Analysis of a Scholarly Article in Your Discipline

The idea behind this assignment is for you to take a closer look at your discipline’s discourse community. Discourse communities can only have similar interests and shared knowledge because they continually engage in the production, distribution, and consumption of written (as well as oral and visual) texts. This kind of textual exchange defines a discourse community, sustains it over time, and allows it to adapt to changing social conditions. In other words, discourse communities share not only interests and knowledge, but language, and the particular uses of language within a community keep that community going. In particular, understanding how a scholarly article in your discipline is constructed will give you a better understanding of how knowledge is made in that discourse community.

Audience: Instructor, Classmates
Length: 1000+ words
Article: Product personality and its influence on consumer preference by P.C.M. Govers and J.P.L. Schoormans

This assignment should have two main parts:
I. A brief (100-150 words) summary of the main idea of the article. (Do not base this summary on the abstract of the article.)

II. An analysis of the article, taking into consideration the following points from the Johns article:

• How does the article introduce the main topic and argument? What assumptions do the writers seem to make about the audience?
• How do the authors situate their study in relation to other research that has been done in their discipline (or in other disciplines)? How do they use their sources?
• What kinds of specialized language does the article use, and how does that language indicate who the audience of the article is meant to be?
• How do the authors use metadiscourse to direct readers through the text?
• How do the authors use hedging tactics when presenting arguments or conclusions? What are the effects of that hedging?
• How are the authors “absent” from the text? How do they use grammar and lexis to distance themselves from the text? Alternatively, how are the authors “present” in the text? How do they appear as people with particular lived experiences? How do their decisions about whether or not to be present in their texts affect your confidence in their objectivity? (Does objectivity even seem to be a concern for them?)
• What “vision of reality” do the authors present, and how does it represent the assumptions of the authors’ discourse community? How does the article represent, in other words, how the authors think like ________ (architects, accountants, biologists, engineers, etc.)?

Format:

Your paper should follow the format for scholarly articles in your discipline. See the links on Blackboard for help and/or look at the format of the article you are analyzing.

Grading Criteria for Project Two:

• Appropriate article chosen for analysis (research article published in a peer-reviewed scholarly journal)
• Summary demonstrates careful reading and a clear understanding of the article
• Analysis demonstrates careful reading and an understanding of both the article and Johns’ discussion of academic textual practices
• Demonstrates careful crafting, including formatting, with respect for student’s primary audience
• Shows effective use of citation conventions appropriate to the discipline (proper use of quotation marks, references) APA
• Includes thoughtful reflection

Reflection Letter:

When you submit the FINAL draft, please also write a reflection letter (1-2 pages) addressing what you’ve gained from writing this assignment. For your reflection, you should write about the process you went through in writing the disciplinary profile. Consider the following questions, but do not simply list out answers to the questions—rather, discuss the experience of writing and revising the project in light of the questions. Don’t be afraid to write about difficulties and even failures—sometimes we learn more from them than we do from success.

• What were some of the challenges that you faced as you worked on this project? How did you address those challenges–what did you do? Do you feel that you succeeded in meeting those challenges? Why or why not?
• How did the peer work help you revise your analysis? What about the peer work helped the most? (For example, getting feedback in writing, discussing your projects with each other, seeing how partners were addressing the same assignment…) What didn’t help (if anything) and why?
• Consider your experience with this project in light of the Writing Program Student Learning Goals. (See the syllabus for the list of the goals.) Which of the goals do you think this project has addressed? How? (Be specific.) Note: I don’t expect that this project has enabled you to “master” any of the goals (some of the goals are ones that take years to master—if ever). But you should consider how you might have made some progress on some of the goals.

Additional Files:

article_project_2.pdf

6 Pages

APA- 4 References