How to Write like an Economist: Lexis and Structure

We decided to video-adapt Paul Holland’s Project 3, which focuses on three of Professor Flanagan’s texts (academic research, an op-ed, and a National Science Foundation research proposal) in order to understand the rhetorical strategies and patterns utilized in academic economic writing. We specifically chose his essay due to the relevancy of the subject in the common person’s life and Professor Flanagan’s incredibly interesting area of research- Peremptory Challenges. Thus, our purpose was to share with our audience how important it is to understand the rhetorical strategies of economic writing and how different strategies, specifically lexis and structure, should be reflective of the text’s genre and audience.

When creating our video, we understood our audience shifted from a scholarly, rhetorically-fluent audience to a more general, popular audience. Furthermore, these audience members are specifically students, faculty, or anyone else who visits the “We Wake, We Write” youtube page. Thus, it was vitally important to us to appeal to these audience members through colloquial language and an entertaining form of media as this often represents the most effective medium of communication. Specifically, we had to reformulate complex, “academic” vocabulary back to their simple structures as if we were the students with the same vocabulary from the beginning of the semester.

The reason it was imperative that our video had some entertainment value is that our goal was to capture the attention of the audience, and bring them through the narrative path we built. This is because we imagined the audience would not truly understand or care to listen to our lessons and advice if the video did not capture their attention. Therefore, in order to achieve this aesthetic, we modeled our video off comedy-news shows such as “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” and “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver”. These news shows are excellent examples of entertainment mediums that transform hard news into a easily-consumable, yet educative, format for a popular audience. Our group then studied the methods and tools in which John Oliver and Jon Stewart hosted and edited their shows, including certain mannerisms- while also implementing some of the video production effects such as the screen that appears to the left of the host (typical of news outlets like CNN and MSNBC). We again chose this method of communicating our purpose because we assessed that this format was perfect for educational reasons while also thread-ing a sense of entertainment that could highlight our greater themes, while hopefully leaving a memorable image of our purpose in our audience’s consciousness.

We essentially created a new TV show called “Rhetorical Situations”, where we would hypothetically discuss different rhetorical strategies used in writing or media (a tv show where people can learn material from WRI 210 but in a popular way). One episode, this episode, is: “How to Write like an Economist” in which we obviously discuss these writing styles in the context of the economic discipline. We begin our show with a brief introduction of economics and its presence in academia, which serves as a roadmap to where our episode will lead the listeners. Furthermore in this introduction, we define economics, introduce Professor Flanagan and his texts, and tell the listener why understanding rhetorical strategies is important. We then analyze a Scholarly Research piece, a Popular op-ed, and a National Science Foundation Research Proposal to prove how audience really does affect choices in writing (with examples straight from the text). Conclusively, we hope that the audience will recognize rhetorical patterns within the writing in the field of economics in order to enter into the disciplinary community with a proper sense of agency and understanding of the pressures they must face writing in such a competitive space.

Next, we provide background information on economics and introduce Flanagan’s specialty, which is Peremptory Challenges. We then take time to explain what this means in terms of rhetorical tools, the subject, and the viewer. Once we have addressed this background, we get into the meat of our discussion. First we discuss lexis through a sketch where a student (Paul Holland) does not know what lexis is, demonstrating the lack of general knowledge for rhetorical terms and vocabulary. Then we extrapolate on that there is a gap in knowledge between students and their understanding of rhetorical strategies, which is a needed tool to become a successful economist and writer in general. As a group, we took it upon ourselves to share our knowledge by defining lexis for a popular audience through this entertaining format. We then show specific examples of lexis used in Flanagan’s works to show how lexis varies depending on genre and audience. For example, in Flanagan’s academic piece, he uses high level vocabulary for other experts in his field like, “Nash equilibrium, lemma, and backwards induction”. Next we discuss structure with a similar format of a skit where a student does not know what structure is, which leads to a definition, examples from Flanagan’s texts, and finally the importance of understanding structure.

Finally, we get to our purpose and overall conclusion. As a group, it was really important for us to have a deeper meaning to this artistic piece. Essentially our greater purpose is to show students that it is necessary to learn how to write like an economist if you want to be one- and only then will your work and ideas be accepted within this field. We asset that economic ideas, spawning from its writing, can influence the world but it fundamentally begins with understanding the proper rhetorical strategies needed to properly communicate theories and ideas that impact every person who exists in that economy as such writing can influence political legislator.

So how did we film this? Our filming process was actually quite interesting. We found this really elegant room on campus that has a unique and incredibly different architecture than any surrounding room (Tribble 201A). Essentially, the room consists of a long table that Paul and David sat atop of to film Kayla. As director, Paul took on a creative role and stayed relentlessly attuned to every detail: such as where the chair should be positioned to look perfect on camera, the materials in which Kayla should hold, the angles of the camera and the lighting, the sequences of film for editing specifications, and more. David sat next to the camera where he steadily held the computer screen with the script for Kayla. However, David also took on the majority of editing in the ZSR computer lab- which involved sacrificing lengthy amounts of time from studying to both edit and learn the new video editing software: Adobe Premiere. Kayla of course served to contribute to much of the editing of the reflection paper and record the majority of scenes which appeared in the final video product.

Conclusively, we hope the class enjoys our video as an educative piece and a deeply creative expression of what we believe is a relevant piece of news in the world today. Our group retained its flexibility in the face of difficulty, and yet believe we delivered a fantastic, creative piece for our audience.

Best,

Paul Holland, Kayla Rowe, David Moran