Meta Analysis

My main goal for writing this scientific blog post was to repurpose the information given to me by the IPCC through their technical paper, titled “Climate Change and Biodiversity.” Their paper was main informative, and remained in the first stases throughout its entirety (the stases of definition and cause). I wanted to give this information a reason for being- a reason that the common person (rather than climate scientists, who the technical paper was originally directed towards) should care about the affect of climate change on biodiversity. That meant I was going to attempt to shift the stases to value, which I would achieve through a focus on the other states of cause and policy.

The first strategy I implemented, to make the information available for the public sphere, was to define my audience. I would love to have my blog be read by every person on this earth, but that is unrealistic- so I chose a specific margin of people I felt would care and would read it, and wrote my article towards them. I specified that my audience was for the lay-person of an average education, so I did not bother defining some terms in their entirety (I made the assumption that they would know what ‘solar power’ was, for example). I also specified that I wanted my audience to be those people from America, whereas the audience for the technical paper was the entire world (The authors were from about 10 different countries themselves). I did this by offering examples from the USA, such as New York and Chicago. The Northwest Passage is also concerning North America, which I establish right off the bat. All of the measurements I use in miles, rather than kilometers as well. 

Intertext was very important to me. I noticed heavy use of intertext  through my analysis of other’s scientific blogs, and implemented it in mine to help build my credibility. By referencing other texts directly and quoting certain people (being sure to note their impressive titles), I was hoping that their own credibility would direct reflect upon me- that since I included their knowledge in my text, the rest of what I wrote would be equally as ‘based in science’.  I also recontextualized a couple of these texts- for example, I situated the IPCC’s idea that trees absorb carbon dioxide within Biello’s description of Chicago’s green roofs- showing that it wasn’t just a conjecture, but an actual possibility that has already been implemented. By recontextualizing, I hoped to show my audience that these ideas made sense in a real-world sense, and weren’t stuck in a hypothetical situation.

I made sure to carry my themes throughout the blog post. I did not explain a point just to have it be unused- I made sure to apply it and show my audience that climate change comes full circle. Something that helped me to do this was to use consistent language. Once I explained the meaning and significance of a word, I used it throughout the rest of my post. You’ll see this with the words “Biodiversity” and “Greenhouse gasses”. This use of consistent language will help my audience follow through and make connections on their own (that I didn’t point out to them). This was instrumental- I felt that if my audience took some active part in realizing the value of the information I was giving them, it would be more significant to them.

Above all, what I attempted to do in my blog post was give the climate situation some sort of relative significance that was valuable to my audience. For that, I was almost blatantly obvious- at times I even said “this is important because…” rather than finding some roundabout way to demonstrate the significance to them. A challenge that I met was that I could only list so many examples of hypothetical situations- potential superstorms and droughts- and tying the information to human concerns – condominiums, the economy- to demonstrate the value of this knowledge. Part of my blog post was to help my audience realize the intrinsic value of this information, which I attempted to by sprinkling human interest throughout. The pictures provided a sort of visual detail that may have sparked pathos or ethos in my writing.

The rhetorical situation I which called my blog post into being- other than being necessary for my grade in my ENC4404 class- is that there is a significant lack of value attached to the idea of climate change when it comes to the average person. I worked within my many constraints (audience limitations, my own understanding of the information, etc) to provide this information to my audience.

Works Cited

  Bazerman, Charles. “Intertextuality.” What Writing Does and How It Does It: And Introduction to Analyzing Texts and Textual Practice, Ed. Charles Bazerman and Paul Prior. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2004. 83-96.  

 Fahnestock, Jeanne and Marie Secor. "The Stases in Scientific and Literary Argument." Written Communication 5.4 (Oct 1988): 427-443.

Grant-Davie, Keith. “Rhetorical Situations and Their Constituents.” Rhetoric Review 15.2 (Spring 1997): 263-279. 

Killingsworth, M. Jimmie, and Jacqueline S. Palmer. "Transformations of Scientific Discourse in the News Media." In Ecospeak: Rhetoric and Environmental Politics in America. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois U P, 1992. 133-160.