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Chuyi Wang

Rachel Feldman

Writing 2

6 December 2019

Bullying in Schools

“You protect the world, and I protect you.” This famous sentence is from the Chinese

film called ​Better Days​, which launched in October. This highly anticipated Chinese teen drama

film ​Better Days has netted over 600 million yuan at the box office since its release. Many

movie-goers have made the movie a trending topic across social media platforms, saying they

can’t help but be deeply touched. The story tells a touching relationship between two youngsters

as victims of school bullying and how the issue shapes their fates. Sadly, there is bullying at

school all over the world and it is not rare in China. It can be found not only in newspaper

articles, but also blog posts in some social media platforms. The newspaper articles titled

“School Bullying’s Impact Can Last a Lifetime: Study” posted on U.S. News and “Toronto

mother of 12-year-old boy who died by suicide calls for bullying inquiry” posted on Global

News and the blog posts titled “Why Do We Hurt Each Other?” and “7 Ways to Deal With

Bullying at Summer Camp” are indicative of their respective genres. Those two different genres

are used for different writing “that answers the needs of that situation” (Bickmore). In order to

orient to different audiences and purposes, each genre has a set of conventions and rhetorical

situations. While the newspaper articles take advantage of the timeliness and reliability of the

information, blog posts are concerned about personal commenting and human interest.
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As Laura Bolin Carroll says, “there are three parts to understanding the context of a

rhetorical moment: exigence, audience, and constraints” (Carroll 48). Exigence is the need that

the author is trying to meet. The need for newspaper articles is reliability, timeliness and

authentic fact itself. In the article “School Bullying’s Impact Can Last a Lifetime: Study,” the

author cites a lot of direct data and interviews to show how serious the school bullying problem

can affect people. He indicates that one research shows that victims of bullying face a 40 percent

risk of mental health problems by their mid-20s (Mozes). The “40 percent” is a roughly but

scientific number from testing to show the reliability of his writing. This accurate data is critical

to identifying problems and implementing practical solutions for school bullying. Then he also

cites interviews and direct words of the researchers. In the third paragraph, he directly uses the

study author Emma Gorman’s words to state pupils would 2% lower income after bullying

experience (Mozes). Compared with specific statistics, the direct citation is more convincing and

straightforward to support the authentic fact and accuracy. Moreover, the need of newspaper

article’s timeliness can obivously found in “Toronto mother of 12-year-old boy who died by

suicide calls for bullying inquiry.” After this tearful story happened on October 23, Caryn

Lieberman published this story on October 29. In just a few days, she reported this sorry story to

the public as quickly as possible so that people would pay attention to school bullying seriously

(Lieberman).

However, for the blog post, its need is engaging and communicating personal opinions.

As a semi-formal genre, blog posts have less restrictions and more innovations. Emily in her

blog post “Why Do We Hurt Each Other?” talks about her bullying experience in her high school

and calls attention to this problem. She said that she has been harassed and ridiculed for rumors.
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Although none of the bullying she experienced was physical, she felt the damage was the same

(Emily). Such a personal story makes blog posts more attractive and convincing. It uses empathy

to let people think about the same situation so that it attracts people’s attention to this problem.

Other blog posts like “7 Ways to Deal With Bullying at Summer Camp” are for the exchange of

ideas, conveying personal opinions. For example, the author says that “there are a few ways you

could handle it” at the beginning of the post (“7 Ways”). It indicates that this blog post is from

personal perspective, and it gives some unofficial advice to readers. Also, at the last part of this

post, the author advertises this blog website to readers and hopes students who have been bullied

to speak out their stories instead of bearing it without a word (“7 Ways”).

Also, those two genres have constraints. The constraints are the limits of writing like a

word count, beliefs, traditions, or language (Carroll 49). For example, the language of blog posts

is usually personal and in the first person. In “Why Do We Hurt Each Other?” Emily uses

phrases like “I think,” “I plan to.” and “I want to” to make the blog post more personal and

engaging. Also, in “7 Ways to Deal With Bullying at Summer Camp,” the author uses many

everyday language to make it has the common touch with readers. But the language of

newspaper articles are formal and official. Mozes just writes facts and cites data without personal

thoughts in “School Bullying’s Impact Can Last a Lifetime: Study.” And in “Toronto mother of

12-year-old boy who died by suicide calls for bullying inquiry,” Caryn Lieberman describes the

story in neutral tone and cited words from parties (Lieberman).

Because of those exigences and constraints, different genres face different audiences.

Readers can infer the various genres and choose whether or not they are oriented audience. For

example, newspaper articles have an essential convention that they stay focused on the latest
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information and the official aspect of the fact. Unlike blog posts, they do not need to show

personal ideas to the fact and make the fact to be fascinating to attract readers. This is reasonable

for the fact that the newspaper articles have a limited audience that is concerned about true facts

and current hot topics. What they want to know from the newspaper is the latest reports of what

happened recently. School bullying is a hot topic at that time, so the article “School Bullying’s

Impact Can Last a Lifetime: Study” published on April 26, which is every daily health news for

the U.S. News (Mozes). And Caryn Lieberman immediately reported the Toronto woman’s

bullying inquiry of her son’s suicide after it happened. But for the blog posts, it orients to most

people who are concerned about this issue and want to know others’ perspectives. There are

thousands of hundreds of school bullying happening every day, and different people have

different opinions about this problem. The blog posts are the platform for those people to speak

out their stories and thoughts to others. Since it is informal and non-academic writing, the

audience can be children, teens, and elders.

However, despite those differences, these two genres still have some common patterns.

For example, in the content and structure, both of them stress the seriousness of bullying first and

then propose possible solutions. Mozes, in his newspaper articles, illustrates that people who

struggled with bullying are more likely to have mental health issues and difficulties finding a job

and study. He cites the experts’ suggestions that a “strategic and targeted approach” and

“developing positive character skills in young people, such as resilience, grit, and self-esteem,

can help in reducing the negative long-run consequences of bullying” (Mozes). Similarly, Emily

posts that her painful experience at first, and then she starts a bullying prevention project to
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increase awareness concerns about bullying. Based on the above, both of them focus on the same

topic and use the same structure to emphasize the seriousness of school bullying.

Overall, genres are the unspoken rules and common senses in writing. It decides which

situations and audience that the writing needs to focus on. The study of genres communicates the

readers’ responses and writers’ purposes. In these specific cases, newspaper articles and blog

posts have some similar conventions, but they are also unique genres. Blog posts are not only

entertaining but are an excellent way to instruct stories and convey personal opinions.

Newspaper articles are more severe or academic and are essential in communicating and

explaining the current situation. Blog posts would be a genre to understand and comment on the

simple version of the current situation, and newspaper articles would be used to study and

understand the official fact. These texts show different rhetorical situations and how specific

styles can be effective. They also show that many rhetorical situations and genres will create

many effective writing styles as long as the correct genre is used to consider the main rhetorical

situations of exigence, audience, and constraints.

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Work Cited

“7 Ways to Deal With Bullying at Summer Camp.” STOMP Out Bullying,

https://stompoutbullying.org/blog/bullying-summer-camp/.

Bickmore, Lisa. “Genre in the Wild: Understanding Genre within Rhetorical (Eco) Systems.”

Press Books, p​ p. 1-10. 2019.

Boyd, Janet. “Murder! Rhetorically Speaking.” ​Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing, v​ ol. 2, pp.

87-101

Carroll, Laura Bolin. “Backpacks vs. Briefcases: Steps Toward Rhetorical Analysis.” ​Writing

Spaces: Reading on Writing, v​ ol.1, 2010, pp. 45-58

Dirk, Kerry. “Navigating Genres.” ​Writing Spaces: Reading on Writing, v​ ol. 1, 2010, pp.

249-262

Lieberman, Caryn. “Toronto Mother of 12-Year-Old Boy Who Died by Suicide Calls for

Bullying Inquiry.” ​Global News​, 29 Oct. 2019,

https://globalnews.ca/news/6091103/toronto-mother-son-bullying-suicide-inquiry/.

P., Emily. “Why Do We Hurt Each Other?” ​StopBullying.gov,​ 5 July 2015,

https://www.stopbullying.gov/blog/2016/07/05/why-do-we-hurt-each-other.html.

Mozes, Alan. “School Bullying's Impact Can Last a Lifetime: Study.” U.S. News & World

Report, 2​ 6 Apr. 2019,

https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2019-04-26/school-bullyings-impact-

can-last-a-lifetime-study.