Hansol Jang

De Piero
Writing Project 2
4 November 2015
th

Weed-Out
Snoop Dogg sings his recent song Young and Wild and Free. So what we get drunk
so what we smoke weedwere just havin funwe dont care who sees. Young and Wild and
Free people might be having fun but I hope they are in states where smoking marijuana is legal.
One of the hottest societal issues that have been going around is marijuana legalization. We will
be digging deep into three articles that talk about this issue and see how each article with different
discipline take different stance. Janet Boyd, the author of Murder! (Rhetorically Speaking),
states that every discipline has its own range of acceptable jargon, diction, and tone to be learned
and applied. She elaborates more that the freedom of diction depends on the writers profession.
Therefore, there could be variety of genres with different disciplines because biological,
economical, and non-academic professionals do not share same constraintsjargon, diction, tone,
rhetorical features and conventions. By looking in depth about how these constraints make up
each genre, we will come to realization of how important constraints are when composing a genre
within certain discipline. Accordingly, the limitations in constraints affect writers delineation of
genuine ideas and opinions.
First things first, what makes this scholarly article, scholarly article? To identify the
genre of this piece, we need to look for evidences that this piece provides us. Boyd defines genre
as a particular kind of creative piece that carries traits or attributes that are considered normal for
that piece. When we skim through the first articleSex, Drugs, Cognition: Effects of
Marijuana, by five scientistswe can see that there are quantitative data provided with bold
titled sections. Andreas Lunsford, who wrote Finding evidence, states that quantitative data is
the sort that can be observed and counted which is the charts and figures in the article. If we take
a closer look into this maybe-scholarly article, we can see biological terms such as delta-9tetrahydrocannabinol without a definition after or before the term. Scholarly articles do not tend

to define academic terms because the readers are mostly fellow scholars who are experts in the
same field. We identified quantitative data, bold headings of sections, and professional terms.
Now, we can change Is this scholarly article? into Oh, it is scholarly article!
The biological scholarly article contains rhetorical features and conventions that are
similar and dissimilar to economic scholar article and non-academic news article. It is always
important to think of the purpose of the writer as a reader because it lets us to get the right
message. The main purpose of this scientific article is to confirm their hypothesiswomen under
influence of marijuana will have slower reaction than menis right to the readers. Another
purpose is to inform the readers about biological effects of marijuana use in human body and
educate them about marijuana effectiveness in different sex. The scientists also state in the end
that their purpose is to introduce new key topic for other researchers to work oncognitive
flexibility. On the other hand, the main purpose of article, The Societal and Economic Impacts of
Recent Dramatic Shifts in State Marijuana Law by 2 economists, is to inform the readers about
the economical and societal effects of marijuana legalization and also to persuade the readers that
marijuana is illegal in all aspects at the political level. And the non-academic news article, In
U.S., 58% Back Legal Marijuana Use, also serves different purpose; the purpose is not to
educate others like the first two scholarly articles aimed to. The main purpose of this article is to
inform the readers about what people think about legalizing marijuana and which age group
supports more on legalizing. Even though all three articles are on same topic, purpose of each is
different.
The audiences of scientific scholarly article can be fellow scientists who also study in
biological effect of marijuana and people who are interested in learning about these effects. These
audiences might expect to be able to think how they are going to support or oppose the authors
findings about sex difference contributing to marijuana impacts and see if the authors hypothesis
makes sense. In economical scholarly article, the economists ask what peoples opinions are
about the issue and sum up the results for readers with intention to inform them about what other

people think. The audiences of this article can be the people who have positive or negative
opinion on marijuana legalization issues. Audiences can also be anyone who is interested in
knowing more about marijuana impacts on societal or economical issues in detail. In contrast, the
audiences for non-academic news article can be the people who do or do not support marijuana
legalization and who want to know what other people think about this issue. Even though three
articles are written about the same topic, the audiences are different.
Different backgrounds of writers affect how a writing piece is composed. It is because
they gather different types of datascientists tend to gather science based facts as data whereas
economists tend to consider the statistics of economical issues and peoples opinions on the issue.
In scientific scholarly article, questions are not usually asked instead, scientists state facts and
proven theories. This scholarly article is very formal and professional in style, mentioning
specific biological terms in scientific article and economical terms in economical article. The
style in economical piece is similar to biological scholarly piece but the big difference is that the
tone is persuasive because the author wants to persuade the readers that Minnesota should
reconsider in legalizing marijuana use for adults recreational purpose. The tone and style in nonacademic news article is also different than that of two scholarly articles. It is non-academic style,
meaning its intent is not to persuade or educate the readers.
The first-look on length of the article reveals how deep the knowledge on a topic will be.
The biological scholarly article is 10 pages long, which is shorter than economical article that is
40 pages long and longer than the news article that is 2 pages long. We can see that the length of
economical scholarly article was significantly longer than that of biological scholarly article and
the news article. It is because this article covered not only economical effects but also political
effects on marijuana legalization. We can note that the length of the article also contributes to the
fact that it is scholarly article because it is generally longer than non-academic articles.
The conventions that this scientific article had were charts and figures, titled sections,
detail in experiment procedures, length, and changes in font. Since this article had scientific

disciplines, a lot of charts and graphs were included with short data analysis below the figures
and above the charts to allow the readers to have better understanding. First section of the article
started with abstract, which most scholarly texts start with, then detailed procedures of the
experiment were mentioned to let the readers smoothly read along the article. Authors included
detailed procedure of the experiment to notify the readers about how exactly they tested their
hypothesis so it can build credibility.
The charts and figures were also provided in economical scholarly article like the
biological scholarly article but there were only two tables. The first table represented the
correlation between the decrease in arrest rates and increase in fine for marijuana possession. This
correlation plays big role in this article because it shows the big picture of what the economists
were going forincrease in fine decreased arrest rates. The second table anticipated the potential
impact on property/ violent crime rates after legalizing marijuana. These tables show that
legalizing marijuana would increase the violent crimes, which support the authors thesis
statement saying that marijuana should be illegal. Non-academic articles have many different
rhetorical features and conventions when compared to scholarly articles. While first and second
article had the authors standpoints, this news article did not include authors standpoint. This
article included charts and graphs but it was more simple and easy to understand. It shows the rise
of percentage of each age group that supports marijuana legalization each year. This article also
included the survey methods and how they came up with the data.
The font of biological scholarly article was similar to that of economical scholarly article.
Both articles were in same font throughout and only the title of each section was bolded. They
both used italics every now and then but the italicized phrases had different emphasis. In
scientists article, variety of tests that they did to the subjects was italicized because it is
important to show the readers what tests were given to confirm their hypothesis. However,
economists article italicized the names and short quotes from other sources because the
economical and societal issues derive from different opinions of people. Each section was also

bolded like the scientific article but it also included Roman numeral in the front of the title to
indicate different chapters within the article. Besides two scholarly articles, the news article not
only used italics but also changed font size. It was written with capitalized words, phrases, and
used different fonts when making a note to surprising survey results. So this non-academic news
article might seem more interesting to read than scholarly articles because the font changes as if
the author is speaking directly to the readers. Each section is bolded like scholarly articles and
these bolded titles help readers to find exact information that they want to read. The author also
italicized questions and included dashes to catch the readers attention. Now, we can tell that
article with non-academic discipline has less constraints, which allow the writer to compose more
eye-catching pieces. These distinctions in use of fonts and italics are the results of constraints that
each discipline has.
The writers often have their own moves of attracting readers. Mike Bunn, the author of
How to Read Like a Writer, implies that writers moves are series of choices that they make to
guide the readers to follow through. The scientists used phrases, such as as expected, to support
their hypothesis in tone of certainty and this is move that they made. In common, all the authors
used move called euphemism. According to Boyd, euphemism is when author replaces offensive
and strong words with another term so it seem-s less offensive. The reason why the all authors of
three sources used this move is because they want to prove that their data, opinion, and
hypothesis are right in direct tone inoffensively. Thus, the moves that the author use can affect
how well the readers can follow through the checkpoints that the writer wants them to reach.
Lunsford claims that the quality of evidencehow the data was collected, by whom, and
for what purposecan also become part of an argument. The author of biological scholarly
article uses quantitative data that explains the quality of the evidencehow well 35 men and
women were able to complete their tasks under influence of marijuanawhich can become part
of the authors argument. The author put the data after the experiment section to show the readers
what their results were and analyzed the data to support the strength of their hypothesis. In

addition, economists use tables in between the arguments to add persuasiveness. The news article
author also used tables and graphs to let the readers visualize the point that he/she wants to get
across.
Each piece was constructed in different ways but two biological and economical articles
under genre of scholarly articleshared similar way of construction. First they introduced the
issue, and then used their experiment and survey data to explain how well their standpoints are
supported in relation to the data collected. Next, they confirmed their stance in the conclusion and
emphasized their purpose. But, news article, being the non-academic article, questioned the
reader about legalizing marijuana first to involve them thinking about the issue and then
presented the survey results to show how other people think. This way of construction makes the
reader to think about his/her own opinion on the issue. Thus, construction of writing depends on
the constraints that each genre offers.
News article has less constraints than scholarly article because the audience is not just
scholars and the purpose can vary depending on the author. They can write biased article,
criticized article, and persuasive article. However, scholarly articles have other experts in the
same field as audiences. The differences in audiences and purposes of the authors let nonacademic pieces to accomplish more variety of objectives. Generally, the audiences might find
scholarly sources to be more persuasive because it provides more scientific experiments and
proven facts. We can conclude that the limitations of genre contribute to the effectiveness of
writing piece because the constraintsthat each discipline has limit the word choices of
author, tone of the paper, and how the messages get across to the readers. Genre is produced by
many disciplines. Each discipline has its own constraints. The jargon, diction, tone, rhetorical
features, and conventions are constraints. Therefore, the amount of constraints that the writer is
offered with, affect the freedom of creating ones own genre.

Works Cited
Anderson, Beth A. "Sex, Drugs, Cognition: Effects of Marijuana." N.p., n.d. Web.
In U.S., 58% Back Legal Marijuana Use." Gallup.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 Nov. 2015.
Scherf, Andrew L. "The Societal and Economic Impacts of Recent Dramatic Shifts in
State Marijuana Law." N.p., n.d. Web.

Writing 2 Feedback Matrix for WP2

Table of Textual Features
Did Not Meet
Expectations

Met
Expectation
s

Thesis Statement

Use of Textual
Evidence from Genres

XX

Use of Course
Readings
Analysis
Organization/Structur
e

X
X

Attention to
Genre/Conventions
and Rhetorical
Factors

Sentence-level Clarity,
Mechanics, Flow

Other Comments

Exceeded
Expectations

Hannah,
Nice work here. To take this to the next level,
here are some ideas:
-Consider what kinds of data/evidence these
different sources are using and what kinds of
RQs theyre asking
-Think about what kind of

structure/organization would be best suited for

your argument
-Consider working in moves earlier on and
adding in more of them -- I thought that your
section on moves was very good
-Move past describing and get to evaluating -try to pinpoint the so what? of this
assignment as much as possible.
Like I said, though, I think you did some very
solid work here. :)
8.5/10
Z
Could not find matrix for WP2. (This is it!)