Margaret Schmit

Wilson
Writing 2
Oct 14, 2015
WP 1: What Makes This Thing This Thing?

The problem with writing is that there are too many ways to write. There are so many
subjects, themes, motifs, and genres that figuring out how to write what youre writing is almost
impossible. The first thing a good writer should do when starting a piece is analyze their
audience ~ ask questions like what is the audience expecting from this piece of writing? and
how can I make the audience happy with this?. These questions can be answered by the writer
determining a genre for their text. The genre for the text will then act as a guide for the writer,
and help the writer fulfill the readers expectations about the text. Genres can help an author
determine what an audience expects from a text and act as a guide for the author to deliver on
audience expectations.
Take two texts with the same topic but different genres: the poem A Dog Has Died
published in Poetry Magazine, and the scientific article Dog Domestication Much Older Than
Previously Known, published in Scientific American. These texts have the same general topic,
dogs, but due to their respective genres, they are very different texts. The different conventions
of the genres are what make them distinct from one another and from any other text that is about
dogs.
The poem A Dog Has Died possess a lot of the conventions of the poetry genre, which is
what makes this text a poem. Structurally speaking, the text contains line breaks and stanzas.

Analytically speaking, the text contains the emotions and personal opinions of the author. For
example, the author writes Ill not speak of sadness here on earth (Neruda). Though he says he
wont speak of sadness, the author is really just trying to push down his feelings of sadness about
his dogs passing. The not speaking of sadness means he feels it but doesnt want to show his
sadness. In saying this, the reader relates to the author in the fact that everyone pushes their
feelings away when they lose someone they love. The convention in poetry is to express those
feelings that you push down, as the author is expressing his sadness here. Additionally, the author
describes his friendship with his dog as the friendship of a star (Neruda). Here, the author is
using metaphor to compare his dog to a star. Metaphor is another convention in poetry, because it
also conveys certain emotion to the reader. Here, the author is saying that the dog is aloof and far
away, but he is expressing this in a more artful way than just saying aloof to the reader. This also
creates an image in the readers head, so that they dont just read but imagine what the author is
talking about.
The purpose of poetry is to evoke some type of emotional reaction in the reader. The
author of A Dog Has Died set out writing his text with the intention of making his readers feel
and relate to his mourning over his dog. The author used the conventions of poetry to relate his
feelings to the readers and achieve his goal as an author. After all, it would be impossible to
invoke a reaction to something in a reader without putting your own emotions into a piece of
writing, as the conventions of poetry require you to do.
The scientific article genre has a lot of conventions that are very different from the
conventions of the poetry genre, and thus set any poem apart from any scientific article. Firstly,
the scientific article genre is based completely off of facts. Instead of injecting his opinion into
the article, the author of Dog Domestication Much Older Than Previously Known includes facts

and quotes from reputable sources to create his argument in his article. This is because the author
wants to make himself and his article credible. For example, at the end of the article, the author
writes that The research was published in the journal Current Biology (Dunham). This gives
the readers someone to hold accountable for the research and makes the author seem more
credible for citing a credible source. Additionally, the author cites different scientists, such as
Love Daln from the Swedish Museum of Natural History and Pontus Skoglund from Harvard
Medical School. Both of these institutions are places readers know they can trust, and by citing
them, the author makes himself more credible. It is a convention in the scientific article genre to
cite your sources and quote trusted scientists, so the author is also fitting in to that convention by
citing these scientists. Structurally, the article is very formal and follows all grammar
conventions. This convention also gives credibility to the author, because readers interpret a
formally written article as a good article ~ in other words, this format helps lend more credibility
to the author.
The purpose of a scientific article is to teach the readers about new scientific discoveries.
This means that the readers have to believe that what they are reading in a scientific article is
true. As Ive stated before, a lot of the conventions of the scientific article genre have to do with
making the author credible to his audience. People dont learn from something they dont trust,
but if they do trust the author, they are willing to absorb the information the author is putting out.
As Ive stated before, a lot of the conventions of the scientific article genre involve building the
credibility of the author. This helps the author achieve his goal of teaching the readers.
The authors of both of these genres knew what their audience expected before they wrote
their texts. They determined the genre of the text that fit audience expectations, and they used the

conventions of the genre to meet audience expectations. The conventions of a genre are a guide
to writers, telling the writers what they need to do to make certain audiences happy.
Some might say that it is topic instead that determines how the paper turns out and how
the author treats their audience. However, what would have happened to these two texts if they
switched genres? They would still be dealing with the same topics, but both authors would sorely
disappoint their audiences. For example, if the author of Dog Domestication Much Older Than
Previously Known had written a poem and inserted his feelings into the text, he would have lost
all credibility with his audience and lose their readership, because readers of scientific articles
dont want to read papers by people they cant believe. A similar thing would have happened if
the author of A Dog Has Died had written a scientific article ~ the readers of the magazine would
ignore the article, because they want to experience feelings, not learn about science. He, too,
would lose readership if he had not chosen the right genre to write with.
The genres are used to give readers the information they expect. Readers of
different genres expect different things from authors, regardless of the topic the authors are
writing about. Writers can appease their readers by determining what genre their readers expect
and then writing with that genre. This helps writers become more successful overall.

Bibliography
Dunham, Will. "Dog Domestication Much Older Than Previously Known."Scientific
American (2015): n. pag. 21 May 2015. Web. Oct. 2015.
Neruda, Pablo. A Dog Has Died. Poetry Magazine (1999). N. pag. 1999. Web. Oct. 2015.