HANDOUT 2

In my view every kind of writing should be well structured, logical, cohesive, coherent, clear, precise and concise. Once a text follows these key features allows the reader to understand better not only the topic but also to find pleasure during his reading. I think a blog post should follow the template of an essay, i.e. it should have an introduction, a body and a conclusion. A blog post is a short piece of writing and the best way to save time and to say everything is just to use the standard scheme I presented above.
I read the blog posts I have written so far and nearly all of them follow the structure of an academic writing. Every time I write something I try to help the reader to understand me. I am not very concise and I tend to dwell on what I’m writing. The rules written in Handout 2 have been really useful for me and helped me to understand what I can do to be more clear and effective. However, It is not so easy to change the writing style of someone.
During the Easter Break I read some abstracts or books chapters in the field of Public Relations. Here are the titles of the books I found in order to collect material for my thesis and to understand how academic writings are developed: “Political Persuaders”, “Gender Advertisements”, “Political Communication Report”, “Management of corporate communication: From interpersonal contacts to external affairs”, “Excellence in Public Relations and communication management”.
First of all, the similarities between my posts and the texts I read are that of presenting a similar structure, that is an explanatory introduction of the topic, a body, where the topic presented in the introduction is analysed in details and a conclusion, where everything that has been previously said is summed up in short sentences.
Anyway, my posts are different from these academic writings not only in their style and accuracy but also in their linguistic level. I am not an English native speaker and I use to much sentences to say something that could be said in a few lines. Indeed, I am not so concise and my texts are not so fluent as academic texts. Moreover, I don’t use short, detailed and well-connected sentences and what I write is not always well expressed and easy to understand.
In spite this, I see the tasks of this 2nd semester as a personal linguistic challenge. I am aware of the improvement I did from October up till now. During the first semester, I was really embarrassed as I couldn’t write in English, because of the interference with the German language and the year of study in Germany. Now, I want to use these academic writings as models to follow and to assume for a more effective improvement of my English skills.



In step 2 I analysed some chapters of the book “Political Persuaders” by Dan D. Nimmo.

· Does it follow the hourglass structure? The text follows a hourglass structure where at the beginning there is a general introduction and then a detailed description of the single parts that constitute the topic introduced at the beginning and then a conclusion. For instance, I decided to write the structure of the Preface of the book. As you can see below, I decided to quote the main sentences of the introduction, main body and conclusion. All the book follows the hourglass structure, starting from the preface to the last chapter of the book.

Introduction: “In the last decade students of politics- journalists, political scientists, and practitioners- have expressed an increasing interest in the role played by political campaigns in American elections. There are a number of reasons for this: election campaigns reveal the full range of human ambitions and frailties in stark focus; and, too, we intuitively expect that, since so much time, money, intelligence, and emotional effort is expended on campaigning, it must have an effect on our lives that is worth exploring; finally, the behaviourist movement in the social sciences since World War II has stimulated scholars to examine campaigns as a major dimension of broader area of inquiry loosely designated political participation”.


Main Body:
1)“However, no single contemporary work brings together the results of the many recent studies of individual campaigns and campaigning techniques. This book, although not a summary of all the recorded evidence on political campaigns, does endeavour to recognize a substantial number of insights”.
2) “This exploration of modern campaign technology relies on numerous case studied, published and unpublished, of specific presidential, statewide, and local campaigns (…).


Conclusion: ”In addition to those who contributed their insights during these interviews, I should like also to acknowledge the following for their assistance (…)”.
“Finally, I thank Peter Grenquist and Roger Emblen of Prentice-Hall for their interests in the project (…)”.

· Is there a logical flow of ideas? Give reasons, and examples, for your answers.

As you can see the introduction has a “road –map”, in which the author describes the different topics he intends to develop. Firstly, “the interest in the role played by political campaigns in American elections”; secondly, “human ambitions and frailties during election campaigns”; thirdly, “the effect of time, money, intelligence and emotional effort on campaigning” and finally, “the behaviourist movement activity in social sciences”.
Then the author explains, the purpose of his research in the following parts of the main body. For instance, in the first paragraph he says: “However, no single work brings together the results of the many recent studies of individual campaigns and campaigning techniques. This book, although not a summary of all the recorded evidence on political campaigns, does endeavour to recognize a substantial number of insights”. In the second paragraph, the author describes the sources he used to do his research: “This exploration of modern campaign technology relies on numerous case studied, published and unpublished, of specific presidential, statewide, and local campaigns (…)”. At the end he concludes, thanking who helped and supported him in dealing with his work: “: ”In addition to those who contributed their insights during these interviews, I should like also to acknowledge the following for their assistance (…)”; “Finally, I thank Peter Grenquist and Roger Emblen of Prentice-Hall for their interests in the project (…)”.
Also this preface is an example of large scale argument, as the topic is divided into different parts, who provide evidence to the main topic stated at the beginning of the text. The arguments are linked by metalinguistic signalling devices such as “however”, “in addition” that are a contribute to the overall thesis.


· Is the text cohesive? What is done to make it cohesive? Provide examples.
The two pages of Preface are cohesive and it is easy to follow the flow of ideas as there are references forward and back to other ideas. The Preface is made up by four paragraphs, and each of them is a micro text, where information are connected and come one after the other. There are metalinguistic elements in paragraph two and four and these are: “However” and “In addition”. Anyway, the author manage to connect the second and the third paragraph using only a simple sentence: “This exploration of modern campaign” that develops the topic presented in the previous section. Indeed, in the second paragraph the author asserts that his book’s function is that of bringing together the results of the many recent studies of individual campaign and campaigning techniques and that of showing the impact of new techniques of political campaigns in 1970s. Therefore, the third paragraph is linked to the second only with the sentence “This exploration of modern campaign”, as the author wants to carry out his study emphasizing what kind of means he used to research new technologies of political campaign in 1970s.
What is more, the use of punctuations helps the reader to understand better what the text is speaking about. For instance, the first paragraph makes use of dashes, colons and semicolons to link ideas within the same paragraph, beside giving more emphasis using metalinguistic signals (finally) and coordination elements (and, too). Here is a part of the first paragraph: “In the last decade students of politics- journalists, political scientists, and practitioners- have expressed an increasing interest in the role played by political campaigns in American elections. There are a number of reasons for this: election campaigns reveal the full range of human ambitions and frailties in stark focus; and, too, we intuitively expect that, since so much time, money, intelligence, and emotional effort is expended on campaigning, it must have an effect on our lives that is worth exploring; finally, the behaviourist movement in the social sciences since World War II has stimulated scholars to examine campaigns as a major dimension of broader area of inquiry loosely designated political participation”.


· Is the writing clear or complex? Again, provide examples.
The writing is clear and there is not sign of wordiness in it. The reader has not problems in understanding the flown of ideas and the author make his work readable to everyone.
For example in the first part of the second paragraph, the reader understands clearly what is the purpose of the author’s book. “However, no single contemporary work brings together the results of the many recent studies of individual campaigns and campaigning techniques. This book, although not a summary of all the recorded evidence on political campaigns, does endeavour to recognize a substantial number of insights”. The language used is basic and known by everyone. The author’s target is indeed that of making his study readable to everyone, who wants to broaden its knowledge in the subject.

· Who is the text’s assumed audience? What indications of this do you have? How does this influence how the text is written?
In my view the text is addressed to everyone who is involved in the field of study of political communication. Indeed, the text aims to bring together all the results collected about the topic in order to show what discoveries has been done so far. The book tends also to be a guideline for everyone who is keeping on studying the impact of mass-media and new technologies in political campaigning. Anyway, the language is clear and not complex and it can be read also by not specialist readers. Here is again the first part of the second paragraph that provide evidence to my statement. “However, no single contemporary work brings together the results of the many recent studies of individual campaigns and campaigning techniques. This book, although not a summary of all the recorded evidence on political campaigns, does endeavour to recognize a substantial number of insights”.



This done, do you think a blog post should follow some or any of these points? Yes, no, why?
I think that a blog post like any other piece of writing – academic and not- should be well structured, logical, cohesive, clear, precise, concise and coherent.
Firstly, a well structured blog helps the reader to see how the writer develops and widens his ideas. In this way, it is possible to find trough a quick reading key words and main concepts. Moreover, when the flown of ideas is logical connected, the reader catches immediately the purpose of the text. In addition, a blog post should present clear and precise information that go straight to the point and avoid the reader to waste time on understanding what the text is dealing with. In conclusion, if the text is coherent in all its parts, the reader follows the author through key terms and other technical words, without spending time in further researches trying to understand what the writer intended to say.