An Analysis On Discourse In The Computer Science Community

Computers and their software are used by millions of people everyday. The ways in
which we use them can vary from simple communication to building entire worlds. Those of us
who contribute to or learn about the different facets of computers will find communities built
around them. These communities have their own words, phrases, and ways of speaking that
make their discourse unique. For the purpose of analysis I have found two pieces of writing that
display the different kinds of discourse found in the Computer Science (CS) field. The first is a
formal research journal from a Northeastern Professor in his field of networks. The second is
web page made to advertise an update to the popular software Photoshop. I will highlight and
examine what can make two pieces relating to the same field different in the way they talk to
their audience both in format and in substance, including how much Hyland was correct in
saying that the discourse of a hard science could be dry and factual.
As a whole, the CS academic field can be exclusive from normal people due to their
unique discourse, however some journals will take the time to explain topics in ways that are
approachable by many people with different discourse backgrounds. One contributor to the CS
academic field is Christo Wilson. Wilson is a faculty member at Northeastern who contributes to
multiple research papers in Computer Science and more specifically the Networks discipline.
One such paper is Recommended For You: A First Look at Content Recommendation
Networks. The topic of Recommended For You is the recommended sections you find on
websites all around the internet. These recommendation networks are analyzed for their
substance and their sponsorship. Most people who browse the web have run into these
networks so Wilson and his team have decided to try and make the discourse very
understandable to communities that arent that close to the topic.
The team behind Recommended For You use a healthy mix of field specific words and
more common terms. Many computer science words are accompanied by their definition
allowing for readers unfamiliar with the subject to understand it. Someone with a basic
understanding of Computer Science, and more precisely internet web pages, could read this
paper and understand the majority of it. I believe the authors wanted to be as inclusive as
possible with this paper as its content relates to most internet users. The paper is also found for
free online with no ads on the site it's hosted on. This can be attributed to academic integrity
found in the field. Researchers want their papers to be credible and if their research is
sponsored by outside sources, they would lose credibility to the rest of the discourse
community.
The format of this paper is very typical of most research papers. It begins with a an
Abstract, followed by an Introduction and Background of the topic. The format will be familiar to
other academics outside the field which helps convey that it should be understandable by most
people. The tone for the most part is dry, focusing on presenting the reader with evidential
discourse than inspiring emotional connections. Wilson knows that academics and regular
people appreciate when someone presents facts and a recommendation rather than being told
how something is with nothing to back it up.
While academic discourse tries to provide an unbiased outside view, the professional
discourse standard has no problem trying to convince us that their product matters anyway they
can. The professional field focuses on software development for the most part and selling or
providing that software to users. When a new piece of software is released or an update to an
existing piece is developed, there will be an entry on a blog, website, in the program itself, or
multiple places including all of the previous places mentioned. The popular software Adobe
Photoshop publishes release notes when new versions are released including on their blog.
One specific post is an update release in Photoshop posted on June 21, 2016. While
Photoshop is created by a large team of developers, this blog post is authored by a single
person, Pam Clark. She is mentioned in a small single line at the top of the web page but like a
traditional piece of writing, her specific authorship is at the bottom of the page accompanied by
her picture and a quick description of herself. This emphasises the product and its attributes,
not the author and her work since the purpose is to sell the product. The style of the page is like
most articles you find on the web, and someone who may not pay much attention could even
confuse it with a review by an unbiased source.
The audience reading this post can be anyone who uses the product or is interested in
using it. If someone has never touched photoshop or used an image editor there will be specific
terms that they will not understand such as when the author describes that You can now
license a stock image directly from the layers panel or on-canvas via a contextual menu. There
are little to no definitions of these terms which assumes the reader should be familiar with them
on their own. Exclusive discourse does two things. First it shows that the author knows the
discourse that experienced professionals are familiar with. Someone who really understands
the software doesnt want to bother with a dumbed down analysis. Second, readers who arent
familiar can be in awe of how advanced the technology is. The author may be trying to
convince inexperienced people that the more flashy words she can include, the more they will
believe this is top of the line software.
Other parts of the article have mass appeal. The article is littered with high resolution
pictures of the capability of the product. When the audience can see with their own eyes the
power of the product it is even more useful than just describing it. In the introduction the author
mentions a story about one of her colleagues visited an orphanage in Vietnam where they
teach the children how to use Photoshop. In addition to that, she describes how the children
can use the product and the skills they learned to earn a living, making almost 600% more per
week than an unskilled worker. Note that this does not have a reference or source to back it up
and is mentioned in the sixth line of the story. Convincing the reader that the company is
charitable and the software is built by people who are charitable can only boost sales. You
could take that one step further and make people almost believe that by buying this product they
are helping people second hand.
The contrasts of these two forms of discourse is highlighted more than their similarities.
Though they both have goals of informing the reader about a topic, the discourse and other
methods used are not the same. Wilsons paper provided research, definitions, and sources
along with evidential and textual discourse to prove his point to as many readers as possible,
even those outside the discipline. Clark relied on using discourse specifically found in the photo
editing community to draw in the experienced and inexperienced. The two articles can show
how different the authors can speak to their audience given their different settings and goals but
same broad community.
 Works Cited

Clark, Pam. "Adobe Releases Major Photoshop CC Update Today and Announces More Digital

Imaging Product Features Coming Soon | Photoshop Blog by Adobe." Photoshop Blog.

Web. 25 Jan. 2017.

<https://blogs.adobe.com/photoshop/2016/06/adobe-releases-major-photoshop-cc-update

-today-and-announces-more-digital-imaging-product-features-coming-soon.html>.

Bashir, Muhammad Ahmad, Sajjad Arshad, and Christo Wilson. Recommended For

You: A First Look at Content Recommendation Networks (2016): n. pag. Web.

<http://personalization.ccs.neu.edu/papers/imc147s-bashirA.pdf>.