Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Journal Analysis: Human Factors

I have been reading articles in an Industrial Engineering related journal called Human Factors

The articles are written basically like a scientific lab report.  There is a very specific structure to the articles including the abstract, background, method, results, conclusion, and application. Because of this specific structure I believe the journal fits well in Linton's convention of structure.  The articles are broken into sections which Linton would refer to as "sign-posting".  The articles I have read so far have mostly been building on existing work or investigating previous topics.  There is also a scientific approach to the choice of words in the articles displaying the convention of language.

According to Swales's genre model, there are three "moves" within a particular piece of academic writing.  The first move is establishing a territory, which I feel like the journal does my reviewing items of previous research.  They establish a niche by raising questions about topics of previous research and taking a different approach to the topic.  Finally, they occupy that niche by announcing principle findings and indicating research article structure. 

So far I have found this journal quite interesting and the writing structure suites my learning style by breaking the text up into pieces.

Tuesday, November 9, 2010