Susli Leon
Zack De Piero
Writing 2
May 29, 2016
Self-Analysis
Within each and every genre there are conventions that
target a certain audience. For this reason, to transform an abortion article
into a youth’s brochure and an adult’s bible, I had to not only change the setting
of the article, but also change the structure, the diction, and the tone. The
goal was to eliminate any trace of the conventions of the abortion research
article, without changing its meaning. To make this transition, I had to
manipulate the perspective of my targeted audience by incorporated my own word
choice, imagery, tone, and many other conventions that each transformation
required.
For my youth’s transformation I decided to create a young
teen’s clinic brochure. I knew that because of my intense topic my targeted audience
had to be limited to young children in middle school. My peers helped me realize
that targeting an audience younger than middle schoolers would have been forced
and unrealistic. Due to the high increase of sexual activity in young children,
I decided to go with a clinic brochure that would be handed out after a sex-ed
class. For this reason, my brochure is
not merely based on abortion, but also has other material that would be offered
in a sexual education class. To establish the audience for this brochure, I
used specific “Moves” to differentiate this clinical brochure from that of an
adult. As a way to emphasize the young teenage audience for this brochure, I
concentrated on the wording, the appearance, and the way I presented my information.
In the brochure I implemented simple wording. Because my
brochure is intended for the middle school population, I had to use short simple phrases to
explain the topics, and bullet points to eliminate huge paragraphs. By doing
so, I made it easier for the younger population to read and understand. As for the
appearance, I strayed away from lengthy paragraphs, and boring colors. I had to
get the attention of the middle school population, and persuade them to want to
read my brochure. For this reason, I used a pop of color and numerous pictures
to catch their attention. To explain my information, I used headings and bullet
points to make the information they are interested in reading easy to find.
The beginning of my brochure begins with the name of the clinic
and a friendly picture. The name of the clinic is the same name as the organization
that was provided in the abortion research article. The friendly picture
provided serves as a way to perceive the clinic as friendly and welcoming to
teens. At the bottom of the picture I used the researcher’s name as the Dr.’s
name to show that the information from both the research article and the brochure
were from her. The brochure then proceeds by incorporating helpful information
for teens. The columns are organized from different protective barriers to use
in sex, to methods available to prevent an unwanted pregnancy. For this reason,
the first column discusses contraceptives, the second column discusses Plan B,
and the third discusses abortion.
To
stay true to the original article, I incorporated the main focus of Shellenberg’s
research in the abortion column. Shellenberg’s main argument concentrated on
how stigmas effect the experiences and perspectives women go through abortion.
To represent this claim, the abortion column informed girls of the stigmas that
surround abortion, as well as the positive and negative effects of abortion. Its
purpose is to inform teens of facts about abortion so they are fully informed
and un-influenced by stigmas when making an important body decision. To help convey
this, I used McCloud’s methods presented in Writing
with Pictures. For example, I used choice of moment to decide the
information that was important to incorporate and the information that was
unnecessary (McCloud 157).
I
had to choose which moments discussed by Shellenberg flowed the best with my
clinical brochure. Is it more important to include how Shellenberg did her
research or the results she got from her research? I decided to include the results
of Shellenberg’s research. Shellenberg discovered that the way a community perceives
abortion effects the women’s experience with abortion. If a community is
religiously against or shameful towards abortion, women will feel guilty and
hide the fact that they have had an abortion. After abortion, the community’s
response will also cause fear. Women will begin to fear that they will not be
able to have another child, as well as that they are unworthy of marriage. To
represent all these aspects, I had choose the words I wanted to use in my frame
correctly (McCloud 158). In a clinical brochure I cannot speak about religion,
nor have a biased opinion about abortion. Which is why I chose to state the
stigmas, then state both the pros and cons of abortion to allow women to make
their own decisions without any false claims or fears.
For
my second transformation, I took in consideration the religious stigmas that
were discussed in the article. Because of Schulenburg’s research, it was
discovered that religious communities have a negative perspective on abortion,
and therefore women who abort have a fear of being punished. To represent this religious
effect, I decided that my adult transformation would be a bible. To create the
bible effect, I had to do as Losh and Alexander suggested, and change the identity
of the research article (Losh 145). I changed the role of the article, and fit
the ideas and circumstances into the new genre and audience (Losh 149). How did
I do this? Well like in the youth’s transformation, I had to change the word
choice and choose a flow that fits best with the image of a bible. The bible
usually includes a lot of stories that teach the word of God. In order for the
transformation to be effective, I had to change the flow of the research paper
into the flow of a story. I made this possible by incorporating a beginning, a
middle, and end to my bible transformation. I began with a story of a king, then
followed the purpose of the story, which was how the king aborted the child of
his wife, and I ended the biblical story with a lesson – how aborting a child
was considered murder and thus will not go unpunished.
In
order to stay true to the structure of a bible, while incorporating the
information from the original article, I had to use transitions, sentence
numbers, and dialogue. The transitions, were used to move the biblical story
along. For example, I used therefore to infer that the previous part of the
story leads you to this specific section. The sentence numbers were used to
number of each sentence. In an original bible, all the sentences have number to
use as references when orally citing, so I included them to stay true the
original structure of a bible. Lastly, I used dialogue to represent the biblical
story presented in most common bibles.
Transforming
an abortion article into a clinical brochure and a bible took a lot of trial
and error. It was very time consuming to see what information works and what
does not. Transforming has a lot, if not almost all, to do with the targeted audience.
A clinical brochure for adults would look very different to that of a clinical
teenage brochure. For this reason, audience is everything. Knowing your audience
guides you through the rest of the transformation. It helps you figure out what
information is necessary and which is not, what language is appropriate, how the
structure should look, and so much more. Without any knowledge of the preferred
targeted audience, transformation like those are rigorous to complete.
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