Kazerouni 1

Leila Kazerouni
Zack De Piero
Writing 2
4 November 2015
A Surfers Backside Air Reverse and an Authors Use of Subsections: both moves

Commented [1]: Weird -- though cool -- title. Don't

forget to capitalize that B and M.

Standing on the beach and watching a surfer walk the nose is not the only way to study
surfing. The popular ocean sport which tends to accompany a relaxed lifestyle of sand and sun

Commented [2]: Boom. Hooked.

can be analyzed by many different academic disciplines. In each discipline, the genres, rhetorical

Commented [3]: (Consider: would a semicolon or

dash work better here than a period?)

features, and moves vary depending on the authors distinct desired audience.
An authors approach to and purpose for engaging and informing their audience varies
with the rhetorical features and moves they choose to use and the audiences they are trying to
reach. A move can be defined much like written conventions: an authors use of rhetorical,

Commented [4]: What discipline? What audience(s)?

For talking/writing about what? (Surfing? What about
it?)
I need more of a specific, driving thesis statement,
Leila. What, exactly, are you going to be arguing here?
And what specific points are you going to use to make
that case? What about the conventions within this
genre will you be emphasizing? Also: do you think itd
help your reader (technically, me) to lay out which
specific sources youll be using to make your case?

grammatical, or contextual features that make the audiences reading experience become the way
the author desires. When comparing scholarly and non-academic articles, one can see the
difference in the authors use of moves and features, and the audience they aim to target because
of the contrasting purpose of each piece. When analysing the distinctions between the two, I
looked at three different articlestwo scholarly ones, and another from a pop culture source.
The first is a scholarly magazine article on the technology and engineering of manmade wave
pools. The next is a biological scholarly article on the prevention of getting injured while surfing.
The last article is from a popular pop culture website, Buzzfeed, on a famous female surfer from
India. Using these three articles, I examined the difference between their purposes, the moves
used, and how the audience is intended to view and respond to each piece finding that the

Commented [5]: Woooo!

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scholarly articles intention seems to be to disperse knowledge, while the pop culture articles
share catchy information in order to lead readers towards another purpose.
In our course reader, Laura Bolin Carroll writes about three common methods theorized
by Aristotle that an argument can be presented: logos, pathos, and ethos. The use of these terms
can be considered an authors move, as they choose different methods to persuade based upon
their objective audience. Logos is, defined as [an] argument from reason, attracting readers

Commented [6]: <~~~ Here's your thesis.

I suspect that you broke this up into your 2nd
paragraph so you didn't hit me over the head with a
page-long introductory paragraph (my worst
nightmare). However, I think it's the most effective
when it's there -- that's where most readers are going
to be looking for it.
I challenge you to combine these paragraphs and
tighten it up a bit so it's not a page long.
You got this!

who seek scholarly based information (Carroll). Contrarily, pathos uses the mind to touch our
hearts and persuade our emotions. Last is ethos, using humor to influence the audience to make
the topic approachable. In the three articles presented, each artistic appeal is employed at least
once (Carroll).

Commented [7]: If you're going to use a first-person

perspective (I, you, we, my, our, etc.), I think you want
to establish that as early as possible -- definitely in your
Intro; otherwise, when it comes up later it seems
abrupt. That's why Intros are so important -- they set
the tone and establish the consistency that, hopefully,
you'll carry throughout the rest of your paper.
Commented [8]: Nice use of brackets. Don't forget
your p# for direct quotes.

In The New Wave: are artificial waves the future of surfing? the authorAlf
Aldersonuses both logos and ethos to strengthen his argument. The article about surfing and
the creation of wave pools begins with humorous surfer jargon like, Surfs up! and ride the

Commented [9]: Sweet -- glad you defined/described

these terms in the previous paragraph. Smart
"move." :)

curl (Alderson). Alderson uses these phrases to familiarize the reader with the possibly
unacquainted topic of surfing. The author recognizes that the primary audience may not be
surfers, but engineers and other professionals looking for information regarding a developing
technology. This use of ethos makes the article more relatable, helping the audience better

Commented [10]: Way to explain Alderson's jargon-y

"moves" here and why she's using them.

understand its purpose of informing the public on new worldwide surfing opportunities. As the
article develops, logos becomes more prevalent with the continual use of data, facts, and quotes
to compare wave pools from around the globe. Because the main audience of this article is
interested in the intellectual information pertaining to the topic, this use of logos is necessary to
captivate and preserve their attention. The features gives the argument the necessary credibility
needed to create trust between Alfred and the reader.

Commented [11]: This tripped me up a bit -- unless it's

becoming too repetitive, I'd stick with one name to refer
to the writer (or whomever). The last name's usually a
safe bet... unless it's, like,.. Madonna or Beyonce or
something.
(Like the Madonna reference? Good ole DePiero's
getting old...)

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An example of Alfreds use of evidence is a quote by eleven time ASP World Champion
of surfing, Kelly Slater in which he explains, [on the artificial wave you can] ride as long as you

Commented [12]: Is this a compound adjective? If

so...
Commented [13]: More often that not, it's probably not
necessary to start a quote with brackets.

want, do any manoeuvre you want and practice over and over again (Alderson). Not only is this
coming from a credible source for surfers who admire Slater, but also reliable for anyone who
reads the facts given his impressive competitive-surfing history. Alfred knows that with one of
the best surfers in history on his side of the argument, more people will consider his perspective
on the wave pools up and coming popularity.

Commented [14]: Right, but from a researchy/studying writing standpoint, this is clearly privileging
*interview data* as evidence. Is this different from the
evidence/data in the other two pieces? My guess is,
probably. I think you want to find a way to work this
into your argument -- that is, how/why these different
sources use evidence/data in different ways.

Other moves such as a cover page featuring a large image and title, maps and diagrams,
and short, digestible paragraphs are tactics used by Alfred in persuading his readers and making
their jobs easier. Mike Bunn, who wrote How to Read Like a Writer, explains in his piece,
locate what you believe are the most important writerly choice represented in the textchoice
as large as the overall structure or as small as a single word used only onceto consider the
effect of those choices on potential readers (Bunn). This statement reiterates how important
Alfreds moves like the use of short paragraphs can be to the overall purpose of a paper. They
guide the reader through the paper, without losing their attention or over-emphasizing any points.

Commented [15]: Way to use the readings, and great

tie-in/follow-up to your previous points.

The next article Acute injuries and chronic pathology of the head and face sustained
while surf board riding by the contributors Simon Dimmick, Mark Gillett , Patrick Sheehan,
Cameron Sutton and Suzanne E Anderson uses exclusively logos, the intellectual approach, to
persuade the audience. This piece is written using the structure of a scientific experiment, based
upon research on twenty-nine patients and their surfing injuries. A scientific report tends to begin
with an argument, give data and analysis, and end by stating how the data supports the argument.
This is much like Carrolls definition of logos above, defining it as [an] argument from reason
(Carroll). The audience wants to know why the facts matter, or in other words, understand why

Commented [16]: Look at you, hedging your claims! :)

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the argument is valid and applicable to their personal study or practice. The information given
regarding the different patients injuries and related analysis helps support the purpose of the
piece, which is to spread awareness about, and minimize the potentially life-threatening injuries
that can occur while surfing.
The authors state in the introduction of their piece, Leg ropes are universally used to
ensure that surfer and board do not become separated after falling off the use of leg ropes
however, may increase the risk of being struck and injured by ones own board during a
wipeout (Dimmick). Though commonly known to surfers and other SoCal natives as a leash,
the main audience of this piece are medical practitioners or researchers from around the world
who may not be acquainted with a surfers vocabulary. Therefore, the authors must supply
operational or conceptual definitions to aid readers in following the argument. In the quotation

Commented [17]: Abso

above, the reader is given an explanation of the leg rope and its importance to surfers. This
move is important because without any knowledge of what the leash is, the information
regarding its significance to injury would be disconcerting and confusing to the main point.
Like The New Wave, this article uses images and a bolded title to attract the readers.
Offering such visual features can greatly ease the job of a reader. The use of subsections is
another method authors use to simplify a readers experience by making the information easier to
navigate. In Bunns piece, readers are advised to think about why an author made certain moves
to help their audience better understand their purpose. These subsections are a move to help the
reader focus more on the experiment without being distracted. A longer research paper-type
piece could be tiring and confusing, drawing the readers attention away from the main points
being argued.

Commented [18]: You're absolutely right. Now, I think

you've done a super-solid job so far (really!), but I'm
wondering if, at times, you're treading to close to the
*description* approach and not enough of the
*evaluation*/"so what?" approach.
Commented [19]: "Like" -- it's one super-tiny word, but
it signals to me that a comparison is coming up (which
helps me read with more purpose and clarity). Go
Leila, go!

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The final article examined, unlike the other two, was a non-scholarly one from the
website Buzzfeed, a social news and entertainment company. The article Indias First Female
Surfer Is Now Inspiring Young Girls To Hit The Waves written by Shayan Roy uses pathos, the

Commented [20]: I thought about giving you the

organizational/structural comment -- do you think this
paper would be better if you organized it idea-by-idea
rather than source-by-source -- but the way that you're
constantly reincorporating the similarities/differences
between each piece is very helpful, so I don't think you
need to restructure this.

last artistic appeal we have yet to see, based upon emotion (Carroll). The piece is short,
containing many pictures that split up the text. At the end, there is a five minute video of the

Commented [21]: Super adjective?

female surfer supporting the argument that she could represent an inspirational figure to young
girls. The heart warming idea of youth being uplifted, encouraged, and inspired is the pathos tool
Roy uses to persuade the reader.
In Steps Toward Rhetorical Analysis, Carroll writes, Pathos can also be a very
effective appeal if the rhetor has to persuade the audience in a very short amount of time.
Buzzfeed is famous for their short and to the point articles, which is why their usage of pathos
makes good sense. Advertisers fund Buzzfeed to write articles related to their business to create
good press for the product or idea they want to sell. In this case the article was financed by
Brown Girl Surf, which is hyperlinked at the beginning of the piece (Gallagher). If the author
wants to drive home information about the emergence of female surfing in India, suggesting that
one female surfer has inspired many is a great way to quickly and emotionally influence an
audience and make them invested in your story. The the author gets their point across to readers
who are people just surfing the web and not investing a lot of time on reading long articles. In his
piece, Bunn emphasized, if you know at the outset that the author is trying to reach a very
specific group of readers, then his or her writerly techniques may seem more or less effective
than if he/she was trying to reach a more general audience (Bunn). The audience of the first two
articles is a more explicit group, and most likely put effort into finding specific information to
improve their knowledge of a certain topic of interest. On the other hand, the audience for

Commented [22]: Context = huge. I'm pretty sure this

was a part of your thesis... is it worth explicitly
mentioning this more throughout your paper?
Context is as important as any other rhetorical factor
out there. "How does context shape these pieces?"
Huuuuuuge.

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Buzzfeed articles is quite broad, ranging from young teens to adults. These articles are created
for everyday web surfers who may come across them on social media sites such as Facebook or
Twitter. Buzzfeed readers are much less likely looking for specific information in the articles
they read. In this quote, Bunn is stating that a more specific topic can be more effectively
relatable to readers than a more general one.
When comparing the three articles, the two scholarly articles specific information deliver
a more effective and clear message to their intended audiences. In the Buzzfeed article, the
authors move to reach a wider audience and ultimately produce a high number of clicks for the
clients they advertise consequently weakens the strength of the piece. Prompted by the
audiences lack of specific motivation to read the information provided, Roy shares basic, yet
entertaining information that attracts instant reactions in order to drive peoples attention to his
advertisers sites. Roy gives up bolstering a clear argument for the sake of attracting a greater
audience with brevity and entertainment value. On the other hand, the authors of the scholarly
articles motive is to use moves related to strengthening their purpose, not worrying about length
and losing the attention of the audience. Overall, scholarly texts are designed to reach a directly
invested audience, rather than ultimately drive the audience to other information through
entertainment.

Works Cited
Alderson, Alf. "The New Wave: Are Artificial Waves the Future of Surfing."
Engineering & Technology 1 Aug. 2015: 82-85. Print.

Commented [23]: Are there any other textual clues

you could incorporate to support this claim -- ie, that
Buzzfeed is geared towards younger/non-academic
audience?

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Dimmick, Simon, Mark Gillett, Patrick Sheehan, Cameron Sutton, and Suzanne
Anderson. "Acute Injuries and Chronic Pathology of the Head and Face Sustained While
Surf Board Riding." Web. 3 Nov. 2015.

Gallagher, Fergal. "How Does BuzzFeed Make Money?" Tech Times RSS. 6 Mar. 2015.
Web. 3 Nov. 2015.

Roy, Shayan. "India's First Female Surfer Is Now Inspiring Young Girls To Hit The
Waves." BuzzFeed. 1 Sept. 2015. Web. 3 Nov. 2015.

Writing 2 Feedback Matrix for WP2

Table of Textual Features

Did Not Meet

Expectations
Thesis Statement

Met Expectations
X

Exceeds Expectations

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Use of Textual
Evidence from
Genres

Use of Course
Readings

Analysis

X+

organization/structure

Attention to
Genre/Conventions
and Rhetorical
Factors

Sentence-level
Clarity, Mechanics,
Flow

Other comments

Leila,
Super-solid work here. To take this to the next level, here are some
ideas:
-Take some more time considering what kinds of data/evidence these
different sources are using and what kinds of RQs theyre asking
- I thought that all of your attention to moves was very good, and Id
like to see even more of it.
-Move past describing and get to evaluating -- try to pinpoint the so
what? of this assignment as much as possible.
-This is a tough one, but try inserting more of your own voice into
this. Youve got a great one from what Ive read in your blog and
heard in class -- if you can find a way to make this more of a Leila
piece about how different disciplines/sources analyze surfing rather
than just a how different disciplines/sources analyze surfing I think
itd make it even better.
Z
8.5/10

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