Academic Discourse & Genre

Time to take a closer look into the journal I analyzed in the previous blog post:

How many genres are published in this journal? How would I describe them?

As far as form, all the articles follow the same kind of format ( a bolded title, an abstract, presenting the findings with bolded titles, and a conclusion). Because of this, the different genres within this journal can be differentiated using the content. I found that the content could be divided into 4 general genres; articles made to just inform on facts(like population), articles written to present information so that changes could be made to the practice, articles published to explore the role of nursing, and articles written to explore the fact that current practices have on patients. 

Examples of these genres and their purpose: 

Like I mentioned before, all the articles follow the same form. The differences between them lie in the content and the purpose of each article. Here are a couple of examples (all of them are screenshots from the Journal of Pediatric Nursing) : 

• This example I put under my "article written to explore the role of nursing" category.
• The purpose of the article is to study how nurses are perceived and present that information. 
• There's no specific "do this" in this article; the nurses who read it just gain a better understanding of how they're generally perceived. What they choose to do with this information is up to them.

• This example I put under my "articles written to present information so that changes could be made to the practice" category.
• The purpose of this article is to present new strategies nurses can incorporate to improve the way they care for their patients. 
• As opposed to the article above, this one has a definite "do this" element to it. 

• This example I put under my "articles made to just inform on facts(like population)" category.
• The purpose of this article was to research and present the findings.
• Nurses have no way to use this information and apply it to the way they treat patients. It's just factual information that is generally good to know to understand family dynamics.

I'm finding that most nursing journals don't really deviate in form, so the genre is based on content. I can see how this will be a challenge when I'm choosing my genre examples. Is anyone else having this issue?