Journal Article Analysis 3 double spaced

Example 1

Articles in the conflict analysis and resolution field vary in genres and structures.  Of these various types, this paper analyzes a discourse analysis article as a great writing example in the discipline.  This paper shows its position of the research field by connecting to preceding studies, and conventions to organize information.

        The title of the selected article is “An Easy Coalition: The Peacecamp Identity and Israeli-Palestinian Track Two Diplomacy” written by Kellen, Bekerman, and Maoz, published in Journal of Conflict Resolution in 2012.  In their paper, the authors show by analyzing actual dialogues that Two Track Diplomacy can create “superordinate group identity” (Kellen et al., 2012) in both adversarial parties.  Two Track Diplomacy is an informal dialogue between the parties in a conflict, and has been applied in conflict resolution fields for about fifty years.  Although participants usually tend to refuse their dialogues recorded due to security reason, this study first succeeded in transcribing discourses of two Israeli and Palestinian workshops.

        As for its structure, following abstract and keywords, the body of the paper consists of Introduction – Methodology – Findings/Discussion – Conclusion.  The authors set up subtopics of “Findings/Discussion” and “Conclusion,” the former to interpret their findings, and the latter to discuss this paper’s value in the field of discourse analysis.  This structure succeeds in demonstrating information effectively.  The paper uses Chicago style as its citation school as the journal requires all the articles to apply this school.

        The article’s introduction includes important elements.  According to Swales and Feak, (2012) introduction parts generally have three “Moves.”  “Move 1” introduces research field and previous studies, meanwhile “Move 2” indicates the areas which have been well unexplored or should be more discussed in previous studies.  Finally, the authors’ purposes and description of papers are stated in “Move 3.”  In the article of Kellen et al., the first half of the Introduction explains the models previous studies have achieved.  Then, with a transition sentence as “However, Despite the abundant potential attributed to [the workshop participants],” (Kellen et al., 2012) the second half paragraphs describe clear difference between previous research and this paper, and the discussion topic, introducing three hypotheses.

        The Methodology paragraphs explain how research has been practiced.  In collecting data, the authors recorded two workshops among Israelis and Palestinians, and transcribed all the discourse into a 100 page long document.  They also specified what theory was applied in their analysis process in order to clarify their analysis stances.

        In the Findings/Discussion part, the writers display twelve features Israeli and Palestinian participants showed during the conversation, by using some transcript examples.  For example, the paper examines some similar word patterns spoken by both Israelis and Palestinians, which the authors call “superordinate identity.” (Kellen et al., 2012)  The authors assume with this finding that during the workshop the participants might have established a common identity.  To describe more details, they show the examples from the transcript.  Each feature has at least three sentence examples, which makes their findings fairly reasonable.  This shows one of the discourse analysis methods in conflict resolution field.

        Even though the article first emphasized its unique method, the authors are very humble to see their finding.  Generally, research in social sciences is based on specific conditions, therefore, applying findings are highly limited to specific fields.  The paper discussed here is not an exception, because the authors analyzed discourse of a certain number of people in a certain area, which can hardly cover all the aspects in the world.  Especially, the Conclusion part focuses on describing where this paper takes its stance in its large research field.  This tells that this research and preceding studies are strongly connected.

   

    In conclusion, this article is a great example in narrative analysis papers.  Even though its structure does not precisely follow the standard IMRD pattern, it sets up a sophisticated structure to arrange information in order, which makes readers easily understand.