Rhetorical Analysis
Does the placement of foliage plants in an individual’s office space improve their work performance?
Creating an aesthetically beautiful space is one of the finest ways to bring life to a house or place of business. Plant installation is one common method to do it. There is controversy over whether plants have a real impact on a person’s ability to function at work. Whether Plants Affect an individual’s work performance is up for debate. This is discussed in Seiji Shibata and Naoto Suzuki’s Research Article “EFFECTS OF THE FOLIAGE PLANT ON TASK PERFORMANCE AND MOOD”. The two researchers discuss how alterations to the environment and the addition of plants might enhance productivity at work. After that, they talk about the experiment they ran and the outcomes.
The purpose of the dialogue in this scientific article is to enlighten the reader about previous research and the writers’ results. They convey this through conversation, as seen in the opening when the writer engages the reader by establishing a personal connection and a connection to the subject matter. For example “ It is generally believed that looking at natural scenery has an influence on people recovering from fatigue or stress and it is also said that viewing such scenery increases one’s feeling of well-being”(SHIBATA, SUZUKI 1). Here, the author engages the reader in discussion while providing an unbiased explanation of why it could be appropriate for them to have plants at work.
The article’s writers clearly state their motivation for writing it from the very beginning. Shibata and Suzuki particularly cite earlier research that may have some bearing on their current analysis. For instance, They mention a study from “ Journal of Shita” where they spoke about the effects of plants on terminal patients and spoke about another study from “ Journal of Environmental Psychology”. They speak about the results that surfaced from these studies and Use them to introduce their research. For example” Thus, the results of the Asaumi et al. (1995a, b) study can be interpreted to mean that the plants arranged in the room improved the aesthetic quality of the room and made subjects feel more ‘relaxed”(SHIBATA, SUZUKI 1). The writers of the article expressly explain that they wrote it to educate their readers about their colleagues.
The creators of this piece of literature are Seiji Shibata and Naoto Suzuki. As they note at the very end, their former professor examined their study, and it can be inferred that this work was a graduate piece at the time it was created. The narrator’s persona is one of the literary devices they employ to illustrate the interaction between the writers and their audience. Due to presumably the style of writing, they converse formally yet lack objectivity while speaking to their audience. For instance “In the current study, we used leafy plants as one type of interior decoration object and investigated how plants affect subjects’ task performance and mood.”(SHIBATA, SUZUKI 2). Since this portion of the article is primarily meant to be instructive to the audience, they don’t try to talk to them as they did in the opening while introducing their study. Instead, they allude to them in an informative way.
Throughout the text, the authors also establish the reader-narrator relationship through word choice. This is evident in the way the author shifts from a relatable to a more direct and educational style; this is a deliberate choice made because the piece is intended for a certain readership. Since this work is graduate-level writing, the authors created it with their peers as audience in mind. Though initially it may be assumed that readers of the article are only interested in science as a hobby or are drawn to it because of the tone the writers create via word choice. For instance, the author addresses the audience as though delivering a speech and tries to keep them aware of the topic at hand, even though they don’t explicitly mention the audience in the second person (SHIBATA and SUZUKI). Instead, they make subtle allusions to it. Additionally, they talk in the third person and do not specifically address the reader when discussing their study and experiment. Considering the professor was noted as evaluating the work, it is likely that the writers of this paper were students. It is also probable that they went on to produce more works in the fields of psychology and health. Shibata continued as an expert in psychology, and I was able to track down a couple more of his research papers on the subject, even though they weren’t published by a university like the others. Many of these research publications were written by groups of researchers. I have already read other medical publications with some of the collaborators in these ones. Suzuki continued to write additional pieces, particularly in the 2010s. He carried on composing about psychology’s effects on people. He has written about the impact that facial expressions have on interpersonal relationships, and the Shinrigaku Kenyu, a publishing office, produces his works. His publications follow the same pattern as his previous writings, and they focus on just two research projects rather than a collection of projects. It may demonstrate the manner in which the article was produced and displayed to readers according to the writers’ setting of the piece.
Although not immediately obvious in the initial pages of the text, particularly when the author refrains from introducing oneself. When the writers are summarizing the findings and conclusions of their experiment at the end of the piece, there is a suggestion of the tone. Although the tone may have seemed encouraging at first, reading the article will reveal that it is formal and critical, which is something you wouldn’t have noticed unless you read the author’s explanation of the experiment and its conclusion. For example “Therefore, the subjects could not easily know which aspects of the task performance were evaluated, and as a consequence, they felt less content about their performance than in the sorting task”(SHIBATA, SUZUKI 7). This is from the article’s discussion section, and because this section contains information that is primarily meant to appeal to their peers, the narrator refers to the audience as the general public throughout, unlike how they did in the introduction.
The article’s presentation style may be attributed to the manner in which it was composed and delivered to its readership. This study was published in the scientific publication “Journal of Environmental Psychology” by a Japanese institution. Given that it provides context for the authors’ decision to offer their material in a formal and aggressive manner, the article’s medium can be related to the reasons behind the writers’ choice. In this case, Shibata and Suzuki authored their paper primarily with their contemporaries and potential colleagues in psychology in mind.
A lot of the information presented is presented in a way that the reader must have known of this information prior to reading this. The mere fact that the essay was published in a psychology journal by a university indicates that the writers may have written the piece with their peers in mind when they submitted it. Although the article’s primary goal could have been a graduation piece, its publication in the magazine demonstrates that it also had an educational function. For example” The three-way crossed design(Room, Task and Gender) multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) revealed that the main e¡ect of the Task (F(9,126) 1⁄4 2?63, po0?01) was significant in the mood evaluations:”(SHIBATA, SUZUKI 4). The material presented here would require familiarity with this kind of study to fully appreciate, but if the reader could concentrate on the experiment’s findings, they might be able to understand it.
The way the author presents their experiments and studies throughout the piece shows how informed they are about the subject and gives the impression that they are an expert in this area of psychology. The primary purpose of the experiment recounted in the Shibata and Suzuki paper was to determine whether or not having plants at work would improve employees’ productivity. In order to ascertain the outcome, the experiment involved randomly assigning people to different sorting and arranging activities while also placing plants in different locations. This may demonstrate the writers’ position that they also think that foliage plants might enhance productivity, but it isn’t very substantial how they present their findings to the reader. For example, The final line of the article is “ More work is needed to isolate the unique effects of plants on human performance in the working environment “(SHIBATA, SUZUKI,8). Here they are acknowledging that their data from, the association experiment isn’t substantial evidence to say plants affect work performance, but they aren’t denying it. Conversely, however, as they may be writing this article for a doctoral thesis, the writers have an incentive to favor their own viewpoint beyond that of the “good of the people” or out of curiosity. For this reason, they could have a bias in favor of one position. Although it may come out as cynical, the author has little incentive to lie, but they also have little reason to disclose the truth. Though on the other hand, being untruthful would benefit them by yielding more unusual outcomes by gaining recognition for their piece. Although the writers’ lack of further testing of the article’s conclusions gives them room to deceive, there is no indication in the paper that they are misleading.
The genre of this article is a nonfiction scholarly article that is addressed to peers and people well-versed in this specific area of psychology. This can be seen in the sources that the two authors use in their article, They mention studies by Kazuki Koga, Roger S. Ulrich, and many other psychologists who did experiments concerning plants and the human mind. The authors mentioning these works and research studies demonstrate that their audience is people who are their peers and they are trying to appeal to them.
The readership of an article or other piece of writing greatly influences the style in which the author writes. The manner in which the author addresses the reader throughout the article will reveal the language used. Considering the audience in this essay consists of their peers, with whom they are related in a formal setting, the author formally addresses them in an effort to appeal to that. The article’s language was developed with its intended audience in mind, and this could potentially be connected to the format. The audience is given an overview of the research and previous work on this issue through the introduction. Both novices and experts can better appreciate the introductions’ goals. Next, the experiment is set up so that each portion is represented by a separate layout. The findings, which tie in all of the data and statistics from the experiment, conclude the section on the experiment. Then the author is assisted in explaining and discussing the findings in-depth in the discussion section. Finally, the conclusion brings everything in the piece together. The article’s structure and language are related since the author employs various styles of writing and tones in each part to aid the reader in understanding the content. Furthermore, the language is what helps the reader understand the article.
Lastly, Shibata and Suzuki composed the article employing rhetorical terms as literary methods. The article’s formal tone is set by the audience, who are the writers’ peers. The authors utilize the audience to establish the tone of their work. They gauged this, by using formal language in an attempt to appeal to the audience as peers of the writers. Though genre defines whether the tone is formal or informal according to the environment, it also affects how the author conveys the content. The article’s goal assisted the writers in summarizing their position on the study at the very conclusion. Lastly, the way the author used word choice in the way they spoke to the audience helped them relay all of the content in the article in a formal matter.
Bibliography
- SHIBATA, SEIJI, and NAOTO SUZUKI. “Effects of the Foliage Plant on Task Performance and Mood.” Journal of Environmental Psychology, vol. 22, no. 3, Sept. 2002, pp. 265–272, doi:10.1006/jevp.2002.0232.
