sensitise writers to different audiences, perhaps, or at the redrafting stage –
to
present possibilities, but not to determine outcomes.
Identifying and Comparing Genres
An explicit overview of the steps to be used in process writing is useful
because it can structure an otherwise mystifying experience and make it
comprehensible to students. Such an overview can also help focus task
design on reading and writing subskills that contribute to the overall
composing process. Three general tasks might be considered as
identifying
genres, comparing genres
and
rewriting genres.
Examples of genre shift, such
as the popularisation of scientific articles, can be used to raise students’
awareness of the link between written texts and the discourse community
from which they originate. A simple task would be to ask students to
identify the intended readership of given extracts. For example, the
excerpts given below are from a description of an experiment to determine
the impact of predators on brittlestars, a type of starfish, or, more techni-
cally, ophiuroid. Both excerpts were written or co-written by the same
biologist, Richard Aronson, but for different audiences: a readership of
professional scientists, and a more popular readership. Can you (1) identify
the excerpt from the professional and the popular article, and (2) describe
the linguistic changes that have taken place as the article has been rewritten
for the popular audience?
Text A
To measure predation directly, I tied
Ophiothrix
to small weights and
set them out as ‘bait’ at Bay Stacka. For comparison, I did the same
experiment on a rocky reef just outside Port Erin Bay. Here brittlestars
are much more sparse and we find them only under rocks and in
crevices.
Nothing much happened at Bay Stacka. Starfish consumed bits of a few
tethered brittlestars, but most of them survived. At Port Erin, on the
other hand, ballan wrasses and flatfish ate most of my experimental
animals. I repeated the experiment at the Millport Marine Station on
the Isle of Cumbrae.
Ophiocomina nigra
forms a dense bed in 10 metres
of water, just offshore of the laboratory. The results were identical:
predation pressure is low in brittlestar beds.
Text B
When assemblages of ophiuroids comparable in density to those in
Sweetings Pond were exposed in open arenas (from which they could
not escape) at a coastal site off Eleuthera, the brittlestars were com-
Culture and Written Genres
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pletely consumed within 48 hours. No significant ophiuroid mortality
occurred in similar arenas in the lake. Gut content and fecal analyses of
all possible Sweetings Pond predators of
Ophiothrix
, including the
large majid crab
Mithrax spinosissimus
confirmed the virtual absence of
predation. Through observation and experimentation, Aronson and
Harms (1987) demonstrated that density variations within the lake are
determined by variations in the degree of small-scale topographical
heterogeneity, not by variations in predation pressure. In stark
contrast to coastal conspecifics, Sweetings Pond brittlestars expose
themselves day and night. This behavioral difference is causally
related to the difference in predatory activity by fishes (Aronson, 1987).
It is not difficult to realise that the second extract is from the professional text.
What is perhaps more surprising is that both extracts give almost exactly the
same information. Once students have identified the different genres, they
can compare the language used in each text and relate it to the relevant
discourse community. One notable feature here is the way Aronson refers to
himself: in the popular article he uses the pronoun ‘I’ in combination with
verbs of action: ‘I tied’, ‘I did the same experiment’, ‘I repeated the experi-
ment’. Here the scientist is a lone investigator. The title of this popularisation
‘A Murder Mystery from the Mesozoic’ reinforces the image of the scientist
as a private detective, searching for clues to account for the deaths of com-
munities of this kind of starfish. In contrast, the professional article
downplays the scientist’s individual effort: passives are used to delete the
agent (‘assemblages were exposed’) and even references to the author are
couched in the third person, through the reference to his earlier publications,
and team effort is acknowledged. As Myers (1989, 1990) observes, the code of
politeness in academic writing means that the academic community should
take priority over the lone researcher, and so examples of first-person
reference are few. In popular writing, however, the lay reader wishes to
identify with a protagonist, and so the scientist is represented in this role.
Elsewhere in the articles, there are examples of changes in vocabulary
and grammar as the genre shifts from professional to popular article.
Examples include:
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Intercultural Approaches to ELT
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