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Kat Liang

Professor Marie Webb

Ling 12

March 10, 2019

How Does A Communication Professor Utilize Different Writing Genres?

Writing plays an important role in our lives, so do writing genres. According to Swales,

writing genres are “types of texts that are recognizable to readers and writers, and that meet the

needs of the rhetorical situations in which they function.” (Swales, The Concept of Discourse

Community). From the time that we were able to write down or record things, human beings

started to communicate. Hundreds of years ago, our ancestors communicated through long

distances by writing letters. It is rather simple just to write down words and sentences to express

one’s ideas. However, when it comes to communication studies which require people organizing

different contexts and traditions of communication and the process of how that type of

communication works, writing becomes complex and the language usages are greatly restricted.

In this way, distinguishing which writing genre should be applied to the communication study

and becoming sophisticated in that kind of writing become important. As we could see, writing is

a fundamental skill that is required when people major in communication study. Since I am

interested in communication, especially in interpersonal communication, I would like to know

what specific sort of writing holds the biggest portion in interpersonal communication study and

how it/they works to solve problems and organize theories. For this reason, I made an interview

with Professor Merolla who is now teaching Comm 89 (Theories of Communication) and has a

high rate of teaching qualities and professional knowledge storage, and I found that the most

valued writing types in our field are scholarly writing and articles on newspaper and magazines.
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Though those two writing genres are different: empirical research papers are for academic

writing and newspaper articles are quite non-academic. They all serve important roles in

communication study.

Before we had the interview, I thought of 2 kinds of writing which might be the only two

and the most crucial ones when studying communication, that is research writing and narrative.

Research writing for organizing the theories and narrative for explaining complicated

terminologies into simple cases which could be easily understood by non-communication-major

readers. Nevertheless, according to professor Merolla, beyond these two writing genres, more

types of academic writing are needed when people start to immerse themselves in

communication study.

However, the research paper is still the most important writing genre when people start to

dig deep in their professional area. Professor Merolla states that research paper is not only about

the researchers, more broadly, it is also about the readers and students who have the desire to

understand those research studies and theories. In this case, people who write research paper

should not only pay attention to the professional aspect; they should also be aware of whether

readers could understand the paper. To begin with, a good research paper should be attractive to

readers, and the abstract plays that role. The abstract is used to conclude the whole article in five

to six sentences and to highlight the main idea of research. By doing so, writers are able to raise

readers' interests because most of the readers are just communication major students who do not

have enough knowledge storage to understand all the academic terms; therefore, they would

easily find the research paper tedious since mainly research paper are prolix and full of datasets

and complex terminologies, which are almost the last things students want to read. Those readers

can easily get to know the research briefly and decide whether to continue reading. Plenty of
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research papers will not be missed if their writers make good use of abstract. The second part of

the research paper is more scientific, and this part lays the foundation of the paper to be truly

academic and empirical. Most of the paper contains methods and results. Some may have a

hypothesis as well. This part requires no writing skills but only the writer's ability to summarize

the data and make clear of their research methods. The last part of a research paper is the

conclusion and discussion part. In this part, professor Merolla suggests us to leave audiences

enough space to think about how the theories could be applied in our daily communication. Or

writers could even throw out some questions that allow readers to ask when finish reading the

paper. "a piece of research paper needs feedback and further discussions, just like a diamond

need to be polished”, professor Merolla said. Writers could learn different aspects of research

results from the comments of readers; Thus, authors could perfect their research and conclusion

and show the public a better result.

Aside from the most famous writing genre in communication study, professor Merolla

introduces another genre that he regards to be as important as the research paper – that is the

article in newspaper and magazines. This type of writing is more informal. The terminologies in

the articles will be easier to be understood than those of the dissertation which Jahren had been

qualified to write for earning a Ph.D. degree (Jahren, Lab Girl 80). For instance, the term “Keys

to Soil Taxonomy” will not be used in public articles since the public will not know the term.

Instead, Jahren utilizes a sentence to explain the term – “a handy guide resembling a small phone

book but much less interesting to read” (Jahren, Lab Girl 55) According to professor Merolla, a

piece of a research paper is the guide of theory and those tutorials are the applications of the

theories. They are interdependent in communication study. Students who are like me would

never realize how crucial the application is in the communication area because we always focus
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on written theories. Even though we know that communication major students and professors

mainly study how people interact, we always forget that theories are extracted from daily

interaction and should be applied to our life to make interaction more efficient. In order to meet

the goal, communication experts write articles on newspaper and magazines to make abstract

theories applicable and understandable. For example, the symbolic interaction theory in

communication is quite complex if only looking at the definition. However, when writers

applying the theory in daily life and report it in the articles in magazines or newspapers, the

public will find the SIT a simple reflection of interpersonal interactions. Me, as a student who

majors in communication, sometimes find a research paper to be hard to understand. The

experiments shown in the study is sophisticated operated, which means it lacks sociality. Those

experiments sometimes cannot exist in daily life so many amateurs do not understand the

experiments and thus makes the connection between the experiments and the theories vague. Just

as Swales mentions in his article, “the primary determinants of linguistic behavior are social”

(Swales, The Concept of Discourse Community 471), if social determines linguistic behavior

(communication), linguistic behavior should be able to be reflected in the society. The tutorials

are actually making theories more applicable for daily life, for society.

I also asked professor Merolla a question about what other writing genres does he utilize

in his daily life that he thinks to be helpful for communication study. One writing genre he says

is like the tutorials mentioned above, but more informal. He writes for websites to make some

communication research accessible to the public. Another writing genre is really interesting.

Professor Merolla answers readers’ questions about romantic relationships which have been

worldwide confused for a long time. I actually did not realize how communication theories and
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skills could play a role in our personal life until professor Merolla told me what he has been

doing.

Having done the interview with professor Merolla, I found that doing communication

research is not only about immersing oneself into the study and collecting data overnight.

Communication is a more social nature major that requires a person carefully observing society

through daily interactions and summarizing rules. All in all, communication study is not about

people who are in this area exchanging ideas and publishing new theories. Instead, it is about

making noncommunication majored people understand how people interact and how we could

make an effort on perfecting society since mainly of the social turmoil exist because of

insufficient communication between individuals. In this case, all the writing genres utilized in

communication studies should be more or less accessible to the public rather than being elusive

as those studies of science and engineering majors.

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Works Cited

Jahren, Hope. Lab Girl. New York: Vintage, 2017.

Jahren, Hope. Lab Girl. New York: Vintage, 2017.

Jahren, Hope. Lab Girl. New York: Vintage, 2017.

Swales, John. "The Concept of Discourse Community." (1990): 471.

Swales, John. "The Concept of Discourse Community." Wardle, Elizabeth and Doug Downs.

Writing about Writing. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2011. 467.