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Original
Annalia Foster
ENC 1102H
3 March, 2016
Medical Genre Analysis
To properly analyze any genre, the definition of genre, discourse
community and rhetorical situation must be completely explained as
discourse community and rhetorical situation work to build and identify a
genre. All three components are taken into consideration when analyzing a
scientific genre such as a medical research article.
A genre is a tool used to express a cluster of ideas in a discourse
community and develops due to rhetorical situation. Based on that definition,
it sounds like the only genres that exist are those that have to do with
academics and writing but there are so many things that are considered a
genre that shape our daily lives. A genre is a response to a recurring
situation. Bitzer says that comparable situations occur, prompting
comparable responses; hence rhetorical forms are born and a special
vocabulary, grammar, and style are established.(251) Once a genre is
created for the first call for that specific discourse, it then sets the standards
for addressing that discourse again. Each genre has specific characteristics
that belong to it and has its own layout and expectations but it is far more
complicated that filling in the blanks of a template. See, genres develop
overtime. Devitt points out that they respond appropriately to situations

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that writers encounter repeatedly. (252) A writer might encounter a different

situation but may need to use the same genre. The genre can then be
modified by the writer to fit the rhetorical situation while still retaining the
identity of the genre.
The development of a genre can expand its informational coverage.
This causes the genre to evolve for more effective communication. Mastering
the function of communication regarding genres can help people to better
reach their goals using their work. If one is to write with authority in a genre
it will not only ease communication, but it will prove more effective to the
audience it is received by. Genres evolve for more than just communication
though. A joke is a genre. The best ones, which can be considered the most
useful or evolved, have a punchline that makes the other person laugh. This
is a genre in everyday life. The specifics given about how genres provide
information and how they are structured applies to the things we dont write
down but are still considered genres. These genres are what are used to start
and maintain a discourse community.
A discourse community can have multiple genres that serve different
purposes. A discourse community itself is made up of people with similar
interests and a cluster of ideas. Herzberg defines discourse as a means of
maintaining and extending the groups knowledge and of initiating new
members into the group (21). Swales explains how this factors into discourse
communities in six points. The first is that a discourse community has a
broadly agreed set of common public goals. These may be high level or

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abstract. Not all people that share these goals are considered a part of the
same discourse community. To be included in the community they must
participate in the intercommunication among its members which is the
second point. Meetings, newsletters, conversations, etc. are considered
mechanisms of intercommunication. Bizzell counters the notion of
intercommunication by saying that they all fit a social-class-based or
ethnically-based discursive practice which makes them part of a discourse
community (25). The third point includes the existence of participatory
mechanisms that primarily provide feedback and information. Without
circulating information within the community the members would not know
what is going on within the organization, thus meaning that the members
wouldnt evolve with the discourse. The fourth point focuses on how
discourse communities utilize and possess one or more genres in the
communicative furtherance of its aims. These genres act as tools to develop
discoursal expectations. The fifth point refers to each discourse community
having a specific lexis. A lexis is regular jargon that people in a certain field
use that is not common in regular conversation. For example, surgeons have
a lexis that includes surgical terms that other medical professionals dont
use. This lexis is often learned while being in the discourse community and
during education before-hand. The final point describes a ratio between
novice and expert level members that ensure the survival of the discourse.
Once the expert level members leave the community, for whatever reason,

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the novice members then have the chance to become experts and modify
and evolve the discourse.
Rhetorical situation and genres go hand in hand. Rhetorical situation is
made up of exigence, rhetor, audience, and constraints. Exigence, in short, is
the need for the discourse to occur (Grant-Davie 266). Sometimes the
discourse is called upon to resolve a situation or to persuade. Exigence
individually does not have an exact definition, the term is widely abstract
which can make it difficult to extract what the exigence of a genre is. The
rhetor is a fundamental part of the rhetorical situation because they
compose the work. They must balance their thoughts, satisfying the
audience, accomplishing the exigence, and write within the constraints all
inside a genre. Usually a genre has widely known guidelines that assist the
rhetor but also can make it more difficult. The audience may be the most
difficult because there is an intended audience, an imagined audience, and a
real audience. The intended audience is who the writer is writing to. Usually
the work is intended for members of the rhetors discourse community since
the work would be written in a genre specific to that community. The
imagined audience is the audience that isnt mentioned and must be
deduced by the audience as well. The real audience is the people that
actually read it. For example, scholarly articles that are written for their
discourse community reach that community but other people read those
works to get to know more about that discipline. The final component of
rhetorical situation is constraints. A genre can naturally impose constraints,

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but the rhetorical situation usually sets the constraints for the work on a
deeper level concerning the rhetoric.
Rhetorical situation is what defines and develops discourse
communities. They are created based on an exigence and have an intended
audience. That audience has criteria or constraints that define it. The rhetors
of the discourse are those who fit the criteria given to them by the exigence
of the community. They are in that discourse community for a reason and
rhetorical situation develops this reason as time goes on. These two things
are so important when analyzing the genre because usually the genre is the
tool used to convey information, but now they are being used now to define
what a genre is and its function.
It has been said, by Matthew Allan, that scientific genres are not only
objective but subjective. I agree. Some scientific genres such as research
articles include rhetoric because they are used to persuade others that their
findings are important. Other scientific genres are almost completely
objective. I will be examining the genres used in the medical discourse
community which includes both types of scientific genres. Physicians dont
have many genres that help them to communicate with the other members
of their discourse community, but the accepted constraints of these genres is
that they must be concise and accurate. Patient information is usually the
discourse that is being communicated and if it is communicated incorrectly it
could be detrimental to the patients health and treatment. Experimental
results and claims must be communicated effectively too so that people

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have the most up to date information on illnesses, treatment, etc. Even

though these genres contain components of rhetorical situation it doesnt
change the fact that they must be objective to function. The fundamental
function of all genres is to communicate the information in the most efficient
way possible regarding the discourse. For medical discourse the objective
approach is aided by the genre, thus still making the form of the information
vital to how it is communicated.
The scientific genre I am analyzing is a research article about how
oxaliplatin-induced oxidative stress provokes toxicity in isolated rat liver
mitochondria. The purpose of this experiment was to investigate the dosedependent damage caused by oxaliplatin on isolated mitochondria under in
vitro conditions. Oxaliplatin is a common chemotherapy drug used to treat
cancer. It is thought to cause more harm than good because of the many
illnesses it causes. More research done on this topic is beneficial because it is
a general consensus throughout any medical discourse community that the
point of medicine is to help not to harm. The doctors and other medical
professionals can read this article and use the information to treat their
patient with a lower dosage of this toxin or use a different drug for
treatment.
This article is structured like other research articles with many
sections. These articles can be very long or very short, this one is on the
shorter side. It starts with an abstract that gives its background and aims,
methods, results, and conclusion. Rhetoric is used in that section to frame

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the rhetorical situation. Other sections such as introduction, background,

methods, results, and discussion were included. The introduction included
rhetoric by explaining why the experiment was being done, not only on the
scientific side but it gave reasons to persuade the reader that it was
beneficial. The methods and results sections are objective because they
contain factual information that is not bias. This is part of the genre. The
methods are chronological and extremely detailed. They included the
chemicals used and the many conditions the experiment was carried out in.
These details are written in the lexis of the medical discourse community
because they are the intended audience. It is not part of this genre to
simplify the language for others that will be viewing the articles because that
would make the concepts not as concrete and objective. The results are
explained in the same way. Numerous details with jargon are used to plainly
state exactly what the experiment yielded. They were accompanied by eight
different graphs that showed the quantitative data. The discussion part of
the article is another place where rhetoric comes in. There, it is stated
whether the hypothesis was correct or not. Then the results are analyzed by
the experimenter which can cause a bias in the writing. The results are linked
by the experimenter to the desired use of the experiment. Often when
writing a research article, experimenters try to use a correct hypothesis to
prove that the experimental results support the bigger picture of why they
were doing the experiment. They convey it as proving a scientific point, but
the act of doing so is persuading the readers opinion which is subjective and

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not factual. The writer is persuading the reader to view the results a certain
way. They are often trying to persuade that their results are useful for a
larger, more important cause than just the acquisition of knowledge. This
genre balances both objectivity and subjectivity better than other medical
genres.

Works Cited
Swales, John. "The concept of discourse community." Genre analysis: English in academic and
research settings (1990): 21-32.
GrantDavie, Keith. "Rhetorical situations and their constituents." Rhetoric Review 15.2 (1997):
264-279.
Dirk, Kerry. "Navigating genres." writingspaces 1 (2010): 249. Online.
Allen, Matthew C. "The rhetorical situation of the scientific paper and the appearance of
objectivity." Young Scholars In Writing 2 (2015): 94-102.