How

much do you REALLY trust your doctor?

Being able to trust your doctor and the medical advice that they give you is essential, isnt it?
Well believe it or not, new studies have shown that most doctors dont actually know what
they are talking about when it comes to alternative tobacco products.

Nurses and healthcare providers hold essential roles in trying to get people to quit
smoking. There has been a decline in cigarette and tobacco smoking since the 1970s; however,
recently there has been an incline of tobacco usage through alternative tobacco products.
Alternative tobacco products include things such as hookahs, cigars, bidis, kreteks, smokeless
tobacco, and electronic cigarettes. While nurses and healthcare providers work to help people
stop smoking, new studies have revealed that nurses and healthcare providers dont actually
have the knowledge and understanding of alternative tobacco products that they should have.
In the recent experiment, undergraduate nurses in an urban area were surveyed on
their thoughts and beliefs. The results that were found were shocking. The nurses that were
surveyed had very low knowledge of alternative tobacco products and their consequences, but
even more than that, over 75% of the nurses and healthcare providers reported having used
alternative tobacco products in their lifetime.
One of the main problems in the findings of the experiment, was that the nurses rated
every alternative tobacco product as being less likely to lead to tobacco caused diseases as
opposed to cigarettes. The problem with thinking that alternative tobacco products are less
harmful than cigarettes, is that there is no evidence to prove that. So, nurses and doctors could
potentially be counseling people more critically for cigarette smoking than for alternative
tobacco products, when alternative tobacco products could be equally as harmful or potentially
worse than cigarettes.
These new forms of alternative tobacco products produce new threats to the reduction
of tobacco consumption. Health professionals need to be more educated in the field of
alternative tobacco products so that they can counsel people properly and help to lower deaths
caused by tobacco and tobacco products. Without the proper education on alternative health
products and their potential dangers to personal and consumer health, their miseducation may
undermine their ability to provide appropriate tobacco quitting techniques and alternatives.

Nicole Chiu

WP3

Different texts incorporate different rhetoric to convey their message to their intended

audience. Without being able to properly convey messages to their receiving audiences,
information may be interpreted incorrectly or get lost in translation. Peoples communication
and understanding of topics could be completely altered, which could cause turmoil in many
different situations. By being able to properly identify different conventions that different
genres use, messages and meanings can be conveyed clearer and more transparent. Through
the use of simplistic language and content selection, I transformed a peer-reviewed article into
a New York Times newspaper article by utilizing specific sets of conventions expected of the
intended audience.
For my translation, I translated my peer-reviewed article into an article that would be
found in the health section of the New York Times. Since The New York Times is regarded as a
more liberal newspaper, so more of its readers are going to have a more liberal viewpoint on
topics--such as the acceptance of tobacco and alternative tobacco products. Putting my article
into The New York Times would be most effective, since most of its audience is more liberal and
would be more likely be familiar with alternative tobacco products and experiences. Almost a
third of The New York Times audience is made up of young people between the ages of 18-29,
which is also the target age group of people who use alternative tobacco products. Putting this
article in The New York Times would be most effective in conveying the risks of alternative
tobacco products to as many users as possible.
When translating the peer-reviewed article into a newspaper article, it was essential to
keep in mind the change of audience that would read into the different sources. The discourse

community reading a peer-reviewed article is comprised of people already in tune with the
jargon that is commonly used, and they are aware of the topic at hand. Because of this, in the
peer-reviewed article, the word choice is a lot more sophisticated than would be found in a
newspaper article. For example, the peer reviewed article often referred to tobacco cessation
counseling, which includes vocabulary that most people do not use in their everyday language.
Most people do not use the word cessation, so it would make sense to rephrase this saying
for the newspaper article translation to better accommodate its audience.
The newspaper article that I translated has the same concepts as the peer-reviewed
article, however it is shaped differently to appease to a different audience. People from all
different geographical areas and education levels read the newspaper, so it is important to
keep the content clear and easily understandable to the wide audience it reaches out to.
Because of this, I translated the peer-reviewed article using language that could be interpreted
easier. Using the same example from above, in places where the peer-reviewed article used the
phrased tobacco cessation counseling, I made claims such as counseling to help quit
tobacco. This helps to apply to a broader audience that may not have as high of an education
as people who are reading the peer-reviewed article, and overall makes it an easier read.
When dealing with audience and conventions, Kerry Dirks Navigating Genres helped me
tremendously in shaping my translation. Dirk claims that Knowing what a genre is used for can
help to accomplish goals. Knowing the genre that I was translating into, I was able to utilize
conventions of that genre to meet the audiences expectations in order to accomplish the goal I
was trying to get achieve. I was able to simplify the text and make it more simplistic for a more

universal audience to understand in order to achieve my goal of conveying the beliefs of nurses
and health care providers on alternative tobacco products.
Another main difference between the peer-reviewed article and the newspaper article
was the structure and format of the content. The peer-reviewed article contained some charts,
graphs, and other numerical data to be interpreted. It also incorporated a SPSS study, with no
further explanation of what a SPSS study is. The discourse community of the peer-reviewed
article may need this extra information about the type of experiment in order to recreate it, or
analyze it to see if the study is valid or not. Most of the people that are in this community can
also differentiate between the different types of experiments, hence why there was no need
for an explanation of a SPSS study.
Translating that into the newspaper article, I refrained from using any charts, numbers,
or SPSS studies, because people who are reading articles in the newspaper do not care for the
specifics on how the experiment was performed or what the numerical results were, but rather
the discussion of the results and how they apply in the real world. Most of the audience that
reads the newspaper would not know how to interpret the numerical data if presented to
them, so it was essential to focus on the discussion section of the peer-reviewed article for the
newspaper translation. Because of this, I focused mostly on the implications of the study and
how they can affect people, since that it is more of what the audience is interested in.
When choosing content and framing my argument, Laura Carrolls Backpacks vs.
Briefcases, helped me to set the context and establish my argument. Carroll states that When
you look at any piece of rhetoric, you need to consider the context and the argument. Because
of this, I was able to describe the background of the topic, and then proceed with my argument

in efforts to persuade them. By setting the context of the decline in cigarette smoking
coinciding with the rise of alternative tobacco products, I was able to argue the miseducation
about the beliefs and attitudes that nurses and healthcare providers have on alternative
tobacco products.
Utilizing different conventions is essential in relaying messages clearly and concisely.
While the discourse community of a peer reviewed article would be familiar with complex word
choice and the basic concepts of the field, people reading newspaper articles need text that is
more simplistic in terms of word choice and content. Deciding on what information to highlight
dependent on the audience is also a very critical component of proper communication. Through
simplistic word choice and content selection, I was able to properly convey the same message
that the peer-reviewed article was making, but as a newspaper article to a new audience.





Works Cited

Vandevanter, Nancy, Sherry Zhou, Carina Katigbak, Madeline Naegle, Scott Sherman, and
Michael Weitzman. "Knowledge, Beliefs, Behaviors, and Social Norms Related to Use of
Alternative Tobacco Products Among Undergraduate and Graduate Nursing Students in an
Urban U.S. University Setting." Journal of Nursing Scholarship 48.2 (2016): 147-53. Web.
<http://web.b.ebscohost.com.proxy.library.ucsb.edu:2048/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=67
26cbff-b37b-4884-9b98-e7909c1bce7e%40sessionmgr106&vid=4&hid=124>.