Audrey Yoder

Lang 120-003

Prof. Graves

Genre Analysis

In Teresa Thonneys academic paper, she analyzes the similarities that all good research

papers share regardless of the field. In the process she came up with six moves that the articles

authors all use. They are listed as followed: Writers respond to what others have said about their

topic. Writers state the value of their work and announce the plan for their papers. Writers

acknowledge that other might disagree with the position they've taken. Writers adopt a voice of

authority. Writers use academic and discipline-specific vocabulary. Writers emphasize evidence,

often in tables, graphs, and images. The goal of this paper is to compare my findings from the

three articles that I have chosen from the field of economics, and compare the results with that of

Thonneys. I purposely chose from three different subgenres of the same field to see whether

Thonneys argument still held. The first article I chose called Politician Family Networks and

Electoral Outcomes which was about predicting election results in the Philippines depending on

whether the candidate had a well known family name. I chose this one specifically because it

was the most different from the others, and more political science. The second article being

compared, Macroeconomic Impact of Population Aging in Japan, addressed the rising age gap

and how it may affect the Japanese economy in the long term. Lastly, the third research paper

called A Behavioral Economic Model of Alcohol Advertising and Price studied whether an

increase in alcohol advertisements would lead to a higher amount of consumption. This article

was focused more on behavioral economics.

 I concluded that overall, the similarities the articles share are: structure, referencing, APA

style citations, formality, and diagrams to demonstrate the data found. In the process I also

noticed that the authors of all three articles do in fact incorporate the five strategies that Thonney

addressed. Most importantly, the journal entries are all very similar in structure and style, yet

they do differ in some ways. For example, the article two about macroeconomics, does not have

a stated introduction, but the other articles do. Even after the introduction the articles deviate

from one another in small ways. They all list the data found and the formulas used to find it, but I

noticed that the third article, on behavioral economics, had entire paragraphs dedicated to

previous studies and theories. Of course the others also referenced outside studies but not quite to

the extent that the third journal did, which made it stand out to me. This did however reinforce

one of Thonneys points that outside sources must be referenced. After all of the data was laid

out in the articles, they of course as Thonney also predicted, had visual representations. Whether

a table or a graph, all the numbers were laid out in a way for easier interpretation by the

audience. All three articles then end with a standard conclusion, which generally states why the

research was important and how it contributed to their field.

The referencing of these outside sources not only addresses that the authors are building

off of previous studies, but it also gives them an authoritative voice on their subject. This allows

the writers to support their conclusions, an example of this occurs in article two about aging

impact in Japan states, Most existing studies do not explicitly incorporate this aspect...we adopt

the bonding-utility.( specification developed in Hansen and mrohorolu (2015). The authors

are specifically stating what they are adding to the field, which in this case happens to be

bonding utility. It is not referencing alone however that helps to give authors credibility in

their research. Formality in the way they right is essential. Jargon used in their fields are
expected to show up often and as I have now noticed, often they do not explain these terms for

the reader. There is no use of first person pronouns, and the writing style is straight to the point

rather than filled with fluff. When writing scientific papers, it is very important for students to

keep this in mind, as using I and We may throw all ethos out the door. Its also clear that the

authors intend the readers to have some type of background knowledge on the terms used. For

example, the study conducted on how family names influence elections in the Philippines often

uses the term central family without going into much description on what the term means. As

with other social sciences, APA citation format is used in all of the articles as well rather than

MLA.

Keeping Teresa Thonneys points in mind, I also did notice that in the conclusions the

articles did in different ways state that there could be disagreements with what they found or

addressed that some were results were too small to tell. The article about behavioral economics

and alcohol states that their research provides empirical data to support a behavioral model they

were testing. However, the authors also do address that The empirical data could also have been

generated by an alternate theory showing that there more ways to come to their conclusions

rather than the one model they tested. They also addressed that parts of the studies suggested

only weak evidence on some aspects of their predictions.

After taking all of the similarities that I found into account, I do support Thonneys idea

that there are six moves that academic writers should take. I noticed some more than others, but

the rules seemed to remain constant. Personally, I think that the six rules are very useful

guidelines and would have liked to have known about them last semester when I wrote short

assignments for my natural science courses. Speaking from my own experiences, it may be
beneficial to introduce these concepts to all incoming freshmen as they enter their first science

courses.