McGarry 1

Sarah McGarry
Professor Wilson
Writing 2
3 June 2016
Revised WP2
Who are you? Wait, what just happened? These are just a few questions that you might
hear an Alzheimers disease patient say. The cause for this memory deteriorating disease has yet
to be found, but medical professionals have been on the hunt for beneficial treatments. The
number of individuals who fall victim to this disease are growing, and various academic
disciplines are doing their part to help resolve this epidemic. Psychologists and Neurologists
direct their information towards two different audiences, but they both show an interest in
medicating Alzheimers patients through beneficial treatment strategies. The human mind may
be the common element, but the field of Psychology is concerned with the way people think and
feel and is limited to simple ideals, whereas Neurology places a focus on the anatomy aspect of
the nervous system and uses far more complicated rhetoric.
Psychology is concerned with the human psyche, which deals with thought, cognition,
memory and even the unconscious. This discourse community is easier to understand, because
every individual has their own thoughts and feelings, so they have the ability to relate to and
understand this type of evidence. The monograph, Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation as a
Memory Enhancer in Patients with Alzheimers Disease: A Randomized, Placebo-controlled
Trial questioned how effective transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is in verbal
memory function in patients with Alzheimers disease. It is targeted at an audience that

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understands basic medical terminology and it does not require that they attend medical school in
order to comprehend it.
This discourse community organizes its information in a way that allows its audience to
understand on a level that is simple and easy to follow. John Swales writes in his article, The
Concept of Discourse Community how discourse communities have a common set of goals that
they each try to achieve. The goal of Psychology is to interpret human behavior, and this is
accomplished in the monograph by explaining how the experiment was conducted step by step.
This layout is set up to allow for the audience to maintain their attention long enough to finish
the entire monograph. Had the experiment not been explained in individual steps, the reader
might have trouble deciphering which elements came first. The article Backpacks vs.
Briefcases: Steps toward Rhetorical Analysis by Laura Carroll goes to show how authors need
to understand their audiences if they wish to teach them anything. If someone is to be taught
something, they need to have a complete understanding of what they are reading or they will
grow bored and neglect everything that they are supposed to be learning.
A discourse community has to wisely choose the jargon it chooses to write with, because
it has to be appropriate for the targeted audience. Kerry Dirk explains in her article Navigating
Genres how genres can be differentiated by the conventions and jargon that is tied to them. The
monograph is made up of simple medical terms that anyone would be familiar with and the
reading was straightforward. As long as an individual has some basic knowledge on what
Alzheimers disease is, then they would have no problem getting through this piece of writing.
Words such as placebo (Bystad 2) and dementia (Bystad 3) are understood by those who
have come into contact with Alzheimers disease in one form or another.

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Neurology is a field that is concerned with the the actual anatomy of the brain and deals
with how the nervous system functions. The reason that this discourse community is difficult to
comprehend is because not everyone has the knowledge that is needed to understand the
conventions that are seen in Neurology. This evidence is displayed in the academic article,
Current Research Therapeutic Strategies for Alzheimers Disease Treatment. The attracted
audience for anything in this discourse community would be any medical professional looking
into more research on a particular function or disease of the nervous system. The known standard
from this discipline is that this will be a difficult read due to the expectations that authors place
on readers to automatically understand the terminology used. If a doctor were to read the term
antiamyloid from this article, they should have no trouble understanding the definition,
because it is expected of them to be experienced with medical terminology such as this (Folch 5).
The organization of Neurological based writing is accomplished through scientific and
experimental methods. Before going straight into why a particular hypothesis may see
improvements in Alzheimers patients, they instead chose to explain how that medical term can
be compared in normal and healthy individuals. Tau proteins are highly soluble and abundant in
the neurons where they play a critical role in microtubule stabilization treatments aim to
inhibit the phosphorylation and/or aggregation of Tau protein (Folch 6). This tactic is used to
give the reader some background information so that they can recognize the effects that these
hypotheses are supposed to have on Alzheimers patients. Consequently, these explanations are
too complicated for the average reader to understand which shows that the audience needs to
already have some experience in the medical field. When you take Mike Bunns tip to identify
the choices that the author makes in his article How to Read Like a Writer, you will have a
greater understanding of why Neurology is so different from Psychology. Both pieces of writing

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were written in their own unique ways to apply to contrasting audiences. The author of the
neurological academic article chose to conclude with the results so that the medical professional
who is reading it can know that the research that was conducted was not a sufficient treatment
plan. The final results had to be included, because it is beneficial to the audience that is reading
this discourse community.
The level of vocabulary used is dependent off the audience that an academic discipline is
trying to attract. This academic article would normally drive an individual like myself, one who
has absolutely no medical background into a deep sleep. If one is incapable of understanding
something, there is no interest in continuing to read from there so all attention is lost. The words
used are extremely complicated, and the authors never had definitions to explain them. The
author has an expectation of their audience to automatically understand everything that is being
said. This also places limitations on who can read it, because not everyone will have the
background knowledge to understand what amyloid peptide aggregation (Folch 5) is. This
demonstrates Carrolls point in her article how authors make choices based off a desired
audience. Neurology is more concerned with cause and effect and the scientific side of the
nervous system, which results in jargon that is hard for the common reader to understand.
The medical field is made up of a multitude of academic disciplines that all have the
same overall goal of finding resolutions to medical diseases, but the way they chose to go about
finding this information can be compared and contrasted. Both disciplines used different
conventions through methods, organization and jargon to get their points across. They each have
their own goals of dealing with either human behavior or the actual chemistry and functioning of
our nervous system. Psychology directs its attention onto educating people who do not
necessarily have a medical background, unlike its contrasting academic discourse community.

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The expectations that Neurology has can only be met if one furthers their education by attending
some kind of medical school. All differences set aside, both Psychology and Neurology are doing
their part to find treatments for Alzheimers disease patients.

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Works Cited
Bunn, Mike. "How to Read Like a Writer." Writing Spaces: Reading on Writing. By
Charles Lowe. Vol. 2. N.p.: Parlor Press, 2010. N. pag. Print.
Bystad, Martin, Ole Grnli, Ingrid Daae Rasmussen, Nina Gundersen, Lene Nordvang, Henrik
Wang-Iversen, and Per M. Aslaksen. "Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation as a
Memory Enhancer in Patients with Alzheimers Disease: A Randomized, Placebocontrolled Trial." Alzheimer's Research & Therapy Alz Res Therapy 8, no. 1 (2016).
Accessed May 1, 2016. doi:10.1186/s13195-016-0180-3
Carroll, Laura Bolin. "Backpacks vs Briefcases: Steps toward Rhetorical
Analysis." Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing. By Charles Lowe. Vol. 1.
N.p.: Parlor Press, 2010. N. pag. Print.
Dirk, Kerry. "Navigating Genres." Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing. By
Charles Lowe. Vol. 1. N.p.: Parlor Press, 2010. N. pag. Print.
Folch, Jaume, Dmitry Petrov, Miren Ettcheto, Sonia Abad, Elena Snchez-Lpez, M. Luisa
Garca, Jordi Olloquequi, Carlos Beas-Zarate, Carme Auladell, and Antoni Camins.
"Current Research Therapeutic Strategies for Alzheimers Disease Treatment." Neural
Plasticity 2016 (2016): 1-15. Accessed May 1, 2016. doi:10.1155/2016/8501693.
Swales, John. The Concept of Discourse Community. Genre Analysis: English in Academic
and Research Settings. Boston: Cambridge UP, 1990. 21-32. Print.