Our (Collin and Tory) Project is based around communications within the aquarist (professionals who care for aquatic life) discourse community, and communications from within this community to broad audiences. Our main line of investigation focuses on the rhetorical methods aquarists use in their writing to facilitate the transfer and delivery of their ideas in this scientific discourse. The main interest for this topic, stems from my (Collin) close relationship with the aquarium that has grown from a birthday party there when I was 8 all the way to two internships. We are both marine biology majors and have a deep and lifelong interest in this field of study. I (Tory) have a relatively less developed relationship to the aquarist community. I work in the wet lab here on campus, so my interaction with this discourse community is somewhat more isolated. We have thus far chosen three sources; a blog post written by an aquarist, a paper written by an aquarist, and an interview with an aquarist. The Member of our chosen discourse community that we are interviewing, is an aquarist at The New England Aquarium Quincy Quarantine Facility named Hannah Cutting. The questions that we have settled on are as follows:
What kinds of reading do you do in support of your work as an aquarist? What professional groups do you most often communicate with? What skills do you find to be most important in your day-to-day communications and work? What criteria do you use to determine what is relevant to read and what is not? What specific texts would be valuable for me to review and examine as part of my analysis? Are there analytical tools that you can recommend helping me better understand the variability and similarities of the genre style of scientific journals? Questions we have for you (Classmates) from your point of view: Are our questions clear and coherent? What other sources should we investigate/consider? Do you believe that there are any questions that we are missing that could be insightful?
1 Comment
Jacob Fies
2/25/2018 08:10:12 am
With what you have so far, I like where you are headed. I think it will be interesting to get someone’s point of view on this topic who isn’t in a typical “research” field, but more of a ”profession” (if that makes sense). Seeing the ways in which they choose to communicate, as well as what rhetorical techniques they use within that communication should be an interesting look into a field both of you seem to be interested in, given your background and history with aquarist-based work.
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AuthorHi! I am Collin Barker and I am a Marine Biology Major at Roger Williams University, an avid reader and fish keeper. To learn more about me check out my About page. Archives
May 2018
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