Jocelyn Ramirez

Zack De Piero
Writing 2
December 4th, 2015
Did You Drink Alcohol Before You Were Twenty-one?
Lets not fool ourselves here, most Americansespecially if they go to collegewill
have consumed some amount of alcohol before the age of twenty-one, and why shouldnt they?
Raising or lowering the minimum legal drinking age is a topic debated among many people in
academic and non-academic settings. As a genre, academic papers can be formal, complex, and
lengthy. On the other hand, non-academic articles as a genre, specifically for mainstream media,
contain their own conventions but usually consist of short, easy to understand texts. When
discussing the minimum legal drinking age, many authors within different disciplines
economics, public health, and entertainmentuse various studies as evidence, different jargon,
and moves to effectively persuade the majority of their specific audience into accepting their
argument.
The primary similarity between two academic articles of different disciplineseconomic
and public healthand a non-academic article from Time Magazine is the use of evidence to
support their argument. Jeffrey A. Miron and Elina Tetelbaum discuss old research used to
change the current legal drinking in their article, Does the the minimum legal drinking age
really save lives? from an economic stance. For example, the first table the economists use is
titled, MLD\A Levels in States after Repeal of Prohibition, 1933 to provide some historical
background to their argument. Because their discipline is economic, one of the most important
conventions for Miron and Tetelbaum to include is factual data in the form of demographic and

quantitative tables to provide credibility to their argument and themselves, in front their
audience-other economic scholars interested in the legal drinking age.
From the public health service discipline, Drew K. Saylor also uses evidence to argue for
the need to maintain the minimum legal drinking age in her article, Heavy Drinking on College
Campuses: No Reason to Change Minimum Legal Drinking of 21. In a slightly different way
from the economists, Saylorfrom her public health backgrounduses other public health
studies to contradict lowering the drinking age, previous experiences with lowering the MLDA,
both here and abroad, indicate that there are serious repercussions in terms of increased alcohol
use and its related social and public health consequences. Saylors direct audience are scholars
from the public health service discipline who only recognize authors that use specific research to
validate their point of view.
Using a slightly different type of evidence as Saylor, Tanya Basu from Time Magazine-a
mainstream magazine-writes about continuing the current drinking age in her article, Does the
Drinking Age Affect Dropout Rates?. As evidence, Basu summarizes recent studies, The study
shows that in the run-up to the landmark 1984 act, states with lower minimum drinking ages saw
higher high school dropout rates to verify her claims. Saylor and Basu dont need exact
figures with numerous numbers on them to aid their argument in their fields, but they do need
research to justify the arguments they make. Because all of these authors are making an
argument, they include evidence to support their claims, but their discipline and audience
determines what kind of evidence is used. Mike Bunn from How to Read Like a Writer states,
Because the conventions for each genre can be very different, techniques that are effective for
one genre may not work well in another (113). Even though Miron and Tetelbaum, the
economists, and Saylor wrote the same genrean academic paperthey use different types of

evidence due to their varying fields. In the same way, Time Magazine cant have a twenty-one
paged article with complicated graphs because their audiencebusy, ordinary Americans
probably wouldnt read one page of it. Each author caters to their discipline and audience in
various other ways to create an article that will persuade the readers.
These articles contain many differences, however the primary difference is the jargon
within each article and genre. Janet Boyd author of Murder! (Rhetorically Speaking) defines
jaron as, the terminology used by those in a particular profession or group to facilitate clear and
precise communication (85). The vocabulary within the academic articles is complex and very
specific to the disciple. Miron and Tetelbaum from the economic article use plenty of terms from
their field that are easily familiar to other economists, Though not significant, this decrease
predates the adoption of the MLDA21 across states, as illustrated by the negative coefficients on
the binary indicators dating back 6 yr before policy enactment. The use of their jargon-predates,
coefficients, binary-creates difficulty for readers other than economic scholars to understand the
essence of the argument, detaining non-academic individuals from being interested in the article.
As the second academic article, the author in the public health service field uses vocabulary that
is easier to understand but can still be confusing for the general public, First, a comprehensive
body of research supports MLDA 21, whereas there is little convergent evidence that other
interventions or policies...could work on the same broad level. Even though the general
audience can understand most of the language within academic articles, their lengthy format and
scholarly jargon make it difficult for non-academic readers to follow the argument or even be
interested.
On the other hand, the short, easy to comprehend terms in the Times article allows anyone
interested to fully understand the opinion of the author. For example, Basu, the writer of the

Times article, states, As Plunk notes, minorities are already more likely to face obstacles to
crossing the graduation stage, such as poverty and dysfunction; lowering drinking ages seems to
magnify that effect. Basu uses the author of the study as her source to efficiently state one of the
main problems of lowering the drinking age, but consistently selects words that can be
understood by most readers.
Saylor, from the public health field, executes a distinct move throughout the format of her
article, which is to use transitions to differentiate the three arguments that validate her position
on changing the drinking age. She starts off by stating a part of the argument, expanding on it
with evidence, and summarizing it, all throughout using transition phrases-first, in particular, in
short, and so on. The authors of As a Result affirm, In all of our years of teaching, weve read
countless essays that suffered from having few or no transitions, but cannot recall one in which
the transitions were overused (127). Saylors article is successful because it combines both
academic and straightforward language, that can be recognized by both scholar and common
audiences in an effortless flow of writing.
Furthemore, Basus formatting move is to compose paragraphs that are three to four
sentences long. Even though it may seem to be a small move, it is pretty important because it
allows for the audience of Time Magazine to gain information quite quickly. Because most of the
magazines audience wants to understand, scroll, and accumulate information quickly, Basus
move allows most readers to accomplish all three objectives and to be more likely to accept
Basus argument.
Non-academic articles identical to the one from Time Magazine can be extremely
successfulespecially for current generationsbecause as a society, everyone is much less
likely to read a technical, twenty-plus page research paper on any topic, even if they are

interested on the topic. On the other hand, quickly scrolling through a five-hundred-word article
that will hopefully be able to accurately inform a large audience on a controversial topic is a
much preferable source of reading. And in the same fashion, anyone that is a scholar most likely
wouldnt even bother to read a mainstream magazine, because even though, a vast audience will
be able to gather information from this genre, academics wouldnt be able to recognize these
types of articles as legitimate. Because Time Magazine articles and similar magazines use
academic papers or different studies to justify their claims, without these tedious articles there
wouldnt be short, understandable articles. The similarities and differences between academic
and non-academic articles on a specific topic such as, the legal drinking age, is what produces
effective texts that persuade specific audiences.