Discourse Analysis

Daniel W. Russell, et al. "Predictors and Correlates of Continuing Involvement with the Baby's Father Among Adolescent Mothers." Journal of Family Psychology 12.3 (1998): 369-387. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 22 Feb. 2011.

At Baby Steps women get points if they bring support with them to their classes. They can use these points to go to the store to buy their child diapers, cribs and clothes. According to the article, fathers were more likely to stay involved with the adolescent mother if the couple had an intimate and supportive relationship 6 weeks after delivery. As I read more and more women are more likely to become successful due to the fact that they have assistance and it takes stress off of them to take care of a baby on their own. There is a difference between an adolescent father and father that is old in age. Young boy do not know how to take care of a child according to this article. I find this discriminatory because fathers that bare in old age might not know how to take care of a child also. Young boys have a lack of parenting skills and knowledge of child development. Women reply on men for emotional support, married or not. Men have an impact on a women’s well-being and behavior. Without moral support, I don’t think any women can take care of a baby on their own.

Father’s have a positive impact on children. If he stays around the child is more likely to behave throughout their life. Fathers associated with their baby have advantages where as fathers who are not involved with their child causes problems with mothers and their success. The agency Baby Steps really stress these young ladies to bring support with them. They offer women points which makes no sense. The baby’s father should be involved regardless of the situation. These men are to provide a safe and nurturing environment for their infants. I find it fascinating that men effect women and their success. I find it bias that the articles looks only on adolescent father’s involved but it looks to me that everyone at Baby Steps are under the age of 25.

discourse analysis write up #1-liz white

Elizabeth White
Instructor: Richard Samuelson
English 102
22 February 2001

Discourse Analysis Write-up

Throughout the semester I have been taking all of my reflections and analysis’s into my own hands to find a deeper meaning in these findings. What I found is there are some things worth doing because it is the right thing to do. My first reaction towards my English 102 class was confusion; I was confused as to what service learning had to do with writing in college. Now, being further into the course, I realize that there are valuable lessons that I have learned. Being in college mean being an adult; taking matters into your own hands and being a part of the community. But, what does it mean to be a part of the community, what would a community expect from me? These are questions I never would have thought to ask myself before this class and the answers I’m coming up with are even more surprising. To play my part in my community I don’t have to save a baby from a fire, although I would; or anonymously give a million dollars to a stranger, in which case I highly doubt I ever could. The point is, I’m doing something. Changing the world isn’t about how “smart” you are, it’s about the wisdom you gain from your experiences. I’m proud to say that I feel as though I am well on my way to having many new experiences and sharing them. So, by taking everything that I have learned through my Baby Steps program I have also come up with some questions.
While speaking with Diane, my Baby Steps advisor, she explained that our goal is to be someone that cares. When mothers of the program join in Baby Steps daily meetings it’s my job to check their points list. This points list allows them to be rewarded by redeeming their points for things for their children. They collect these points by doing something that is overall beneficial and healthy to themselves or their babies. So, for example bringing a support system with you gets you points, going to a doctor’s appointment; but the point that struck me as a surprise was not being involved in substance abuse. It hadn’t occurred to me before then that some of these women have struggled or are still with abusing substances such as drugs or alcohol. This is where I got my question. What kind of physiological damage can occur to a child, yet to be born, with a parent involved in substance abuse? To narrow it down a bit more I suppose I should’ve mentioned looking more so at a mother abusing substances as opposed to the father because in most cases there isn’t typically harm to the fetus unless the mother is involved.
To find out more about this problem I decided to start with looking more specifically at an effect of prenatal substance abuse that I was familiar with, but didn’t know much about, fetal alcohol syndrome. I found a fairly recent video online that had snippets of legitimate doctors from a few universities through the nation, and even a couple of adoptive parents that agreed to share their stories, give the facts and spread the word. This is the source I decided to go with. In a very broad sense; the facts are FAS (fetal alcohol syndrome) can occur at anytime of the pregnancy and can be more or less severe dependent upon the mother’s use of alcohol. In latent terms these doctors explained that this syndrome is something that this child lives with forever and cannot be treated. There are many brain abnormalities and even anomalies in physical appearance. FAS is especially hard as the children affected grow to be adults. They have many behavioral problems because they struggle particularly with problem solving skills and aren’t able to understand cause and effect relationships and long-term consequences. This means that a task such as going into a store with $20.00 and knowing what we can and cannot purchase isn’t such a simple task for someone with FAS.
After getting the facts I asked myself if they were legit. In almost every sense of the word, yes, the information I was receiving was legitimate research. However, there is bias in everything, especially in the personal interviews of the adoptive parents. Obviously drinking while you’re pregnant is something that many people frown upon, but I can’t help but think about that news outbreak I heard about maybe last year; about how it can actually be good for you to drink small doses of wine throughout your pregnancy, some doctors even recommend it. So, although a mass majority of people would agree that it is inappropriate to consume any alcohol during pregnancy, there are more and more people gaining a different approach on the matter. Another bias is adoptive mothers. I too would be worried, scared for the child and probably a little angry with the biological parents. But maybe to the biological mother, she did nothing wrong. There may be many women that feel that way. There are always to sides to a story, there are always morals and ethics that contradict a way a person handles or feels about a situation which is why there is always bias. I would like to learn what other people think about drinking while pregnant. On one side of the spectrum we have the doctors and mothers who, without a doubt, believe that by drinking while pregnant the child will very likely be affected by FAS and in their eyes that sacrifice isn’t worth it. But are there people that don’t think it’s that big of a deal?

Research question:

Is there more chance of success if the baby's father is around or if they have some other form of strong moral support? I am interested in looking at this particular topic because I am curious if the baby's father where there maybe they would have more money. These women gets points if they have support there with them. The baby's father should take responsibility of his actions and take care of his child. When I went to the agency most of the women went there alone and had no support with them. I will try and interview the women to see if the baby's father where to be involved would there be success and would they actually be at Baby Steps.

Discourse Analysis of "The Effects of Poverty on Infant's Development"

Gloria Zamudio

“The Effects of Poverty on Infant’s Development.” Livestrong.com, July. Web. 18 Februrary 2011.

            I just read an article on the Livestrong website that takes a very general look at how poverty affects and infant’s development. To find the bias in this article I think it might be important to look at what the website in general supports. The website seems to promote health and fitness for children and adults. It includes topics such as, eating healthy, ways to stay fit, how to keep track of dieting and fitness. It also includes a section on how to stay connected with the community and explains more about the Lance Armstrong Foundation. I believe the information on this website to be honest because it is based on the Lance Armstrong Foundation and because it seems to “genuinely care”, if you know what I mean. I don’t believe any kind of website that has raised so much money for cancer research would pull information out of no-good sources and wants a healthier community.

The author, Lily Medina, has had some background in education, health, fitness, writing and parenting. I think that the information in her article might be partial to information that readers could find on the rest of the website. Not that this was intentional but it covers a lot of the same information found in other article headlines that are listed to the right of the page I was reading. Medina’s article may have been chosen because it correlated so well with what the website is trying to promote and also because it would keep a reader browsing longer if they realized related information was found just a few clicks away. The website is also covered with advertisements so the information would have to appeal to the companies that are sponsoring it.

            I noticed that much of what Medina says leads back to mentioning how the parents are responsible for their baby’s development which makes sense since a baby is very vulnerable and relies entirely on its parents. She doesn’t say that it’s necessarily the parents fault but she mentions a lot of the stereotypes I find while researching this topic. She states that delayed infants in low income families are at greater risk of experiencing injury and illness because of accidents, abuse or neglect. These factors, according to Medina, are caused by stress, physical labor and drug and alcohol abuse. She also says that lower intelligence might be affected by the absence of the father, a mother’s depression or uneducated parents. I understand the reasons behind these stereotypes and research seems to support them but this aspect of the article stood out to me. I believe she probably mentions a parent’s role in this article because she is a mother herself so good parenting would be important to her. Medina also pulled out certain key words such as, malnutrition and mental health, to define and explain exactly why these words are important to a baby’s health. Her background in health and education probably played a role in deciding to focus on these words.

             In general this article did not openly try to persuade and gave very general information about the topic. It does bring up some good topics though that would be useful to pinpoint and research further. Plus, it is in a place where other closely related articles can be found.

Drafted research question- liz

What kind of physiological damage can occur to a child yet to be born with a parent that is involved in substance abuse?

Research Question

I noticed as I was researching there is a lot of bias and stereotyping put on low-income families. I noticed at Baby Steps that mothers recieve points for not resorting to drugs and alcohol and much of the information that I research seems to assume that these mothers are depressed and single. I would like to if things such as drugs and alcohol, depression or other psychological illnesses are a result of living low-income or if they can be linked to the cause of it.

Unit 1 Final

Gloria Zamudio

Professor Samuelson

English 102-Unit 1 Final

February 14, 2011

I was lucky enough to have an English professor my first semester of college that completely changed my perspective on writing. This class allowed me to have more confidence in my writing and also taught me that writing can be used as a tool to explore ideas and make a difference in the world.  I can still improve my writing in many ways but I believe I came into English 102 with the beginning of a strong foundation in academic writing. I have been introduced to some of the skills necessary to be a successful academic writer. These skills might include such things as using a reading as a lens to examine the general cause of an important issue, being conversant with my sources, and finding my role in the conversation. This semester I plan to practice and improve these skills because I believe they are the most important aspects of academic writing.

English 102 is a chance to use the rhetorical features of academic writing I learned last semester by participating in service learning and posting my work on a blog.  With the help of service-learning I can join a very real conversation on a topic that is prevalent in the community. In “Service-Learning and First-Year Composition” Haussamen states, “Service learning is not primarily social assistance; it is a pedagogy, one that addresses not only the issue of how best to learn but also the question of the best purposes of learning;” the idea of joining a legit and intelligent conversation has made writing for school more relevant to my learning and life in general (Haussamen,414). Posting my writing on a blog will force me to consider my audience and what I say more carefully. It will also be the most useful way to put my writing out in the middle of an ongoing conversation since so many people post their ideas on the internet as well. Service-learning, researching, and blogging is about finding a “middle ground between developing an idea that is entirely independent of what experts have written on a subject and producing a paper that does nothing but repeat other people’s ideas” to propose the problems and solutions I see in real life situations (Rossenswasser,216).

A good writer must also be a good reader. This doesn’t always mean simply reading an actual text but reading the environment surrounding them. I know a big part of my research will involve reading articles and periodicals of what experts have said about low income mothers and their baby’s health but through service-learning I will also read the environment of the Baby Steps agency and actually see mothers that struggle with finances and raising a child first hand. In order to use reading as a lens then I must first realize that the mothers at Baby Steps are a small portion of a bigger problem. In my research they represent many mothers across Idaho, or even on a much bigger scale, the United States, but that would require much more research than can be done in a semester. The periodicals I read will help me learn just how big this problem really is. There are two steps in using my reading as a lens to get to the roots of this community dilemma. First, I must literally look at the things the reading is trying to say and second, defamiliarize myself with the reading meaning, I need to allow myself the opportunity to see things differently (Rossenwasswer,213). By applying my research to different situations I can pull what I want out of any article or Baby Steps session that I attend. For example, in my research I might decide to focus on how the stress of living in a low-income family affects the development of a child under a year old rather than how agency’s such as Baby Steps help mothers get back on their feet financially. Allowing myself view things from different angles also teaches me to get rid of any bias that I might have toward the issue.

            Academic writing is about joining a conversation with some of the most informed and well researched people of a certain genre. Writing on a blog can be tricky for this very reason. Every time I think about blogging, not just nonsense but, actual informed facts and ideas, I think of the millions of people who have the chance of reading what I write. It’s daunting to realize that my audience has just expanded from my teacher and my peers to an infinite number of bloggers and researchers; some are experts and some most certainly are not. It’s the experts on the issue that make blogging intimidating because nobody wants to look like an idiot on the internet. Someone could just tear apart every piece of information I just researched to ask me a million questions that I will have to back-up with reasonable thoughts and facts. This is why it’s important to make sure I am conversant with my sources. I need to find the “middle ground” that I mentioned earlier because “typically, inexperienced writers either use sources as answers-they let the sources do too much of their thinking-or ignore them altogether as a way of avoiding losing their own ideas (Rossenwasser, 216).” If I use other experts to prove that my ideas are reasonable and not just grabbed out of thin air then it makes my claims seem more educated. I will also have the resources to look back on should someone try to contradict what I say. Through that middle ground I can begin to create my own space in the conversation and perhaps, depending on the genre, might even become an expert myself.

There are specific tools that I can use to help make academic writing easier for me. A lot of time I find that it is difficult to find my place in a conversation when I feel like one of my sources has said everything I want to say, I seem to struggle the most in this area. Two tools that I believe would work well in helping me with this problem can be found in “Writing Analytically”, a very helpful book on writing academically. Rossenwasser mentions “reading with and against the grain” and “uncovering the assumptions in a reading-where the piece is coming from” (205). Using this information I can get a more objective view on the source by finding “what else it believes that is more fundamental than what it is overtly declaring” (Rossenwasser, 209). It would also be important to view the source and what they write as two independent things. I agree with Rossenwasser when he says “written works…are produced by authors but not ultimately controlled by them” (210). If I could just step back and see what the author is communicating without realizing it then it would be easier to uncover something I don’t necessarily agree with. I can sift through the information this way and place myself right in the middle.  

The whole idea of using writing as a way to find my place role in a conversation brings a more relevant feel to English and school too. Too many times people who attend college don’t understand why required courses such as English are necessary but I’ve learned that it’s a very good communicative tool that will be necessary should I ever feel the need to state my stance on an issue which will more than likely happen sometime during my career after college. Last semester I feel that I learned the basic rhetorical features of academic writing and even had the chance to try it out a little bit. No doubt, this semester I am simply taking what I learned and applying it to real life situations and hopefully finding a solution for low income mothers and their families.

Works Cited

Hausseman, Brock. Teaching English in the Two-Year College. 1997. Print

Rossenwasser, David, and Jill Stephen. Reading Analytically. Print.