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Joel Abad
Professor Wolcott
ENC 1102
April 9, 2015

Genre Analysis

In order to be a part of the discourse community of being a Physical Therapist you must
be able to communicate with the people within that discourse community as well as be able to
read and interpret genres within that discourse community. Dr. Devitt who has published many
articles on genre defines it as A dynamic response to and construction of recurring situation, one
that changes historically and in different social groups that adapts and grows as the social context
changes (Devitt 580). This definition perfectly describes the genres I have chosen from the
discourse of physical therapist which is research reports. The 3 research reports I have chosen
come from the American Physical Therapy Association and those who are published in this
article are researchers that work with professionals and conduct studies to benefit physical
therapists today like what the best treatment for an injury is or what is best for a patient to return
to their full potential. The research has to be correct and peer reviewed in order to be published
in the journal. are written by professionals in the field. The purpose of this paper is to understand
the content within the genres of research reports within the discourse community of physical
therapy and by doing this it will give us a better understand as to why the research are written the
way they are and how it benefits those within the discourse community.
The three reports all come from the same physical therapy journal and are all very similar
since it is research done in the field. These reports explain the process and the results of this

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research in depth, these reports also explain why the research was done in the first place. Finding
these articles were not too difficult, that is because the university I attend which is the University
of Central Florida pays big money for subscriptions to these academic databases. Not just anyone
can access these research reports, if my school would not have provided me with this resource I
would have had to pay a lot of money in order to be able to find the research reports I have. The
articles within these academic databases are written by professionals in their fields and the
articles they write are peer reviewed in which their peers decide whether the information on the
article is valid and whether the article should get published or not.
All three reports I found within these academic databases are on research within the field
of physical therapy. This research advances the knowledge that is already known about
rehabilitating patients since these experiments show what is best, what should be done, or if
some methods work better than others. For example one research report is Does Cardiac
Rehabilitation After an Acute Syndrome Lead to Changes in Physical Activity Habits? Written by
multiple professionals within the discourse community of physical therapy. This research was
done to see what different types of cardiac rehabilitation would benefit the patient by changing
their physical activity habits especially in patients that had an Acute Cardiac Syndrome (ACS).
Improving physical activity habits in patients is extremely important especially for those that had
ACS in which can lead to a healthier heart and lifestyle. The second research report is called
Habitual Physical Activity of Independently Ambulant Children and Adolescents with Cerebral
Palsy: Are They Doing Enough? This article was written by professionals in the field of physical
therapy. This research is done to report whether or not ambulant children and adolescents with
cerebral palsy do the recommended 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous exercise a day. The last
report is called An Investigation of Cervical Spinal Posture in Cervicogenic Headache. This

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report was also written by professionals. This report is to determine whether Cervicogenic
Headache (headache originating from the cervical spine) is related to your posture.
Im going to tell you how these three articles are alike and different. The genres are laid
out fairly simple, on the cover page is says the name of the research done in big bold letters and
under it who wrote the report. Then you can see some words that are bigger than the text and are
bolded, they are words that help you find out more about the research done like Background
and Method. Next to the words is the explanation like the background of the research or the
method they used in the research. All three genres have a column off to the side of the front page
have brief summaries of each of the professionals and their credentials that contributed to this
research to give this report credibility. I believe all these similar aspects of the genre are included
because in the passed there has been reoccurring rhetorical situations that have lead the
publishers of this report to include this information. For example there might have been a lot of
controversy on how they chose the test subjects or why they are doing the experiment in the first
place so they include in bold the study selection and the background of the experiment. Since
this seemed to have work this is included in all research reports within the discourse community
of physical therapy. The differences between the genres is not much, one of the reports has
pictures and the other two does not, the picture helps you further understand the information that
is provided since it is the article about spinal cord headaches and it shows the difference between
the spinal cord of a healthy person without the headache compared to the spinal cord of someone
who does have this problem.
This text is mostly shifted to be for physical therapists, some of these research reports
have some words and phrases that many people wont understand unless being part of the
discourse community of physical therapy. In the passage written by Devitt she used the example

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of politics and the voting process. She explained that although the creators of the ballots try to
put explanations of the amendments and put words in a simpler from for the non-experts to
understand, there still is a gap between the two simply because it is almost always impossible to
understand language inside of a discourse community unless you become a part of it (Devitt pg
4). Even though it might be difficult to understand some words in the research study these texts
are available to anyone that has access to them since they are in a database it might cost some
money to access them. People that might want to see these texts are people that can relate to
them for example, a parent of a child that has cerebral palsy might want to know if their child is
doing enough exercise and how much is necessary so they would read the article Habitual
Physical Activity of Independently Ambulant Children and Adolescents with Cerebral Palsy: Are
They Doing Enough?. The parents reading this article could benefit their childs health
substantially since they might find out something they didnt know about the amount of exercise
their child with cerebral palsy has to do a day. The articles do benefit physical therapists but not
just physical therapists, whoever can relate to the research being done can benefit from the
articles. The journal that publishes these articles publishes brand new articles every month to
keep physical therapist updated on what is new within their discourse community and what
methods have been proven to work better than other when rehabilitating patients.
Genre helps those within a discourse community communicate, after doing this genre
analysis I realized that physical therapists benefit from these research reports this journal where
all these reports come from keep everyone in the discourse community of physical therapy
updated with the latest discoveries. All three articles are written almost identical, they have the
same things bolded and like I said before this is because of a repeated rhetorical situation that

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cause the research report to be structured how it is and benefits everyone who reads it. Doing this
analysis made me realize how important genres truly are in discourse communities.

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Works Cited
Devitt, Amy, Anis Bawarshi, and Mary Jo Reiff. "Materiality and Genre in the Study ofDiscourse
Communities." Diss. 2003. College English 65.5 (2003): n. pag. Print.