Luisa Gonzalez

Jarret Williams RWS 1302

February 3, 2016
Genre Analysis
Health, Medicine and External Factors
The chosen genres for this topic discussion were a book: All Is Well, and an online
academic article: Methodology for the development of a taxonomy and toolkit to evaluate
health-related habits and lifestyle (eVITAL). All Is Well, by Louise Hay and her co-author
Mona Lisa Schulz, focus on the health-related issues by outlining the connections and
correlations between emotional wellness and health and combining a series of
information on medical, holistic, nutritional and emotional health. Opening with a
personal letter from Louise addressed to her readers, All Is Well is a best-selling book,
which was published in 2013 by Hay House Inc. In contrast to this genre comes the
online academic article eVITAL by Federico Alonso, Carolyn O Walsh, Luis SalvadorCarulla, and the eVITAL group. This study is a more formal and scientific approach to
the discussed topic, which was published in 2010 by MBC Research Notes and provided
to the student body at the University of Texas at El Paso through the EBSCO database.
Research on the chosen topic is intended specifically, but not limited, to the course
of RWS 1302 under the teaching of Professor Jarret Williams with the purpose of
informing audience on the impacts that the daily lifestyle has on health, and to persuade
them to improve such in order to live a healthier and happier life. The book All Is Well
holds the main purpose of informing its audience the association between human
thoughts and health (Schulz, L.M) throughout an easy-to-follow structure that can be
easily understood by anyone, anytime and anywhere as the welcome statement from

Louise states. On the other hand, the eVITAL studys main purpose is to provide statistics
and demographics, based on 11 healthy volunteers within the Spanish population, in
order to develop a taxonomy and toolkit for the evaluation of health-related habits. This
study article is a complex scientific approach to the study on the impact of habits on our
health, and delivered in an upper-level and highly formal vocabulary which makes it
limited, in terms of understanding, to a more educated and scientific-oriented audience.
The use of rhetorical appeals and delivery methods can be seen throughout the
readings as one encounters with numerous emotional, credibility and fact examples. All
Is Well constantly refers to common health issues that the general public struggles with,
for example, undesired weight gain is discussed at a personal experience level to
sympathize with readers and evoke a feeling of understanding from the authors part.
Another example of how All Is Well makes use of the rhetorical appeals is by making
occasional comments or statements within the chapters on the authors, or co-authors
background and education. By mentioning Hays other international best-selling book:
You Can Heal Your Life, her profession as a metaphysical lecturer and teacher and her
title as the founder and chairman of Hay House, Inc., along with her Schulz mention of
her M.D and Ph.D., a practicing neuropsychiatric, associate professor of psychiatry at the
University of Vermont College of Medicine and author of three books, they successfully
provide their credibility to their audience and create a full platform of ethos. The final
appeal of logos is not as easily seen, but definitely present by the provision of a few
percentage and statistical numbers on the population which happen to struggle with
certain health problems, followed by statements of the estimated amount of individuals
that have actually improved their health and life by following their advice and instruction.

The logos appeal implicated as well as the reader encounters with statements from the
authors such as the importance medicine plays in healing, medicine has its limits,
technology makes mistakes too and technology without limits is folly. And intuition
alone is equally foolish because it gives an equal amount of importance to both healing
methods by not making derogative radical statements on any of them, and stating how
important maintaining a balance between both is.
The eVITAL study takes a different path regarding rhetorical appeals since its
intention is not to persuade but to inform. The use of logos and ethos is clearly present
with the provision of a visual timeline of the eVITAL project, the detailed process used
for the evaluation of health-related habits, and the background education of those
members in the working group dedicated to create the study as well. Working group
members hold M.D and Ph.D on Psychiatry, Internal Medicine/Endocrinology, General
Medicine, Sports Medicine and Obstetrics and Gynecology; further information on their
expertise is also stated being experts in the fields of mental health, diet, sleep and
sexuality, exercise, gender, disability, health and social policy. A mention of the
association by which the study took place, the Spanish Association for the Scientific
Study of Healthy Aging (AECES), and the institute that founded it, the Aging Institute of
the Spanish Ministry of Health and Social Policies (IMSERSO), further legitimizes the
ethical base of the research. The use of pathos has little to no presence in this genre since
its purpose is not to persuade or sympathize with readers but to inform and provide
clinically experimented facts.
The structural form of any discourse and how it is being presented to the audience
is crucial as this will be a contributing factor to the amount of attention a reader will give

to the material and on the throughout understanding of it. All Is Well does an outstanding
work to deliver the desired information by strategically approaching its audience as soon
as it reaches a self-evaluation questionary, which works in their favor to further involve
the readers. The questions provided are related to the body health and the lifestyle of the
rader; some examples of these include direct health questions that are most likely to be
answered with yes or no, such as Do you have osteoporosis? to more personal
questions such as Does change make you nervous? that might be subject to the readers
personal judgment. With this, they accomplish their goal of hooking up readers into what
they will say due to that the self-assessment leaves them with a sense of wonder and
curiosity regarding the solutions, opinions and advice the reader will provide as the
reader goes through the book. The approach of delivery from the eVITAL study is
contrastingly different from All Is Well since it is more proximate to that of the scientific
method. The study is delivered in a formal, well organized and detailed structural form
that includes the step-by-step process that was taken to accomplish such, accompanied by
a couple of visual aids. The research questions in the process however, are limited to a list
of grouping names that include self-assesment, basic primary care, intensive primary
care, and speciality care, with no further specifications on what the questions in each
group were.

Since both genres experience some lack of a certain rhetorical appeal, they
complement each other by providing some missing and maybe wanted information that
the other one might not contain. If it were to come to the point of being limited to only
one of these genres as the main source of the research, choosing Hays All Is Well would
make more sense since it offers more information, rhetorical appeals are by far more
present, and the material is presented in a more accessible format that can be easily
understood by all audiences. This personally demonstrates the importance of the genres
one decides to choose as the ground-base of the desired topic or research, since it will
eventually somewhat reflect on your finalized work due to the influence it will have on

the way your information is presented.

Sources

Hay, L.L., Schulz, M.L. (2013) All Is Well. United States: Hay House, Inc.

Alonso, F., Walsh, C.O., & Salvador-Carulla, L. (2010). Methodology for the
development of a taxonomy and toolkit to evaluate health-related habits and lifestyle
(eVITAL). BMC Research Notes, 383-87.