Joel Leon
ENC1102
All professions in different discourse communities must convey
information to consumers, customers, fellow professionals, etc… in one way or
another. Many discourse communities choose different genres to convey their
message, whether it is via a newspaper article, online journal, a patient medical
history form, or even a survey sheet. Regardless, these genres serve a mutual
purpose in responding to a repeated rhetorical situation in that specific
discourse community. A discourse community would not implement a genre to
present information if it was not going to bring benefits to that community.
Whether it is the police department, dentist office, or the Army Corps of
Engineers, each profession must see eventual gain from sharing ideas and
imposing genres that help that community strive to succeed and/or grow.
Genres allow the discourse community to act as a liaison between nonmembers
and members to further increase the knowledge of the community and possibly
of the nonmembers as well. Becoming a dentist has been a dream of mine and
I feel that to better understand my future profession, I must know how genres
are implemented and used and how it benefits the field of dentistry. After
extensive journal research, a psychological journal presented informative
articles on dentists that were written to increase the knowledge of those
bystanders interested in gaining perspective and as well as any curious dental
professional that wants to fine tune his communicative skills with child
patients in his/her office of work. This genre is intended to inform the reader,
whether professional dentist or not how to deal with constant child-dentist
behavioral patterns and trends.
When searching through an online psychology journal, I stumbled upon
an article titled, “Impact of Dental Atmosphere and Behaviour of the Dentist on
Children’s Cooperation”. For an average web surfer, stumbling upon this article
would probably not arouse any hint of interest and motive into reading it
because most likely that person is not in the dental profession and thus would
see no use in reading it. However, since the article is at the disposal of anybody
that chooses, it is written in a way that invites anyone to participate in reading
the text. Upon observation of the formatting of the article it was safe to say that
the authors who wrote it were not concerned with challenging the reader by
utilizing dentist office literacy. Although not completely omitted from the text,
dental specific vocabulary words are implemented sporadically throughout the
paper as if to remind the reader that it is in fact an article about dentists and
their everyday interactions with children. In order to read this article, the
reader does not need a Master’s degree in English literature, however, some
words may be considered advanced psychological terms. A person studying
dentistry may not have the same literacy type as a person in the psychology
field and vice versa. This article is not a walk in the park to read, but is
definitely not impossible and made clearly understandable to anybody that
takes the time to read it.
A well-written informative article usually encompasses the footprint of a
detail oriented author or authors. As an aspiring dentist I have to exhibit some
sort of neatness to my style. This article displayed that exactly. This is an
incredibly specific article and to corroborate the specifics in just the title, an
abstract is written to inform the reader about what he/she is about to read.
The abstract lets the reader determine if the article is worth reading. The
abstract is a semi-vague summarization of the article written without giving
away too much of the article. It is a gist of what the entire article states. It is
clear that the article writers intend on informing the reader without getting the
reader lost into the text because many subsections are titled and jump out to
the reader as a flag, indicating an important section of the article is
approaching. In this article, the experimentation to collect data of child
responses to dentist communication with them is done through observations of
pediatric dental appointments. The results were then posted onto the article in
the form of a bar graph. The graph displays to the reader how the dentists
communicated and how the children responded. It is safe to say that a dentist
wants satisfied customers, and by looking at the bar graph, I as the reader now
know what to say to a stressed out child at the dentist office to make him/her
cheerful and happy. I as the author would’ve now possibly helped spread the
knowledge through this genre to other dentists that may deal with a juvenile
and toddler crowd as well. Now the author has positively provided information
to readers who may be dentists or even other physicians that deal with
children. The author has now helped his discourse community because other
dentists can now make their customers happy as well, thus benefitting the
community as a whole.
It is clearly a repeated rhetorical situation when children visit the dentist
and dentists need to find a way to solve the issue at hand better communicate
with stressed out children. Dentist-to-child interaction happens quite
frequently and to combat the seemingly hostile connection, this article was
written with the intended purpose of informing the reader of how to have
children calm down and cooperate in the dental office. This article analyses the
direct correlation between office mood and atmosphere with that of child
cooperation; things that intersect many times.