Chai 1

Zichun Chai

Professor Robert Speiser

Writing 2 Writing Project 2 Cover Letter

Dear Readers:

Like my first writing project, my topic this time is still about American politics. While the

previous essay talked about unacademic ways about politics, this essay analyzes American politics

in two academic disciplines. By using biology and political geography, I analyzed American

politics or the election specifically in two different academic disciplines. Geography analyzes how

the place where people live defines their political leaning, while biology studies how the deviation

in genes changes voters voting behavior.

The first time I first realized the phrase discourse community was through an online

discussion forum about it. I could not fully understand this in academic ways. However, after

several examples about my classmates soccer team or cheer leading team, I started to realize what

discourse community means to an academic group. But I am still a little confused about literacy

practice, which I believe might refer to the writing skills in scholarly articles.

Similar to my first essay, the main topic this time is still about politics. The two disciplines

that I chose are topics that I read in previous quarters writing course. I still remember that chapter

was about the partisan politics in America. Several articles are included in that chapter to support

the main idea, and I found some of the research very intriguing. When I start to brainstorm the

essay, I tried to refer to those journal articles that I read before as the academic articles which I am

going to analyze. But the professor reminded me that those articles are nor academic enough.

Fortunately, I learned how to access databases through online library and websites like ProQuest,
 Chai 2

and I found two scholarly articles that can support my thesis. In fact, I was actually choosing

articles to support my point so I know pretty much of the context in the articles. What I really

learned is the way of conducting experiments. I realized how they analyze their research results

and what they consider as evidence. Its important to notice, specifically, how each academic

community approaches a topic and calculates evidence.

The biggest challenge that I faced might be choosing articles from academic databases.

First of all, I need to settle down the discipline and find specific key words. In addition to that, I

need to choose the most suitable one for me from thousands of articles. I changed my target

academic article twice during my writing process to make my essay more understandable and

convincing.

During this writing process, I learned quite a lot about writing research paper and getting

the chance to know a few of unfamiliar terms like discourse community. This is the first time to

write an article like this so there might be a few segments that are not clear enough. I tried my best

to make my essay more reasonable and readable, hope you can find something that you find

interesting in my essay.

Best regards,

Zichun Chai
 Chai 3

Examining Political Inclinations Biologically and Geographically

Zichun Chai

Writing 2 Writing Project 2 First Draft

Professor Robert Speiser

05/17/2017
 Chai 4

Examining Political Inclinations Biologically and Geographically

It is widely known that American people have great enthusiasm in politics, especially when

it comes to the election year. I still remember the topic that had been talked about the most last

year was the presidential election between Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton. People discussed

this event through multiple ways like newspaper articles and TV talk shows. Although mainstream

media reports are rather universal and popular, scholarly articles provide more profound insight in

the same topic. Even though academic articles may not be that well-known, they offer readers

valuable and abstruse background information and perspectives into political process. And through

different academic disciplines, people could learn about political issues in multiple aspects.

Different scholars study the same topic with their own expertise in each field when they

encounter political issues like the election. In general, peoples political leaning depends on their

personality and living environment. Minor deviations in those aspects could change their decisions,

and the disciplines that I chose Biology and Political Geography are focused on the cause of

those deviations. There are several fascinating research findings that accounts for the different

behaviors of voters: biologists believe peoples political leaning are defined in their body, while

geographers argue that the side which voters choose depends on the place they live. In this essay,

I am going to analyze the specific traits and lexis in each discipline, and how scholars in each

discourse community convey their work to the rest of the world.

When people approach an academic discipline related to politics, one thing that might come

to everyones mind is scholastic articles, and every academic article has similar patterns to follow.

Nowadays many scholars are considered successful in their field if they have published several

extraordinary academic articles and been approved by their discourse communities. The

professionals present their research result and analysis through words. An academic article with
 Chai 5

dozens of pages can reveal their research thoroughly. In the topic of the election, the structure of

scholastic articles across numerous fields. Fowler, Baker and Dawes (2008), authors of the article

Genetic Variation in Political Participation, argue in the article that the fact that millions of

people abstain suggests that there may be inherent variation in the human tendency to participate

in politics (p. 233) implies that sometimes peoples voting behavior could be predefined due to

their inside: their inherent genes. Fowler et al. (2008) studied how genetic deviations cause

voters to make different decisions, introducing a method which compares the voting strategy

between monozygotic twins and dizygotic twins, also known as twins studies (p.234). The

authors explain this experiment by claiming that people who share similar or identical genes would

have the same political leaning, and their study was based on how different genes affect peoples

political leaning. Certain lexis that is unique in this discourse community: several Greek characters

each represents a biological terminology, academic words monozygotic twins (MZ) and dizygotic

twins (DZ). Those are rather hard for people to understand before looking them up, and this

phenomenon also proves that academic articles target readers are mostly people in the same

discourse community.

In addition to the research above, Fowler et al. (2008) accessed and examined the entire

popularity registration in Los Angeles and observed all the MZ and DZ voting records. They expect

that people with more similar genes would perform more identical in political choices. To further

exploit the data, Fowler et al. (2008) use statistics to make a few diagrams to analyze the pattern

in it. At first, the authors found that compare to MZ twins, DZ twins appear to be more likely to

have large differences in the frequency they vote (p. 237). Then Fowler et al. (2008) used two-

parameter item response model (Clinton, Jackman, and Rivers 2004) and assume there is a single

latent propensity to vote underlying all eight observed turnout decisions (p. 237). Finally, the
 Chai 6

results showed that twins who share identical genes make more similar political choices. Biology

is a scientific discipline, and researchers are more likely to conduct studies in a scientific basis,

which means biologists like Fowler believe in solid evidence like real-life data and logical

deductions to prove their research even in the field of politics. In this article, Fowler et al. (2008)

used statistics analysis and control variable method to study with the writing skills of Chicago

style, and they follow these rules to fit in their own discourse community.

As a matter of fact, many scholars like university professors enlarge their discourse

communities through higher education and devote themselves to educate future scholars.

Professors not only need to teach students basic knowledge in each discipline, they are required to

let the students think critically in the way of their own discourse community. Like the previous

article, biologists think, analyze and conducts experiments in their unique way. We could notice

the specific approaches through the syllabus in universities. A typical example is the syllabus of

Biology 41 in Tufts University by Dr. Ekaterina Mirkin. Unlike many liberal arts courses, this

syllabus is quite straightforward. The professors name is on the top following the schedule and

grading policy. In the course objective section, professor Mirkin (2017) said apply this knowledge

to solving complex problems by utilizing critical thinking skills and analyzing and predicting

experimental results (p. 2). It is clearly that the article by Fowler et al. (2008) followed this

method of pursuing strict evidence while conducting experiments.

Another discipline that concerning politics is geography. When talking about the election,

red, blue and swing states and different political leanings due to urban or rural areas that voters

live are topics that are frequently mentioned. However, academic articles are required to be more

precise and excellent to examine this issue. The article Reconsidering Political Regionalism in the

American by Gimpel and Shuknecht (2002) analyzed the partisan situation in the United States.
 Chai 7

Like the article by Fowler et al. (2008), this article also contains an abstract to give readers a hint

about the outline of this article. Furthermore, Gimpel and Shuknecht (2002) also includes several

maps to illustrate their thesis since geographers tend to rely on map representations heavily.

This article begins with analyzing the state-wise election from 19822000. Gimpel and

Shuknecht (2002) compared a few states because these states' citizens are widely thought to

exhibit regional tendencies in their political behavior (p. 329). Typical red states like Texas and

blue states like California share different traits which make them to stand on opposite sides when

it regards politics. When people study the reason to be partisan, they could use human geography

or political geography specifically. Texas contains vast rural area, people there are religious and

gun-loving. On the other hand, California has been only settled for more than a century, people

there have the unique willingness for risk taking. The development Silicon Valley also gives

Californians openness to new information and knowledge. Those differences force these two states

to possess their own political standing.

Instead of study voting results among states, Gimpel and Shuknecht (2002) analyzed the

percentage of vote in county level. They claimed that this weighted average captures both the

county's partisan bias and its electoral importance in state-wise mobilization efforts (p. 330). In

the maps below, the partisan situation is clearly displayed with statistics anslysis: rural areas lean

to the Republican Party and urban areas are more likely to support the Democrats. Most Major

cities are left-leaned even in Houston and Dallas, and a large percentage of Californian counties

are Republican. In the discourse community of geography, maps are functional and valuable tools

for geographers to conduct studies even in politics.

 Chai 8

Political geography is also a commonly taken course in universities. Stanford University

opened a course studying Global Geopolitics by Lewis (2008). In this course, he examined politics

using multiple maps he displayed a few maps like election maps in America in mid-nineteen

centuries, map of Ukrainian election and map about 1984 Election which Ronald Reagan beats

Walter Mondale with the biggest leading difference by electoral votes in American history. In this

lectures, Lewis (2008) considered data-analyzed maps and statistics to be authoritative and evident.

Maps with different labels reveal how geography effects politics or the election to be specific.

Comparing to the article by Gimpel and Shuknecht (2002), Lewis (2008) course also shared the

same characteristic in their discourse community who value maps and statistics in their research.

Biology and Geography are rather distinct disciplines, but they are both scientific discourse

communities who conducts rigorous experiments, using statistics and big data. Both disciplines

use similar kind of writing style and both instructed by universities. Nevertheless, biology and

geography use different approach to analyze their study, and each discourse community shares
 Chai 9

their own way of analyzing knowledge. The topic has always been politics, but Examining the

issue of multiple disciplines such as these disciplines could help people learn more

comprehensively and diversely.

References

Fowler, J. H., Baker, L. A., & Dawes, C. T. (2008). Genetic variation in political participation.

The American Political Science Review, 102(2), 233-248. Retrieved from

https://search.proquest.com/docview/214441731?accountid=14522

Gimpel, J. G., & Schuknecht, J. E. (2002). Reconsidering political regionalism in the American

states. State Politics & Policy Quarterly, 2(4), 325-352. Retrieved from

https://search.proquest.com/docview/213773620?accountid=14522

Stanford Univeristy. (2008). Global Geography. Stanford, CA: Martin W. Lewis. Retrieved from

https://itunes.apple.com/us/itunes-u/global-geopolitics/id384240471?mt=10

Tufts University. (2017). Biology 41: General Genetics. Medford, MA: Ekaterina Mirkin

Retrieved from https://ase.tufts.edu/biology/courses/syllabi/041.pdf