Rhetorical Analysis of Academic Journal

This blog will explore one article from a journal posted in my blog "My Discipline"

Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association - Factors associated with recovery from paraplegia in dogs with loss of pain perception in the pelvic limbs following intervertebral disk herniation.

Author: 


There are 8 authors credited in the article I have chosen: Nick D. Jeffery, Andrew K. Barker, Hilary Z. Hu, Cody J. Alcott, Karl H. Kraus, Elizabeth M. Scanlin, Nicolas Granger, Jonathan M. Levine. If one looks at the front page of the article, all of the authors are listed with hyperlinks attached to their names. The hyperlinks forward the reader to more articles these authors have contributed to. The authors are not specifically referenced in the article.

Audience:

The intended audience for this article is the veterinary community including doctors and medical staff. The journal entry states "In a prospective study of 78 dogs that underwent spinal decompression surgery..." Any scientist knows that a good study is one that can be replicated with varying outcomes. 

The fact that they being this particular sentence with talking about the study means they are reaching out to other veterinary medical professionals to further the study and see if they come out with the same results. Secondary audience would be people like me looking up the article online.

Context:

This entry was written on February 15, 2016. This article is written in a QRG type style. It has a lot of white space, subheadings, and pictures throughout the article. "JAVMA News""Commentary" "Small Animals" are some of the subheadings.

Message:

The message of this journal is the contents of the study performed to relieve paraplegic animals of pain perception. "In a prospective study of 78 dogs that underwent spinal decompression surgery because of IVDH and loss of deep pain perception in the pelvic limbs, 45 of 78 (58%) were able to ambulate independently within 3 months after surgery."

Purpose:

The purpose of this journal is to draw attention to possible pain relief for paraplegic animals. The title of the article relates to "paraplegia in dogs that lost pain perception in the pelvic limbs following inter-vertebral disk herniation".