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Project 2: Artifact Analysis
Due: Draft: 8:00 am on Monday November 20th Final Sunday November 26
th by 11:59 p.m.
Project 2: Artifact Analysis
Context & Purpose:
In the future, you will encounter many rhetorical problems (exigences) that you’ll have to
respond to, such as a research prompt in a psychology course or a request for a cover letter to
accompany a job application. The good news is that while these problems might be new-to-you
they’re not entirely new, meaning that others have encountered and used language to navigate
and respond to similar rhetorical problems.
And Dirk agrees. Dirk cites Amy Devitt’s point that “‘no writing class could possibly teach
students all the genres they will need to succeed … [thus there is] value [in] teaching genre
awareness rather than acquisition of particular genres’” (259; emphasis added).
Instructions:
First, read this assignment sheet in its entirety, including “Project 2, Part 2: Writing” on the next
page. Be sure to understand the concepts and questions outlined. Get a clear picture in your mind
of the destination the assignment is guiding you toward.
Second, (re)read each article in its entirety, keeping in mind the questions below. As you read,
make a note each time you notice the writer making a choice that contributes to the structure/path
of the article. You should use this page to help formulate some short answers to the questions
that seem most important. As you answer a question, return to both articles to find specific
evidence for your answers. In other words, locate the parts of the articles that made you answer
the question the way you did.
Part 1:
Artifact Analysis
The first major stage of this project involves rhetorically analyzing a set of artifacts (texts) to get
a sense of the kinds of moves authors make in different genres and contexts/disciplines. This is
building on the skills we developed in Project 1 where we rhetorically analyzed text in terms of
identifying the Rhetorical Situation. Now, we will use those skills and continue our analytical
work by Reading Like a Writer to identify Conventions of Academic Discourse as we engage
in the process of Navigating Genres.
Bunn gives us ways into this work, and Thonney models what this work looks like.
To be clear, we’re shifting gears from making use of a text (as we did in Project 1) to now
reading texts in order to learn how different genres are composed and what sorts of moves
writers in academia make.
ARTIFACTS:
“The Societal Role of Meat—What the Science Says” by Peer Ederer and Frédéric Leroy
“Our Moral Duty to Eat Meat” by Nick Zangwill
Part 2: Writing
The Project 2 artifacts were written by different authors and explored various ideas. You spent
time considering the choices each author made, and what might have motivated those choices.
You’ve thought about the exigences that each article might be responding to, the audience each
article might be addressing, and the strategies of language each author is employing. Now that
you’ve cataloged a number of these observations, you will write an essay in which you
synthesize those observations to describe the role of genre in academic writing.
Your paper should reflect a clear consideration of both articles in the context of our class readings
and discussions, writing that demonstrates you have “read like a writer,” as well as thoughtful
reflection on how your own writing process compares to and is being influenced by the concepts
and examples we are exploring in this class. Clear analysis of the genre choices of the author in
each artifact text, rather than an analysis of the topic of the artifacts.
Use the questions below to help you organize your analysis but remember your work should not
appear as a list of answers to questions; it should be a fully realized exploration of how your
comparison of two articles contributes to your understanding of genre in academic writing. Give
specific examples from the articles to support your thinking and claims.
• How does each rhetorical situation suggest the use of particular genre conventions or the
making of certain rhetorical choices? Or, how does each rhetorical situation seem to
discourage the author from making certain kinds of choices? (Think about how the
artifacts’ audiences, exigences, and contexts inform the boundaries of the artifact’s
genre.)
• Why do you think some patterns in conventions are shared across artifacts? Why do you
think some are unique?
• Thonney claims academic writers make six moves. Do her claims hold up? Why or why
not?
• How do the moves you catalogued differ from moves you make as a writer?
• To what degree — if any — has the rhetorical analysis of these artifacts given you new
ways of conceptualizing how to write?
Technical Requirements and Format:
Your paper should be between 1000 and 1250 words (4-5 pages). It should be double-spaced and
follow MLA 9 formatting rules. Standard 1-inch margins, 12-point font, header, and page numbers
are required. Do not include a title page. A Works Cited page is required and does not count toward
word/page count.
• See the following link for details and instructions on how to properly format your paper.
https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/mla_style/mla_formatting_and_style_g
uide/mla_formatting_and_style_guide.html
Additional Resources:
• Your peers’ feedback (+ office hours*)
• The Writing Center – FREE tutoring for writing
• Guides from the UNC Writing Center
*Not required but recommended and encouraged.