are limited in different ways, the first genre limit itself because it
does not state many facts it just states how families are dealing with the pain of losing someone
from their family. Even though the statement of the families could be used as a primary source
they dont do a good job at delivering and passing on knowledge. The statements that the
family does do a great job at making you feel emotions. The ideas that the newspaper present
shape the genre because it is directed towards a different kind of audience than the scholarly
journal. The newspaper article uses different mediums to get their point across, it uses a
variety of pictures that include family members, the President of the United States and the
World Trade Center memorial, as for the scholarly journal the only medium that it uses is
writing. Most newspapers use two mediums, which are pictures and writing to get their point
across, this helps the purpose of the newspaper to be understood clearly. The scholarly journal
is shaped into this genre because it uses a variety of references to favor his thesis. What also

TERRORSIM BEFORE AND AFTER 9/11

helps shape the genre is that the scholarly journal has an opinion behind it. The author of the
scholarly journal uses this genre to help deliver his thoughts and purpose.
Conclusion
Both of the genres did a good job at conveying their message because they are both
directed to different discourse communities. Both genres have a similar topic, which is
terrorism in the United States. They are directed to different people because maybe the people
that read the newspaper article wont agree with what the scholarly journal has to say and vice
versa. They both have different purposes and thats what shapes them into their specific genre.
But the genre that uses the information better to favor their purpose without a doubt has to be
the Scholarly journal because of the way the author connects his thoughts to his statements.
The author of the Scholarly Article uses all of his ideas to favor his argument and the way that
the Journal Article is organized makes it easier to comprehend.

TERRORSIM BEFORE AND AFTER 9/11

Reference

Santora, Mark and Schlossberg, Tatiana. (2014, ). On 9/11 anniversary, looking back and ahead.
The New York Times

Selden, M. (2002). Terrorism before and after 9/11. Economic and Political Weekly, 37(37),
3795-3796. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/4412600

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