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AJ Stockwell
Professor Walcott
ENC 1102
18 February 2015
Genre Analysis
In the discourse community of economics, most people are concerned with what they
think different markets are going to do in the future. Although people often look to the past to see
the general trends, they only care about what is going to happen next. The genre that I am
looking at, academic articles in an economic journal, is mainly concerned with making an
argument about a hot topic that many people in the discourse community are concerned with.
The articles that I gathered were about three different popular topics. One is hedge funds, which
is a relatively new type of investment, which is why it is being discussed (Stulz). Another article
is about paying college athletes which has been discussed immensely recently amid many
scandals about college athletes taking money from schools illegally (Sanderson and Siegfried).
The final article is about the wealth distribution in the United States (Kopczuk). Amy Devitt,
associate professor of English at the University of Kansas states that, Genres develop, then,
because they respond appropriately to situations that writers encounter repeatedly (Devitt 576).
This means that genres are solutions to the different situations that writers face repeatedly. This is
obvious in my articles because they are all set up in almost identical formats and are used to
make an argument about a largely discussed topic. In this paper I will be discussing the
similarities and differences in the three articles and what that tells us about the genre.
Evidence

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All of these articles attempt to make some sort of argument about the topic they are
discussing. In order to make their arguments more effective, the authors of these articles need to
establish credibility. Doing so requires some sort of evidence. Every discourse community has
their own standards of what qualifies as evidence. In this case, all of my articles cited other
articles or scholars, used visual aids and used many numbers and percentages. This evidence
allows the writer to show that they have done their research and the readers can trust the
information that they are being given. All of these articles also end with a list of references which
also gives the author credibility. This discourse community cares a lot about credibility because
their professions are dealing with their own money and others money, so making sure they have
correct information is key.
Structure
Each of the articles is set up in the way that I have set up my own paper. They open with
an introduction to the topic they will be discussing and then the body of the paper is divided into
sections using headings. Each section heading is bolded and lets the reader know what they will
be reading about next. At the end of the articles, there is a list of references. In my case, I used a
works cited page which is slightly different from the references list used in the articles.
Setting
The way I found these articles was through searching a database that the UCF library
provides for its students. Although these articles were free for me to access, it still costs UCF
some money in order to have access to the journal for its students. After looking on the American
Economic Associations website, I found out that in order to give their students access to these
journals, UCF pays somewhere in between $760 and $940. This may not seem like a lot for a

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university the size of UCF, but one must consider the number of journals that UCF subscribes to.
If each journal is around the same price as this one, the costs would add up rather quickly. Giving
their students access to these journals allows the students to do research and reflects well on the
university, which in turn may bring in more students in the future.
Participants
In the genre of academic articles, the authors are usually professors or researchers in their
respective field. In my articles, the authors of all three were professors at universities in the
economics department. It seems as though these people are considered to have the best
information on these topics. Anyone may become a member of the American Economic
Association but in my opinion, they should have a pretty good grasp on economics and its
terminology. There were parts in my articles that I could not understand because of my limited
knowledge of economics. This is an exclusionary factor to the general public and one of the
things that makes this discourse community successful. If anyone could jump into economics and
succeed right away, there would be no need for people to go to college to learn about it.
Function in Discourse Community
In the discourse community of economics, academic articles are used to pass along
information to others that they would otherwise be unable to obtain. College professors, the ones
mainly writing these articles, most likely have more resources at their disposal in order to
research and learn more about different topics. Doing this research allows them to gain more
knowledge about a topic than other people have, which is why they write the articles. This genre
helps both the reader and writer. The professor is able to do research about a topic they are
knowledgeable about and write a paper in order to get credit for their findings, and the reader is

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able to gain knowledge about a topic that they would be unable to research deeper into
themselves. These academic articles also help members of the discourse community accomplish
their goals. The goals of the economic discourse community are two sided. The investors are
trying to make money not only for the client, but also themselves. Ideally, the investors can make
money for both parties. This is where academic articles come in. If the investors can read an
article to find out about some new opportunity or type of investment, they may be able to jump
on it quickly to accomplish both sides of their goals.

Conclusion
Economic professors seem to write academic articles about popular topics in order to
make an argument about them and inform others. This genre probably came about because
people know that economics professors have the best information about current events and the
professors were tired of answering the same questions many times. To combat this, they decided
that they would start writing their theories and ideas in articles and publishing them so that
people who want to know their ideas easily had access to them. This genre seems to be
successful in relaying information to people and seems to work well for this discourse
community which it is designed for. allowing members of the discourse community to
accomplish their goals. In order for a genre to be successful, it must be effective in the situation
for which it was designed. I think that this genre is in fact effective in the way that it is used by
this discourse community and will most likely be used the same way for a long time.

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Works Cited
Devitt, Amy J. "Generalizing about Genre: New Conceptions of an Old Concept." College
Composition and Communication 44.4 (1993) : 573-86. Print.