This essay shows the differences between the two pieces of writing but they are both centralized around the same research topic. One is a mass media article written for a medical magazine centralized around prostate cancer. The other piece of writing is an experiment in a medical journal, and it is the primary source for this research. In my writing, I explain why their differences are important and how they create those differences.
“Prostate Cancer and How it’s Explained”
Help received from Mrs. Mattie Smith on July 20, 2018, from 14:15-14:30
Writing in any Scientific field can have various forms of structure, analysis, and can be written for different audiences the same way that writing in English or History can. They both appeal to Kairos, which means that specific variables affect the timeliness of their publishment. Examples could be that an author’s competitors have just failed to or have put out a theory of his own and now the author plans to retaliate with his theory or article. Ethos and pathos can be used as well to help the reader persuade their audiences by appealing to their ethical mindsets and their emotions. For these particular writings, the kairos appeal is good news about the development of a more successful treatment option for hormone-sensitive prostate cancer (Sweeney 737). This is an important topic because men all over the country are affected by this devastating illness, and this new treatment option gives the patient a better chance to spend more time with their families and loved ones. I have had two grandfathers pass away from cancer, and I understand how precious the time to be with our sick loved ones is. Between “Upfront chemo plus ADT dramatically improves survival,” written by Wayne Kuznar for the Urology Times, and Dr. Christopher J. Sweeney’s “Chemohormonal Therapy in Metastatic Hormone-Sensitive Prostate Cancer” experiment for the New England Journal of Medicine, there is a significant difference of language usage between the two passages. That is because the authors wrote the two articles intended for different audiences, the authors are a part of different discourse communities (Porter 548), and they were written for different reasons. The usage of different styles of writing, different diction usage, deliberate omission of data and information, and the contrast of design and visual concepts are the essential elements that make these articles different from each other.
Kuznar is a reporter, so his job is to tell his audience important information and use his words to persuade his readers that the information that he is providing is correct. His other objective is to keep his readers coming back to read the Urology Times. Sweeney’s Journal was written to be presented to a slew of doctors and others within the oncology community. He fills it to the brim with specific information about his experiment, background information to support the findings of his experiment, and proof that two other authors that studied the same hypothesis. There is much more information within Sweeney’s work because he is also trying to continue his credibility to his superiors, colleagues, and his patients. So, Kuznar creates tons of optimism and enthusiasm, while Dr. Sweeney sounds confident, sincere, and intensity. The tones that are produced are products of the diction used, different amounts of data produced, and the different structures that the two articles use. In other words, Kuznar is much more interested in getting his readers to research the topic that he is writing about and he hopes that they will continue reading what he produces because they think that he is a credible source. Dr. Sweeney takes a much more clinical approach because he is more worried about convincing his patients that this new treatment option does work and he also wants to persuade his colleagues to use the same treatment as well.
Sweeney and Kuznar come from different backgrounds and have different forms and intensities of education, which creates them to use different forms and levels of diction. Sweeney, who is a well-respected oncologist, might say that he is researching about “metastatic prostate cancer,” but Kuznar claims that the research is about “hormone-sensitive prostate cancer.” The two terms mean the same thing except that the two authors are talking to different audiences. If Sweeney were talking to a moderate audience, they would not understand what “metastatic” means. On the flip side of that, if Kuznar were speaking to an audience full of Oncologists, PA’s, and nurses, then the term “hormone-sensitive” would be too broad for them to verify the exact type of prostate cancer that he is talking about. Sweeney also mentions other topics of the experiment such dose modifications, toxic effects and efficacy, and secondary endpoints and toxic effects. Terms such as these are most likely only understood by those who are trained in the medical field. They all have to do with how the patients are treated, monitored, and how that information is recorded to be used in the research article that Sweeney wrote. There is not as professional and advanced medical diction in Kuznar’s article because he fears that his audience will not understand the meaning behind them, or because he does not understand them himself.
Kuznar’s article briefly explains what the experiment is and what it’s findings are. He explains how doctors are adding docetaxel, also known as Taxotere, on top of Androgen-deprivation therapy (ADT) to help improve the time of survival. He is writing to an audience of cancer patients with prostate cancer or those who know people who are affected by the terrorizing disease. The audience does not have to be doctors or nurses because the diction that is used is not too advanced for the average person to understand. Kuznar helps the audience understand advanced medical terms by saying “that the results apply to chemotherapy for patients as determined by the treating clinician.” He says this instead of quoting Sweeney directly, who explains that the “eligible patients had a pathological diagnosis of prostate cancer…with an elevated prostate-specific antigen (PSA) level; radiologic evidence of metastatic disease; and an ECOG performance status score of 0,1, or 2 (Pp. 738)” By making these terms easier for a less medically inclined audience to read, there is a better chance for this information to be rhetorically amplified(Ridolfo and Devoss 527), and spread throughout various discourse communities. Sweeney added simple terms into his article such as “The primary objective of the E3805 study was to determine whether docetaxel therapy at the beginning of ADT for metastatic hormone-sensitive prostate cancer would result in longer overall survival than that with ADT alone (Pp. 737).” He does this so that researchers like Kuznar can rearrange those words to make them more understandable for audiences who do not understand advanced medical terms can relate better to the context. This rearrangement is an example of how Sweeney uses rhetorical velocity (Ridolfo and Devoss 529) to theorize how third parties might recompose a text strategically. These third parties can consist of news companies, social media websites, and writers such as Kuznar. So, Sweeney is “trying to determine how this recomposing may be useful or not to the short-or long-term rhetorical objectives of the rhetorician (529).”
Kuznar omits large portions of data, tables, and graphs that show the medically advanced measurements, stratifications, and different races to make the information more appealing to his audience. Percentages of the patients who has or has not had prior treatment for prostate cancer is also not shown. This is because Kuznar did not want to lose his audience’s attention by putting in too much monotonous information that does not support the main point of if this particular treatment improves survival time of the patients. There are also very knowledgeable line graphs that show ratios between survival rates of Patients with a “High-volume” or a “Low-volume” disease and the number of months that they live on page 742 of Sweeney’s article. That would have been a good visual for a non-medically inclined audience to understand, but instead, Kuznar only showed the number of deaths between the two different treatments. He also shows the median of months of overall survival, and the median of months of survival of high volume diseases, time to clinical disease progression, and time to castration-resistant prostate cancer in a self-made table. Kuznar probably believed that his readers would have overlooked this valuable data if he added these tables into his article. This omission of various forms of data from Sweeney’s article that is not put into Kuznar’s article is a big reason why the research was manipulated so that the research could be presented to a different audience.
The overall appearance of the two articles is dramatically different as well. Kuznar uses colors like red, black, and dark gray to hook his readers and almost force them into reading the article. He also includes a picture of Dr. Sweeney to use as pathos; he tries to show his audience that this “sweet man” is working hard to find a better treatment for his patients. The subtitles used are another way that Kuznar tries to direct the attention of the readers by saying “Survival benefit evident in all subgroups,” and “Findings very significant.” At first glance, the first subtitle makes the reader believe that the two different variables create the same results, but after reading under the subtitle, they can see that there is a large difference between the two treatments. Sweeney’s medical journal uses a softer coloration scheme with colors like orange and white with only black lettering. There are no decorative patterns like there is in Kuznar’s article, but there is a larger amount of graphs, diagrams, and tables that will catch the reader’s attention more than it’s color schemes. The subtitles that Sweeney uses are much more specific and are used more so to explain what is happening in the experiment rather than catch the reader’s attention. The examples of these subtitles are “dose modifications, statistical analysis, patients,” and more like them that helps the reader understand what the text underneath will be talking about. The different formats and color usage of the two articles show how dramatically different the objects of these two pieces are. It also shows how color, appearance, and presentation can talk to an audience almost as much as words can.
As stated before, both of these authors use the same information within there articles to achieve different objectives. They use different tones and styles that are produced in the texts to appeal to different audiences. The diction, sentence fluency, and topics that are discussed show how the authors have different education focus and influences to create their voice in their articles. The different amounts of data shown in the articles is a significant indicator of credibility between the authors, and it leads cretics, patients, and others interested in believing one source more than the other. Research on a specific topic can be manipulated in many ways to appeal to many audiences, but the source is the most important. This is because it sets up third-party writers to either succeed or fail in their interpretations of the data. This experiment was successful in showing other doctors how useful this particular treatment is, and the Urology Times article is also very successful in showing this experiment to a broader range of audiences. One could say that they could work together to help prostate cancer patients. Only the reader’s interpretation of both pieces of literature can determine if that is true or not.
Word Count: 1825
Citations
Kuznar, Wayne. “Upfront chemo plus ADT dramatically improves survival.” Accessed on 17
July 2018.
Porter, James E. “Intertextuality and the Discourse Community.” Writing about Writing.
Downs, Wardle. Pp. 542-555
Ridolfo, Devoss. “Composing for Recomposition.” Writing about Writing. Downs, Wardle.
Pp. 512-539
Sweeney, Christopher J., et al. “Chemohormonal therapy in metastatic hormone-sensitive
prostate cancer.” New England Journal of Medicine 373.8 (2015): 737-746.