Benjamin Seilhamer

Zack De Piero

Writing 2

08 May, 2016

The Biologists’, Sociologists’, and the Popular Critics’ Perspective on the Impact of Music on People

            The academic fields of biology and sociology and the popular field of music criticism have literary genres written by writers; this means that they include genre-specific conventions and rhetorical features and writer-specific “moves.” These three genres will have some similarities and some differences concerning their general conventions and rhetorical features, and specific pieces from these genres will exemplify the ways in which their writers engage their audience using moves. In order to demonstrate how different academic fields provide different perspectives, conventions and rhetorical features from each other—and how academic fields provide different perspectives, conventions, rhetorical features and reader-directed implications than popular fields—, this essay will examine the genre-specific conventions and rhetorical features and the writer-specific moves of two academic articles’—biology and sociology— and one popular article’s—music criticism—approaches to analyzing how music impacts people. As broad of a topic as this may be—the biologist’s approach concerning a single person being impacted, the sociologist’s and music critic’s approach concerning large groups of people being impacted—, the three sources chosen all represent their specific genres sufficiently by providing solid examples of the conventions and rhetorical features specific to their genres and have writer-specific moves that are worth analyzing. Academic articles from different perspectives and non-academic articles all are different genres with different moves being utilized because different academic and non-academic disciplines have their own conventions and audience expectations and their writers’ moves differ due to both genre expectations and the writers’ personal decision for execution.

            The first article (PNAS article)—written for the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and analyzes music and people from the biologist’s perspective—is academic, entitled “Intensely pleasurable responses to music correlate with activity in brain regions implicated in reward and emotion;” The second article (MERIP article)—provided by the Middle East Research and Information Project, and analyzes music and people from the sociologist’s perspective—is academic and entitled “Egypt’s Music of Protest;” the third article (RS article)—written by someone from Rolling Stone, and analyzes music and people from the popular music critic’s perspective—is nonacademic and entitled “Nirvana.”

            The biologist’s article has many recognizable moves. These moves can be thought of as conventional to the academic-biology genre, but are moves nonetheless. For instance, the IMRAD-esque structure is employed for this piece, starting with an “Abstract”, then “Methods,” “Results,” and “Discussion” (Blood), all ordered and labeled accordingly. Under these subheadings for this piece are even smaller subheadings, including “subjects,” “stimuli,” “scanning procedures,” “data analysis,” all existing particularly under the “Methods” section. Although this sort of structure may be considered conventional for academic, scientific pieces, the ordering of the paper in this way may be considered a moves by the writers; the structuring of this article may definitely was a conscious decision. Small variations from the conventional structure of this genre prove that this is the case—for instance, the “A” section of the IMRAD structure, “analysis,” exists within the “methods” section, instead of being its own section (Blood). This may have been done because the writer decided that the “analysis” section may have been too small or insignificant to warrant its own section, or that the “analysis” of the data may be been a “method” used in the experiment. The purpose of this article is obviously to provide a peer-reviewable report of an experiment done for the scientific community to approve and add to their vast plethora of credible investigations. The types of evidence used, primarily graphs and photocopies of scans done of patients’ brains during the introduction of music, and the scientific jargon used throughout the article, “neuroanatomical regions…regression analysis...” indicate that the intended audience are of the scientific community, primarily peers of those doing the experiment, or students of universities. It can be inferred that the audience expects to see the “IMRAD” sort of structure, and that they expect to see—and probably be able to analyze and understand themselves—the visual graphs and photocopies that are included in the article. It can be expected for the audience to be ready to criticize or corroborate the arguments made by the writers of the article.

            The moves made by the writer of the sociological article on music and protest, with respects to the Middle East, can also be seen as conventional of the genre. In his article, “Egypt’s Music of Protest,” Ted Swedenburg separates his ideas into sections; these are not labeled particular to a sociological-academic structure, like IMRAD is for the sciences, but is separated into section of Swedenburg’s own choosing, labeled as “Music of Protest” (introduction), “Anti-Imperial Struggle,” “Revolutionary Memories,” “Poetry of Resistance,” “Working Class Posses,” and finally, “Endnotes” (Swedenburg). The only label that may be conventional of academic writing for sociology is “Endnotes,” which provide cited works and further explanations for particular ideas throughout the article. This article’s purpose is to collect information from many other already published sources and reorganize it to make it more accessible to the reader; there is no original field work done in this paper, only research. The sort of evidence provided is from other authors or other works, as well as specific music examples. The audience is expected to be primarily students. There is a considerable lack of jargon, which makes this article accessible to pretty much anyone, and the nature of the article does not necessitate peer-review. There is no field work or new research introduced in this piece, but rather, it is an argument based off of information already provided by other academic sources. Those who may be particularly interested in this article would be students of the “soft” or “social” sciences, who may need a succinct article to use that has a collaboration of many different articles to inform the specific topic of the role of music in protest in a Middle-Eastern context. The author’s decision, or obligation, to provide endnotes at the end of the article gives students the means to research other articles that may be relevant to the topic they are studying, if that topic has to do with music in Middle-Eastern protest.

            The nature of the Rolling Stones’ non-academic article on Nirvana—a biography—could be described as much more laid back than the other genres. One can recognize immediately that when juxtaposed with the other academic articles in question, there are a few aspects missing. One obvious aspect is the lack of subheadings; ideas are just separated into different paragraphs, and the main title is just “biography” at the top of the article. One can argue that the lack of subheadings is a move made by the writer to make his article feel a lot “cooler” to read; the lack of effort put into separating main ideas in the article, such as chronological events like “On March 30, Cobain check into the Exodus Recovery Center in LA” from other time-insensitive information like “Nirvana’s impact was also felt by some of Cobain’s own musical heroes…” (Simon/Schuster). Maybe the writers moved for a lack of organization by subheadings to make the reader feel more casual reading the article. The article does not provide any direct evidence with citations, but it provides many dates that can be corroborated. Open-ended statements, especially concerning who Nirvana impacted and how do not have any evidence; the article does not need to have citations, which may be conventional of biographies. It can be inferred by the article that the audience is supposed to be casual, looking to learn simple facts, but not for research or anything of the like, because of the lack of citations or even endnotes with the mentioning of cited works; in other words, the audience is not expecting too much, just a casual read. The audience can include anybody, not just those of a specific discipline, like an academic science article.

            There is a significant difference between the structures, conventions, and moves of academic and non-academic genres. Academic genres tend to have more “strict” conventions with standards for how they are supposed to be written, for practical purposes—peers and other researchers want to be able to know how to read the article as efficiently as possible, and must be able to find information within it quickly, especially regarding original research done by those in the science field. The audience-span is much narrower for academic articles, which are intended to be understood—and reviewed—only by those within that particular academic circle; the extensive use of discipline-specific jargon supports this idea. On the other hand, non-academic articles have a much larger audience-span because they can be understood by anybody. There is not an overarching structure that must be followed, the reading and writing process seems to be much more relaxed and open to personal preference by the writer. Academic articles have affordances that are the same as their limitations—their nature of being strictly organized and succinct with high audience expectations of understanding the discipline-specific jargon off the bat enables them to shoot information and arguments into the readers’ brain very precisely. This same characteristic, however, is what limits the article in its scope of audience—not necessarily a bad thing, because your average Joe probably will not care about “complementary subtraction analysis” or “regression maps” (Blood). The non-academic article’s affordances and limitations are the opposite—it is able to be understood by a greater span of audience, yet does not communicate as specific, high-level information as academic articles. Both types of articles are successful in their own ways, however; they deliver to the audience what they expect, whether it may be in-depth analysis about brain function supported by visual evidence such as photocopied brain scans and visual aids such as bar graphs, or whether it may be a simple, casual timeline outlining a rockstar’s life and tragic end. The nature of an article, in this sense, depends primarily on the intended audience of the piece.

Bibliography

Blood, Anne J., and Robert J. Zatorre. "Intensely Pleasurable Responses to Music Correlate with    Activity in Brain Regions Implicated in Reward and Emotion." Intensely Pleasurable Responses to Music Correlate with Activity in Brain Regions Implicated in Reward and Emotion. Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 11 July 2001. Web. 06 May 2016. <http://www.pnas.org/content/98/20/11818.full>.

Simon/Schuster, and Evan Serpick. "Nirvana Biography." Rolling Stone. Rolling Stone, 2001. Web. 06 May 2016. <http://www.rollingstone.com/music/artists/nirvana/biography>.

Swedenburg, Ted. "Egypt's Music of Protest | Middle East Research and Information Project." Egypt's Music of Protest | Middle East Research and Information Project. Middle East Research and Information Project, n.d. Web. 06 May 2016. <http://www.merip.org/mer/mer265/egypts-music-protest>.