Student NameLING 305WProject #1 Final Draft - Handout2.docx

Student Name
LING 305W
Project #1 Final Draft - Handout
23 February 2012
Genre Analysis of the Online Article, ‘Superfoods’ Everyone
Needs
Genre: online article
Author: Susan Seliger
Target Audience: variety of ages; healthy people, healthy cooks,
people who want to eat better, people
with illnesses, diseases, or other health ailments
Article Title: ‘Superfoods’ Everyone Needs
Source: www.webmd.com
Date: February 2007
Author’s claim: “A healthy diet incorporating a variety of...
superfoods will help you maintain your
weight, fight disease, and live longer.” (para. 4)
My analysis tool: COLFV model, which stands for five
elements—content, organization, language,
format, and values
My claim: Using the COLFV model to analyze the genre of this
informative online article, I find that
Seliger effectively uses organization, language, and values;
however, the content and format of the text could be improved.
CONTENT:
Feature 1 – Percentages

• In reference to the outside source, Elizabeth Somer, Seliger
includes percentages. “I’d say about 50%-70% of suffering
could be eliminated by what people eat and how they move:
heart disease, diabetes, cancer, hypertension can all be
impacted.” (para. 3)
✛ By including these percentages, the reader can easily
refer to them in the text.
✛ Percentages make the comment more tangible.
Feature 2 – Comparisons
• The author compares age with calcium levels for adults (para.
12). For example, the author includes:
“Age 9-18 – 1300mg; age 19-50 – 1000mg; age 51 and over –
1200mg,” in bullet point format on
separate lines.
✛ These comparisons by age and level of calcium help readers
find which level fits them.
✕ These comparisons are important, however, the ages are
limited to adults. Albeit the first group
includes children from ages 9-18, it can be useful for readers to
be informed about the levels for
younger children.
ORGANIZATION:
Feature 1 – Classification
• Seliger classifies each highlighted superfood in the
subheadings. For example, blueberries are the
“antioxident superfood” (above para. 5) whereas tea lowers
cholesterol and inhibits cancer (above
para. 11).

✛ These classifications help distinguish the beneficial
properties of each superfood.
Feature 2 –Expansion
Blueberries—one
of
the
superfoods
Seliger
describes.
Source:
www.sciencedaily.com
• Describing the preferred form of beans to purchase for the
superfood, fiber, Seliger cites Dr. Ann
Kulze (para. 10). Kulze expands beyond the dried, fresh and
frozen form of beans by mentioning that
consumers should try to avoid canned beans as they contain
high amounts of sodium usually.
LANGUAGE:
Feature 1 – Informal
• The author uses vocabulary like “guess what?” (para. 1) and
“yummiest” (above para. 13).
✛ Seliger does a great job of connecting to her more general
audience by using informal vocabulary.
This shows readers that an expert, like Seliger, is more similar
to them.
Feature 2 – Acronyms
• “ECGC” is described as a powerful antioxident by the author

(para. 11).
✛ Including acronyms can help reduce reading time for readers.
✕ This particular acronym is not defined by each of its letters.
This leaves members of the target
audience to search for its definition or to overlook it.
FORMAT:
Feature 1 – Subheadings
• “Soy – Superfood to Lower Cholesterol” (above para. 9) and
“Calcium” (above para. 12) are two of
the subheadings used by Seliger.
✛ Subheadings nicely guide the reader to the specific content.
Specifically, each superfood receives
its own section with a subheading and a paragraph description.
Feature 2 – Bullet points
• Fourteen items (superfoods) after the fourth paragraph and the
comparisons by age after the twelfth
paragraph receive their own lines with bullet points.
✛ Bullet points help a reader quickly and easily follow
emphasized text.
✛ Seliger does a great job of including the fourteen superfoods
with bullet points as it resembles a
shopping list. In fact, a reader could potentially print this
portion of the article and refer to the
bulleted items as a shopping list at the supermarket.
✕ The comparisons could be enhanced for better reader
interpretation if the content were inserted
into a table or graph rather than in bullet points. The reader
could refer to a visual such as a table

more easily and compare each age group side-by-side.
VALUES:
Feature 1 - The author and the target audience share the same
interest in good health.
• “A healthy diet incorporating a variety of the following
superfoods will help you maintain your
weight, fight disease, and live longer.” (para. 4)
✛ For the readers (as described in the target audience on page
one of this handout), this line directly
connects the benefits of eating superfoods.
Feature 2 - The author and the audience share the same
understanding that health can be improved.
• The author refers to Somer in regards to an additional benefit
of Omega 3s being a depression reducer
(para. 7).
✛ For the target audience, additional benefits support Seliger’s
plea to eat superfoods.
Reference
Seliger, Susan.
Concussions and NFL: How the name
CTE came about
By Bennet Omalu
Updated 11:38 AM ET, Tue December 22, 2015
CNN Opinion - Political Op-Eds | Social Commentary
Editor’s Note: Dr. Bennet Omalu, chief medical examiner

of San Joaquin County, California, is an associate clinical
professor of pathology at the University of California, Davis.
His story is told in the new movie, "Concussion." The
opinions expressed in this commentary are his.
(CNN) — When I read Mike Webster's file before I began
his autopsy, I knew he was more than a 50-year-old heart
attack victim. His file and the television reports of the death
of the former Pittsburgh Steelers center described a long, steep
fall into bizarre behavior. I
suspected he suffered from some sort of brain disorder.
The potential diagnoses on my mind were post-traumatic
encephalopathy (encephalopathy
means brain disease, damage, or malfunction), Alzheimer's
disease, dementia pugilistica, aka
punch drunk syndrome, and/or schizophrenia.
At this time there was no disease that I was aware of that
was called chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE.
Dementia pugilistica was unlikely since he was not a
boxer. Schizophrenia was unlikely since he did not have
any diagnosis of that disease in the extensive pre-mortem
clinical workup that he had. Alzheimer's disease was less
likely given his age.
Post-traumatic encephalopathy was about the only
remaining diagnosis I had in mind while I performed the
autopsy and considered the case. Based on what I knew
about Webster's career and his post-football behavior, I
expected to see the residual damages of recurrent contusions
and necrosis (death of body
tissue), and even atrophy of a lobe in his brain, which would be
characteristic of post-traumatic

encephalopathy.
The story of the discovery of Webster's brain disorder is worth
telling, not only because of the
upcoming release of the film "Concussion," but also because
some detractors have raised
questions that I believe are unjustified.
_______________________________
http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/21/opinions/omalu-discovery-of-
cte-football-concussions/
Dr. Bennet Omalu at a screening
of "Concussion."
No visible damage
I was flabbergasted when I opened his skull and saw a brain that
appeared completely
unremarkable without any visible damage. I saved his brain and
fixed it in formalin because I
was totally lost and confused by what I observed during the
autopsy.
When I examined his brain and requested a battery of tests --
histochemical and
immunohistochemical stains -- I honestly did not know what I
was looking for, and I did not have
any expectation of what I would see.
When I examined slides of Webster's brain under a microscope I
found abnormalities that I
could not explain. The unique and distinctive topographic
patterns of abnormal accumulations of

proteins called tau and amyloid did not match with any
neurodegenerative disease that I was
aware of.
Because I had already excluded Alzheimer's disease and
dementia pugilistica, I was very
surprised to see the abnormal accumulations of tau and amyloid
in his brain, both of which
occur in those diseases. Yet the topographic pattern, cellular
architecture and distribution of
these abnormal proteins were inconsistent with those diseases or
any other of which I knew. I
believed I had found something distinctive.
At this juncture, I wanted to show the slides to Dr. Ronald
Hamilton, my professor and mentor
who had taught me neurodegenerative diseases as a physician in
training.
Seeking Hamilton's opinion was consistent with the guidelines
and standards of practice of
pathology as has been established by the College of American
Pathologists, that when you see
something distinctive in a microscope, you may show it to a
second pathologist to confirm the
microscopic findings that you are observing. I took the slides to
Hamilton, and he confirmed that
I was not being delusional or hallucinatory: The microscopic
findings in Webster's brain were
distinctive and unique.
Hamilton suggested that we show the slides of Webster's brain
to Dr. Steven Dekosky, the
chairman of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center
Department of Neurology, and director
of the Alzheimer's Disease Research Center. Hamilton arranged

the meeting. I went to
Dekosky's office and showed him the slides. He, too, confirmed
that this was not Alzheimer's
disease and it was not dementia pugilistica. He agreed that I had
observed a new syndrome
and advised me to publish the paper of my findings. At this
point we still had no clue what this
new syndrome was.
_______________________________
A new disease
I went home and began a very comprehensive and extensive
literature review to see if this
observation had been published before in an American football
player. I was utterly surprised
that it had not.
Not a single paper had been published describing what I had
observed in Webster's brain. None
whatsoever. I honestly could not, and did not believe it. It was
simply impossible. Yes, much had
been published on boxers, (the "punch drunk" condition known
as dementia pugilistica) but
nothing had been written on any American football player.
However, I did not want to report the paper simply as a case
report describing the distinct
pattern I had observed in Webster. I believed I had discovered a
new disease in an American
football player, a disease that had to be named. I did not know

what name to give it, but I
decided that whatever name I would give it would satisfy three
criteria:
1. The name must be erudite and intellectually sophisticated.
2. The name must have a good acronym to facilitate recall
should someone not be able to say
the scientific name.
3. The name must be sufficiently generic, so that if someone
down the road proved me wrong
that this was not a distinctive disease, the name would still
accurately describe the observed
symptoms.
I am a forensic pathologist, and in the medico-legal
consultations I had done, I had learned that
precedent is very important in case law. This same principle
applied to the acceptability of
medical concepts in the court of law, frequently referred to as
the Daubert rule or principle in the
American judicial system.
If I derived a name that had been used in the literature as a
descriptive terminology, took that
descriptive terminology and converted it into a proper noun as
the name of a disease, I was less
likely to be deemed a radical, making my proposition more
likely to be accepted by the medical
community.
I therefore went back to the medical literature looking for
descriptive terminologies that had
been used to describe conditions resulting from primary brain
injuries. In my research I identified

and selected 24 descriptive terminologies that referred to long-
term and delayed complications
and outcomes of traumatic brain injury, but were not proper
nouns of any specific disease with
established pathology, especially in an American football
player.
They are: cerebral neurasthenia, chronic traumatic brain injury,
chronic brain injury,
compensation hysteria, concussion neurosis, delayed traumatic
apoplexy, dementia traumatica,
encephalopathia traumatica, litigation neurosis, postconcussion
neurosis, postconcussion
syndrome, post-traumatic concussion state, post-traumatic head
syndrome, post-traumatic
psychoneurosis, terror neurosis, traumatic constitution,
traumatic encephalitis, traumatic
encephalopathy, traumatic encephalopathy of boxers, traumatic
hysterias, traumatic insanity,
traumatic neurosis, traumatic psychosis, and chronic traumatic
encephalopathy.
_______________________________
Choosing a name
I spent days going through these names and analyzing them
within the context of the three
criteria I listed above. I finally settled upon two names:
1. Chronic traumatic brain injury

2. Chronic traumatic encephalopathy
Of the two, I preferred chronic traumatic encephalopathy. It
accurately described what I found in
Webster's brain. Chronic means long-term, traumatic is
associated with trauma, and
encephalopathy refers to brain damage, disease or malfunction.
The acronym, CTE, seemed
easy to grasp and remember. The name sounded intellectually
sophisticated. The name was
sufficiently generic that if I were proven wrong and this was not
a newly discovered brain
disease, it still referred to a bad brain associated with trauma .
Chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, thus became the
name of the disease I observed in
Webster's brain. Following DeKosky's advice, I documented my
findings in a paper entitled,
"Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy in a National Football
League Player," which was published
in the journal Neurosurgery.
In the paper, which listed Hamilton and my boss, Dr. Cyril
Wecht, as co-authors, I differentiated
CTE as a distinctive disease, and presented the defining
microscopic features in a case report
defining Webster as a sentinel case. The paper indicated that
other football players also
suffered from the same disease. This is a very basic and
fundamental step in epidemiological
methods for the surveillance, identification and introduction of
new diseases.
Before the case report on Webster, there was not a disease
called chronic traumatic

encephalopathy or CTE, although chronic traumatic
encephalopathy had been used as a
descriptive terminology in the literature. And this is why the
National Institutes of Health recently
published a paper for the diagnostic criteria for the pathologic
diagnosis of CTE claiming that
this was the very first time in history the pathologic criteria for
the diagnosis of CTE were being
published. If it was not a new disease, why would the NIH be
publishing and presenting such
criteria today?
_______________________________
Discovering more cases
Having published the sentinel case, I began searching for more
cases in football players,
because I believed a great majority, if not all professional
football players, suffered from CTE.
Discovering new cases was not difficult. Going by
epidemiological methods, I published the
second case of CTE in Terry Long, a football player and
teammate of Webster, then a third in
Andre Waters, a football player who played for the Philadelphia
Eagles.
The third case qualified as a case series. I still searched for
more cases of CTE in football
players, and eventually published a cohort study. I identified
and linked CTE with a distinctive
constellation of presenting symptoms, which included suicidal
behavior and suicides, which I
also published.

I believed CTE existed in other high-impact contact sports
athletes, and when Chris Benoit, a
professional wrestler, committed suicide, I secured his brain
and identified the first case of CTE
in a wrestler. I again believed that some, if not all, the so called
PTSD in military war veterans
was a "blast variant" of CTE. Again I was the first to identify
CTE in military war veterans.
Moving forward, I believe CTE will become a disease that will
have sub-types and variants.
Today, chronic traumatic encephalopathy has become a
generally accepted disease and
principle, if not common knowledge, in the medical literature. It
has become a broadly
diagnosed disease by clinicians and pathologists. In fact, I am
very proud that some people
have described the Webster autopsy as one of the most
significant single events in the history
of sports because of the discovery and diagnosis of CTE.
_______________________________
Knowledge of the disease spreads
Knowledge of the disease has now spread through all levels of
football and society. Even my 8-
and 6-year-old daughter and son, Ashly and Mark, know what
CTE is. They may not be able to
say chronic traumatic encephalopathy, but they can say CTE.
The search for the real cause of Webster's death was, for me, a
faith journey that epitomizes
who we are as a common humanity. The search for this disease

was not about gaining any sort
of recognition for myself. Rather, I wanted to make a difference
both for Mike and for all of us.
Some detractors, just like NFL doctors in the past, continue to
deny that I discovered and
named CTE when I performed an autopsy on Webster. These
detractors continue to ridicule me
like the NFL doctors have done. These insinuations are
extremely hurtful and these are part of
the reason I have always said that I wish I never met Mike
Webster. I would never have
imagined that 13 years after the Webster autopsy that certain
people will still be making very
calculated efforts to dehumanize, belittle, discredit and
marginalize me and my work, just like it
was 2002 all over again.
According to the Oxford Dictionary, to discover something
means "to find (something or
someone) unexpectedly or in the course of a search." Therefore,
just like Will Smith has said in
the movie "Concussion," "If you continue to deny my work,
people will continue to die." Anyone
who continues to deny and misappropriate this work is
dehumanizing Webster and the other
athletes who guided me to the truth of the disease that
ultimately contributed to their deaths.
It is my conviction that we are one love, one hope, one spirit
and one body, bound together by
the bond of peace. I wish us all every joy and happiness this
Christmas, for that is actually what
the movie "Concussion" is all about.

Project #1 Prompt
Your task is to analyze a text, paying special attention to the
features that influence a piece of writing the most: the audience,
the writer’s orientation, the rhetorical situation, and the genre
(COLFV features). Use the sample rhetorical analysis on pages
42-47 as a flexible guide (not a rigid model). The content of
your project should differ from the sample because you are
analyzing a different text, but the format of your analysis
should contrast with the sample as well, due to the nature of
this assignment.
PART A : TEXT & SUMMARY
· Select one of the texts available on BlackBoard under Project
#1, labeled “Text Options.” Annotate a hard copy of the text.
· Write a SUMMARY: Use one of the texts made available for
this assignment on Blackboard. Apply what you have learned
about analyzing texts using the COLFV model and write a
summary of your findings. Your COLFV summary will
include:
· 1: rhetorical information about the text
· 2: a brief description of content
· 3: a brief description of organization
· 4: a brief description of language
· 5: a discussion of the values that might be held by the
discourse community of readers and writer.
here is the summary
Analysis of the essay “Concussions and NFL: How the name
CTE came about”
Bennet Omalu uses various rhetorical analysis devices to
communicate to the audience about the findings that have
become controversially discussed by opponents of chronic
trauma encephalopathy disorder or CTE. Rhetorical devices are

used to appeal to readers of any text through use of logos,
ethos, and pathos. Ethos refers to the appeal to ethics of
readers, pathos appeal to the emotions, and logos appeals to the
logical reasoning of the readers. The essay “Concussions and
NF: How the name CTE came about” is able to communicate to
the prospective audiences through utilization of rhetorical
devices that pass information to readers in an effective way. It
is important to note that the text provides information to the
football players and stakeholders on the causes of many deaths
among football veterans. This paper analyzes how Omalu is able
to pass information in an effective by using the appealing
techniques (Omalu, 2015, p. 1).
For Omalu, the work of autopsy on the body of Mike Webster
who was a former Pittsburgh Steeler center is the basis of a
great finding that led to the publication of journals about CTE.
Omalu speaks with academic authority of his professional.
Through analysis of Mike Webster, Omalu discovered that the
disorders that could be related to his death were unavailable. It
was a new finding that required proof and credible backing. The
experiments on the brain provided evidence that the disease that
could have led to the death of the veteran footballer was
different from other diseases whose findings had been
published. Cooperation with senior neurologists and other
professionals of the brain provide a backing that Omalu had
found a new disease that required publication. CTE was
confirmed on other players who suffered similar disease after
years of football. Omalu backs his analysis by consulting with
his mentor Dr. Ronald Hamilton whose academic qualifications
makes the findings credible. Throughout the writing, Omalu
shows the readers that in deed the findings and information
provided are credible (2-3).
Omalu organizes the text in a technical way that appeals to
readers who are in the field of neurology. Omalu selects his
audience by use of technical language that can be understood by
people who are professionals in medicine. Systematic
organization of the information collected in the experiments

carried out provides a good starting point to back his assertion
and findings of CTE disease. At the introduction, the author
discusses that the disease and findings of autopsy were different
from what was known to be main cause of many deaths among
players. To this end, there is backing of the information that
there was a new disease that had not been discovered (2-4).
Use of technical language is important aspect of the description
provided by Omalu. The information appeals to the ethics of the
medicine profession. For instance, the statement, “when I
examined his brain and requested a battery of tests-
histochemical and immunohistochemical stains” shows how
Omalu relied on ethical experiments before making his
conclusion (3).
Readers would be interested in finding out why Omalu wanted
to give the disease a new name. The new name is discussed and
analyzed through the continuous assessments. Information
provided throughout the essay implies that the author was a
professional and was credible to provide information. Omalu
appeals to the emotions of the readers by stating that those who
were opposing his findings are dehumanizing Webster and other
athletes. The way Omalu wrote the text is able to tell the
readers about the text and what could be expected in the movie
“Concussions” (Omalu, 2015).
· PART B : CONTEXT (Due Friday, Feb. 12th on Blackboard)
· • Use the close reading, summaries, and notes to analyze the
text — in particular, examine the effects of the audience,
writer’s orientation, rhetorical situation, and genre (COLFV
elements) by responding to each of the following questions with
2-5 sentences each. The format of this section should be a
numbered set of responses to each question, BUT this does not
mean giving short or one-word answers.
·
1.
What is the context of the issues? What do you know about the
topic? What issues does the topic raise? Is there a larger debate,

discussion, or controversy already going on? What seems to be
at stake?
2.Who is the writer? What do you know about the writer’s
background, credibility, knowledge of the topic, beliefs, and
social allegiances?
3.What is the publication/source? What do you know about its
intended readers, reputability, political slant, and the topics it
covers?
4.How does the writer define to rhetorical situation and identify
the call to write? What is the writer’s orientation toward the
issues involved? What is at stake for the writer?
5.Who is the intended audience? Is the writer addressing one
group of readers or more than one? Is the writer trying to bring
an audience into being (to create a group/ audience)? What kind
of relationship is the writer trying to establish with readers?
What assumptions about readers does the writer seem to make?
6.How does the writer use language? What is the writer’s tone?
What does the writer’s word choice chow about his or her
assumptions about readers? Does the writer use specialized
terms or slang? Are there memorable figures of speech? Does
the writer stereotype?
7.What is your evaluation of the rhetorical effectiveness? Does
the writer accomplish his or her purposes? What constraints, if
any, qualify the writing’s effectiveness?

Student NameLING 305WProject #1 Final Draft - Handout2.docx

Student NameLING 305WProject #1 Final Draft - Handout2.docx

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