Genetics: Discourse Community Analysis

Introduction-

The discourse community of scientists in the field of genetics attempt to find solutions to problems with genes, and heredity. For over a century, popular articles have played a crucial role by building a communication medium between scientists and their audience who are people interested in keeping up with the upcoming science. These articles have been influenced by changes in the audience, exigence, and constraints experienced by the community. Therefore, by analyzing the changes in the popular articles through the years we can understand the growth of the discourse community. This paper is an attempt to understand what caused the changes, and how it has influenced the outlook of the community by using the articles- “Genetics”

This article attempts to form the basis of the discourse community by explaining the basic concept of “heredity”(Genetics), and “chromosomes”(Genetics). Back in the 1920s, genetics was a fairly new subject and very few people knew about it. It was important for the author to establish vocabulary which would be useful for future analysis in the field of genetics. The purpose of this article was to introduce the industry and gain audience rather than analyzing specific research. It was much more generalized in its formative years, after which it started zeroing in on particular

Times magazine had its first issue published in 1923, and the audience of the magazine was fairly restricted for the 1929 article “Genetics” as the magazine was still building its image, and genetics itself was a new field of science and did not have many followers. In retrospect, the increase in audience can be seen along with the accessibility of information. The increasing availability of information has resulted in a proportional increase in audience. With the help of technology scientific information is uniformly reached to a huge audience. It is evident through the mention of American organizations like “American Museum of Natural History”, “American Eugenics Society” all throughout the 1929 article that the article only focused on the American community and was limited to the population of a specific geography. With the introduction of electronic mediums, and surge in the range of readers, the direct effect it has had on the genre is palpable through the usage of briefer articles and assumption of established