Rhetorical Analysis of Academic Journal

In this post, I will write about the rhetorical analysis of my academic journal

Journal of Comparative Physiological Psychology

Some of the authors published in this issue are MaryLou Cheal, Joyce Klestzick, and Valerie B. Domesick. There are several other authors that contributed to this entire journal, too many to count. What the journal tells the readers is where each author currently works. Cheal and Domesick are both affiliated with the McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts and Harvard Medical School. Klestzick is also a member of the McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts.

The authors are portrayed as credible sources. For example, by including that all three authors of the article, “Attention and Habituation: Odor Preferences, Long-Term Memory, and Multiple Sensory Cues of Novel Stimuli” work at McLean Hospital assures the reader that they have the necessary education and experience to write an article on neuroscience (Pg 47).

The intended audience for this particular journal issue is most likely other scientists and professors. I can tell because the articles are not simplified for a general audience; they are very content heavy and use escalated vocabulary that only others who are familiar with physiological sciences would be able to comprehend. For example, one sentence in the article I mentioned above, “Investigation of novel stimuli may be thought of as part of a natural behavior that is analogous across many phylogenetic levels,” (pg 47).

The context surrounding this particular journal issue is….

The overall message and purpose of the journal issue is to present results from several experiments performed on animals to compare mostly their neurology to their physiology. Basically, why they might act the way they do and what it tells us about human physiology and psychology.

Specific details of the overall purpose are the titles of each of the articles in the journal: “A Vagally Mediated Histaminergic Component of Food-Related Drinking in the Rat”, “Effects of Paleocerebellar Lesions on DRL Performance in the Albino Rat”, “Memory and Septo-Hippocampal Connections in Rats.”