Junior Olivieri

Writing Project 2
Writing 2: Zack De Piero

Discipline Shapes Framework

Even though all doctors go through mostly the same amount of education, what they
practice depends on the specialty they chose to focus on, such as surgery, psychiatry, or
neurology. Similarly, by the use of simple stylistic choices and tools, writers can frame their
work to focus the attention to aspects that most interests them and their field of study. As a topic,
drug abuse captures the attention of many researchers and writers throughout the world. Based
on specialty, however, individual writers tend to focus on various aspects of drugs the misuse of
them. Through the use of two academic sources from JSTOR.com, "Drug Enforcement and
Crime and "Stress, Motivation, and Drug Addiction as well as one non-academic source form
Vice.com, "This Neuroscientist Argues that Addiction is Not a Disease and Rehab is Bullshit", I
will show that academic discipline effects the writers structure, concepts, and data presented and
that undoubtedly, academic sources present an unbiased display of factual evidence in
comparison to non-scholarly sources.
The first scholarly reference that I found was Stress, Motivation, and Drug Addiction
by Nick Goeders. Since the article was published in a psychological journal, Goeders formatted
in in APA style which included an abstract to get you in the correct mindset, keywords for easy
search results, and in text citations with footnotes in order to give credit and allow access to
background information if desired. Focusing on the psychiatric aspect of drug addiction, the
paper discusses those who are most at risk for addiction, why they are more susceptible to
addiction, and how they experiment with the idea without abandoning research ethics in terms of

human subjects. Throughout the length of the research paper, Goeders uses elaborate language
such as, The CRH receptor blocker CP-154,526 also attenuates cue-induced reinstatement
(Goeders), that emphasizes that this is in fact a research paper written by professionals in their
field. More ordinary and simpler moves and conventions of this paper included the Psychology
Department name on the top near the paper title in order to somewhat tell the reader that the
more social dimensions of drug addiction will be focused on. There was also recommended
reading at the bottom in order to give other researchers the opportunity to double check and do
their own research.
The overall purpose of Goeders paper seemed to be to provide the general population
with new information regarding how stress can potentially be a cause of drug use and eventually
addiction. Likely, the audience would mostly be other researchers who are interested in this area
of study, those who support it and those who do not support it in order to find counter claims for
their own work. Being a scholarly article, the expectations from the reader are generally easy, to
be clear, informative, unbiased, and as accurate as possible. Goeders article does contain each of
these aspects classifying it as a scholarly article. In terms of being unbiased and informative,
Goeders explains that although many times drugs are seen as bad, in reality, however, stress
they are not always associated with negative events. (Goeders) Instead of simply playing along
with the stereotypical stigma of drugs, the statement offers an unbiased view of drugs.
Furthermore, in trying to be as accurate as possible, Goeders also uses hedged language such as,
On the surface, however, this hypothesis may appear somewhat counterintuitive. By giving
himself leeway and not explicitly claiming his claims are correct, if it is ever proven false, he
was not technically wrong.

For my second scholarly reference, I downloaded an article titled Drug Enforcement and
Crime: Recent Evidence from New York State that focused primarily on the implications of
laws and regulations pertaining to drugs and drug abuse. Throughout this article the two authors,
Shepard and Blackley used academic language consisting of primarily large words mixed with
abbreviations of various drug and other government agencies. Since it is an academic article
pertaining to legal activities the author chose, or was rather forced, to write in APA style. This
style includes in text citations as well as footnotes which references others work in their own in
order to add to their own credibility as experts in legal studies and social sciences. Academic
sources should primarily be unbiased, and this article clearly exemplifies credibility by listing
definitions exactly as they are and not elaborating based on personal feelings. When discussing
the data, the authors write, Time effects are also included by means of yearly dummies that
control for statewide changes affecting crime rates from 1996 to 2000. Failure to include
significant cross-section and time-series effects would yield biased coefficient estimates.
(Edward Shepard) Without implying personal beliefs on the topic, they simply report what the
states do and why they do it leaving it up to the reader to make an informed decision on what
they wish to think about it. Toward the end of the academic article, the authors identified the
research gap by stating that The findings also suggest possible directions for further research
(Edward Shepard). The move is essential to any research in the social science field in order to
provide other researchers opportunities to build upon your ideas.
As my second scholarly article, the purpose of this paper as well is meant to inform and
provide information regarding drugs and drug addiction. The focus for this piece however is
centered on the legal aspect and is meant for those who are currently trying to uphold or overturn
certain laws pertaining to substances. According to the article, contrary to the normal rhetoric

when discussing dugs and addiction, studies have begun to suggest that drug enforcement will
reduce crime, while others suggest that drug enforcement will lead to more crime. (Shepard).
By stating this fact, this scholarly piece is exemplifying the unbiasedness that is required by all
academic articles. When first reading the title, audiences expectations, or mine at least, was that
the author would not only go into specific laws and regulations but also specific statistics for the
state of New York. Evidence about crime rates, drug arrests, and related determinants of crime
were collected for 62 counties in New York State for the years 1996-2000. A substantial amount
of research has documented positive correlations between illicit drug use or sales and other types
of crime, with a high percentage of arrested persons testing positive for illicit drug. The
reference to New York not only fulfill readers expectations, but also provides solid evidence and
unbiased reporting of how drugs are affecting a state in the United States.
Vice is a Mainstream media news outlet that reports on stories that often go unreported
form regular media outlets, which in and of itself separates it from the two scholarly articles. The
very first convention I noticed different from the academic sources was the use of academic and
colloquial language, particularly in the title. Not only does Vice use words and phrases that are
more easy to understand and typically heard around day to day conversations, but it also uses
vulgar language, which is very divergent from typical new sources as well as academic sources.
For example, in the arguable most important aspect of the article, the title, This Neuroscientist
Argues That Addiction Is Not a Disease and Rehab Is Bullshit. Neil Sharma uses the word
bullshit when words such as irrational or simply dumb would have sufficed.
Furthermore, this article was styled in a question & answer format, interview style, rather
than just a normal article. For the questions, Sharma has bolded them followed by the Dr.s
answers in normal text right underneath. The questions asked by the Vice author are seemed to

be written in order to trigger a specific response in order to get the point across as soon as
possible. For almost all questions however Sharma gave a little bit of background at first, I've
never been to rehab, so I don't know much about the ways in which they treat patients
(Sharma). This aspect of the vice article I feel is particularly important because it lets the Dr.
make a more informed reply, and also gives us a stronger insight to the author while providing a
more reader-friendly type of argument. Lastly, different from the two academic sources, Vice
uses a different type of font that gives readers a more informative and less informal type of mood
while reading.
The primary target audience for the vice article I say would be those who are interested in
the issue of drug abuse but not generally experts in the field. Based simply on the website Vice
itself, finding information on a news website is generally not what expects normally do.
Furthermore, I do not believe that experts would be willing site this article because of the
language used. Though the article may have some valid points, by using vulgar language in the
title of all things may capture the attention of everyday people who like to see the norm
challenged, but it takes away from the professionalism.
One main difference that I found between the scholarly articles versus the mainstream
vice article is the use of hedged language that we talked about in lecture. Defined by my group
during our activity, hedged language is Hedged language is a way for writers to show readers
that they dont know everything about a given phenomenon. It gives the reader some leeway on
what they are saying. (Class Discussion). The scholarly articles, in order to gain and keep their
credibility, will often use statements such as These animal studies typically investigate
(Goeders) or There are numerous potential links between drugs, drug enforcement, and crime
(Edward Shepard). Compared to the vice article in which the doctor blatantly addresses things as

improbable, Treatment is inadequate. Opiate substitution doses are wrong (Sharma)The

differences between these two types of genres are evident throughout the entire paper and by
simply adding one or two words, the scholarly articles are definitely more reliable. Another
difference between the two types of articles is how relatable they are to the reader. Although the
scholarly articles do offer more information and better analysis of data and comparison of
theories, the Vice article is relatively easier to ready and flows better based on the font and
sentence structure. The length of paper has a big impact on how relatable it is. Based on the
nature of research papers, they generally need to be longer containing lots of technical
information to provide other researchers the opportunity to reproduce their experiments.
However, the Vice article is essentially an opinion piece about drug addiction so all the author
has to do is express the doctors view on the subject with no extra technical experimental
information.
Structure along with writing concepts all depend upon the area of study a writer is trained
in. Whether it be an academic discipline like legal studies or psychiatric studies or a nonacademic study such as the Vice article, the writer accomplishes their goals of getting
information out and expressing their viewpoint. In respect to their individual field, a writer can
shape the audiences viewpoint of a topic and potentially shape their frame of thinking as well.
For instance, as an article in a psychological journal, Shepards writing perspective focused
mostly on the personal and mental effects that drug addiction may have on a person. Goeders on
the other hand, being focused on law, was primarily concerned with the legality of drugs and the
implications drug laws can do to crime rates with no concern to the social science aspect of the
issue. Lastly, as a non-academic source, Sharmas Vice article focused on the controversial

aspect of drugs and drug addiction by bringing in an expert that totally turns the unbiased
convention of academic sources upside down.

References
Edward Shepard, Paul Blackley. "Drug Enforcment and Crime: Recent Evidence from New York
State." Social Science Quarterly (2005): 323-344.
Goeders, Nick. "Stress, Motivation, and Drug Addiction." Current Directions in Psychological
sciences (2004): 32-35.

Sharma, Niel. "This Neuroscientist Argues that Addiction is Not a Disease and Rehab is
Bullshit ." 4th December 2015. VIce.com. <https://www.vice.com/read/thisneuroscientist-argues-that-addiction-is-not-a-disease-and-the-rehab-industry-is-bullshit>

Writing 2 Feedback Matrix for WP2

Table of Textual Features and Qualities

Thesis Statement
Use of Textual Evidence from Genres
Use of Course Readings
Analysis
Organization/Structure
Attention to Genre/Conventions and
Rhetorical Factors
Attention to Moves
Sentence-level Clarity, Mechanics,
Flow
Comments and Grade

Did Not Meet

Expectations
X

Met
Expectations

Exceeded
Expectations

XXX
X
X
X
X
Junior,
Back from our first intro day in Writing 2
together, I think I remember you saying you
were interested in becoming a drug/substance
abuse counselor. If my memory serves me
correctly, Im really happy that you chose a
topic that means something to you. :)
OK, so to improve this paper for your portfolio,
my #1 suggestion is to tell me more about these
pieces -- what specific data did they collect?
Whatd they find? Whats going to be done
with their work? I dont feel like I learned
anything new about drug addiction from an
pychiatric or legal perspective -- help me
understand what theyre trying to teach us about
this issue. Get into the data. Get into their
RQs. What does it seem like each perspective
values with regard to understanding this topic?

Id also like you to consider: how can you lay

out your argument 1 (small) piece at a time so
your reader can best understand how your
argument plays out? Think to yourself: OK,
what are some ways (plural) to lay out this
paper, and which way (singular) would be the
best for me and my readers?
Im also pretty sure your paper was set to 1.25
margins, which eans that if it were at 1, your
whole paper length might be less than 5 pages
(the minimum).
Z
6.5/10