Academic Discourse & Genre

In this blog post, I will analyze what different genres are within my journal of choice.

Paolo Braiuca, "We are all different." 9/13/15. via flickr. Attribution 2.0 Generic.

Within this journal, there seem to be 3 major different genres published within it. The main genres that can be seen within the journal are scholarly articles, book reviews, and editorials.

Editorial

The journal started off with an editorial, and it was written within the first person and was a more personal experience as to how the journal writing process was for the editor. It was far more personable than either of the two genres, and was more of an autobiographical entry rather than a piece of an academic journal.

Scholarly Article

Scholarly articles were written with abstracts and the information was listed out in paragraphs, laced with facts and information regarding the topic of each article at hand. While the author is involved in the writing, and the amount of care can be seen by each author, it is not about them and is strictly about the information that they are trying to relay.

Book Review

Book reviews are more of a combination between the two above genres. They go about trying to give their logical progression for how the book was, and tries to keep their own personal tastes out of the equation and focus on the content of the book. They are free to give their opinions and are encouraged to be critical rather than simply relaying information to the audience. They are expected to give their opinion as in an editorial, but back it up with the facts found within a scholarly article.

• Editorial: The editor or writer going about describing the process of how the piece came to be.
• Scholarly Article: The author relaying detailed information to the audience, specifically an audience that is educated on the subject.
• Book Review: The author taking their subjective opinions on a piece of work and relaying the facts of why a piece of work made them think or feel the way that they do.