Youngsters and Geezers

“Wow, this reading is boring as hell!” is one phrase you may hear floating around a college campus. This phrase is one that you may not be able to blame the reader for. Hell yeah, some reading are boring, and this may be just because the reader is not a particular audience. Do you ever read something and think “My grandpa would really dig this!” or other phrases like that? This is probably because the material you are reading was aimed towards an older audience. Many writings are geared towards a neutral age group, not only the elderly, even if the writing is very “lame” or “boring”. I will take one of these neutral pieces entitled Joan Littlewood and the De-Mystification of Acting by Roger Grainger and explain how I can adapt it to make it appeal better to a younger audience and then to an older audience.

            First, I think a good way to appeal to many youngsters would be to turn the Grainger article into a rap song. Not only would the article be extremely shortened and simplified but it would also be catchy. This rap song wouldn’t have to include the classic curse words or other foul imageries of many rap songs, but would just summarize the main ideas of the article in a rhyming form. This would be a very easy way for a younger audience to absorb the information of the article. They could download the song, put it on their iPod, and listen to it while on the go. If the song was catchy also, then they would very easily learn some more information on theatre and method acting. People could be walking around rhyming the lyrics and humming the tune of Roger Grainger’s article. It could be floating all around social media and be considered the hot new “fire” in the rap game. In all seriousness though, a simple rhyme scheme and summarization of the themes in the article would very much appeal to a younger audience. A quick and fast learning method like a song very much appeals to the busy lives of a younger audience.

            When I picture an average morning for my grandparents, I always visualize them sipping a cup of coffee, lounging around and reading the newspaper, at 6 a.m. My point is, newspapers appeal greatly to an older audience. It is something they grew up with and are used to. Younger people feel that this old “reading” thing takes way too much time and prefer quick ways to learn. If the Grainger article were to be converted into a newspaper article it would be bold and brief. Most newspaper articles are not very long and usually have a title that reels the audience in. a few pictures could also make the reading experience a bit better, because who doesn’t love a good visual? The article would be very factual with some minor opinions scattered throughout. An interview between the author Roger Grainger and his subject Joan Littlewood would also spice up the article. An older audience would love to sit down with this newspaper article on their Sunday morning and learn some more about Grainger and his training. The newspaper article genre would be a great way to appeal to an older audience.

            The bottom line is that most people like getting to the facts and simplifying things. A younger audience would better identify with a catchy rap song that rings in their ears, while an older audience would enjoy a factual newspaper article. The ease of picking up the newspaper on the front porch or downloading the song online greatly appeals to both audiences. Most people of an older audience do not want to fiddle around on the computer, just the same as a younger audience doesn’t want to sit and read a newspaper. Converting the scholarly Joan Littlewood and the De-Mystification of Acting by Roger Grainger into the two genres of a rap song and a newspaper article would greatly spread out the piece’s audience. Many more people would be willing to learn about this topic if it were simply presented to them in a genre they enjoy.

Dirk Vs. Elbow

            Moves are pretty awesome. Until the concept was presented to me, I never really knew what to call all of the things writers do to get to their goals. Now I know to call these actions, moves. There are millions of moves that writers can execute in their writings. Two of the articles that we read at the beginning of this quarter both struck me as very unique and full of moves, and being that we had to read them both together, I really got to see the similarities and differences between the works. The first article is “Navigating Genres” by Kerry Dirk, and the second is “Teaching Two Kinds of Thinking by Teaching Writing” by Peter Elbow. Both of these works really caught my attention, but in very different ways.

            Both Dirk and Elbow have very particular moves that they use to reach their goals in their articles. Dirk is aiming to teach about differences in genres and what different genres look like, while Elbow is targeting in on his concept about two different kinds of thinking. Both writers start out their articles in pretty similar and fun ways. Dirk starts her paper off with a fun joke to get the ball rolling. This is a great move to get the reader involved and ready to continue reading. Most college kids don’t want to read, but when they sit down and read the goofy joke, they may read a little more. Elbow has a similar intention and uses a similar move. He uses some quotes to start the article off about certain people’s opinions on thinking. This connects to the reader just like Dirk’s joke. Both the quotes and the jokes are moves aimed at connecting and engaging the reader to the article. No matter how boring an article is, if it has a good introduction that makes you laugh, ponder, or maybe even cry, chances are you will read through most of that article.

            Neither of the articles are completely academic in the sense that they are aimed at pompous scholarly nuts who only enjoy words like “platitudinous” in their daily vocabulary. Elbow’s article is a bit more formal and he draws less anecdotes than Dirk does, but I would not consider his article that of a text book. This lack of formality is a strong move on both of the writer’s parts. Instead of being pompous writers, which I am sure both could easily accomplish, they chose to take a simpler, more casual approach. This move acts in a similar fashion as the introductions do. It connects easily with the reader, especially a younger audience. Most college students don’t enjoy reading, but when they come across articles like these, it is hard to resist. They are not completely boring, and the casual move makes it fun to read both Dirk and Elbow’s articles.

            Some moves the writers chose were very different. Although both writers did not usually extremely academic writing styles, Elbow’s article was still more formal. In my opinion, this was not a very strong move. I enjoyed how relatable Dirk’s article was. She drew from pop culture with references to The Onion and its wacky article titles. A lot of the writing in Dirk’s article was funny too and had a conversational tone. This move was extremely effective on her part. I did not enjoy Elbow’s somewhat casual yet didactic tone. The only way I could really describe it compared to Dirk’s move of super casual, flip flops and tank top style, would be a semi-formal, awkward button-up style. Reading Dirk’s article was a lot more fun. Elbow’s move may work better with an older reader, but I dig the super casual Dirk move.

            Dirk also made a nice move with the set-up of her article. It had nice quotes and bullet points, an occasional heading. The overall appearance was great. I felt more engaged and ready to read the paper. It didn’t look like a bunch of blocky words or page long paragraphs. Elbow chose a different move. He went for the simple plain old text style. This can definitely work, and is probably the oldest move in the book, but compared to Dirk, it was boring. I really enjoyed Dirk’s article layout. When I saw a different heading or a quote coming up, I had something to look forward to. With Elbow’s paper, the layout got boring and repetitive towards the end. Dirk’s unique layout was a very effective move, while Elbow’s layout can be effective, but in retrospect to Dirk’s it was cake with no icing (Sure, I’ll eat it, but where is the fun icing?).

            Overall, these articles has some similar moves, yet other big different moves which really shaped the articles. Kerry Dirk’s “Navigating Genres” gave a fun insight to the world of genres, while Peter Elbow taught us about different types thinking in “Teaching Two Kinds of Thinking by Teaching Writing”. Both of these articles, although very different experiences, were both good reads.

The Same, but NOT the Same

            Unlike myself, and what most people would imagine, all scholarly works and genres are exactly the same. After reading them for hours it may feel as though they are the exact same, acting as a written NyQuil, however not all scholarly and academic texts are exactly alike. The rhetorical features and some conventions in academic texts differ, like those in the article entitled Developing Multicast Applications and Access Points off of the SCIgen genre generator compared with the features of the article Theater and Therapy: How Improvisation Informs the Analytic Hour.

            First, let’s look at the article from SCIgen, a computer science research paper generator. Before anything else is said, it should be said that all the articles generated on the site are pointless and make no sense. The papers that are generated are complete gibberish, but aim to illustrate the rhetorical features and conventions of a research paper. The visual layout and structure of each generated paper was extremely similar. From a surface level view, they look exactly the same. The text font and sizes all matched up, the headings, the different layers, the main difference was the content. Each article displayed a boldfaced heading along with multiple bold sub headings. Every paper contained a table of contents, an intro, related works, references, and an abstract section to begin the article. The abstract gave a brief preview of what the rest of the article was going to be about. The papers all contained a heavy amount of academic vocabulary and didactic phrasing. Although the writing was heavily academic, it was just a scholarly form of gibberish. It is as though a bunch of different paragraphs were pasted together that don’t entirely talk about the same subjects. The aim of the SCIgen site is “amusement, rather than coherence”. It is just a fun way to view different scientific articles. Another convention seen throughout the papers are a series of many different figures. The figures can either be graphs, tables, or regular drawings. They also do not seem completely coherent to the whole work of the paper. Basically, the articles on the SCIgen website are a good way to look at the conventions and some of the rhetorical features of a highly academic research paper, as long as you disregard the lack of coherence in the article’s text.

            Next is yet another scholarly article written by obviously two fine scholars, Rosalind Chaplin Kindler, M.F.A. and Arthur A. Gray, Ph.D. It is apparent by their names just how damn smart these people are. The article talks about the connection between improvisation and acting with the brain and how the two affect each other. This article contained words and phrases that seemed like gibberish like in the SCIgen articles, but they were actual words and phrases. This article is filled with enough didactic and inflated language for the whole entire family! The text is broken up into short and sweet paragraphs. The writers also draw upon their own experiences and memories at times which can be very interesting. In terms of conventions, there are a few different headings, each of the same font and size. The article also contains a brief summary in the very beginning, explaining a bit about the article. There also footnotes present on each page, giving some more explanation to the text. Also, embedded in the text are quotes from people taken from interviews that were conducted. And finally, like most scholarly texts, there is a works cited or reference page at the very end. This article contains all the rhetorical features and conventions to make it a scholarly article, but it rings much differently than the SCIgen article.

            Besides the obvious fact that the SCIgen article is gibberish and the theater article is not, the two works are very different, yet very similar and of the same genre. Unlike the SCIgen article, the theater article contains small anecdotes from the authors. This makes for a more interesting read. The SCIgen articles also do not contain footnotes like the theater article. Both articles are broken up into small paragraphs and contain multiple headings and sections. The theater article is more fluid, with less breaks in the text, yet no figures. Both contain summaries before the article begins, or what could be called abstracts. The overall writing in both texts is very inflated and academic. The words used at times are incredibly hard to understand, I’m not sure Google would even know the definitions. The papers differ on many levels. Both are academic and aimed to teach, but the theater article becomes more personal at times. Some similarities between the texts exist, yet many differences are also present, but overall the articles are of the same genre because they both possess the perfect amount of rhetorical devices and conventions to make them scholarly articles.

Link to SCIgen article:  http://scigen.csail.mit.edu/scicache/154/scimakelatex.11892.Tyler+Reinhold.html

Link to Theater article: http://web.a.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=948a1edf-05fe-44b7-b4d3-ab744f3d6388%40sessionmgr4002&vid=9&hid=4212