Food Label Genre: Heuristic #2

Identify and Describe Patterns in the Genre’s Features

1. What content is typically included or excluded? How is the content treated? What sorts of examples are used? What counts as evidence (personal testimony, facts, etc.)?

… There are all sorts of strategies for food labeling. Some decide to add facts if the item is healthy and also depending on the audience they are aiming for. Some use a simple one syllable word such as YUM. There are even testimonies for food labeling about how someone lost weight or lowered their cholesterol or something like that . Some labels even just simply have an enlarged exaggerated photo of the food simply writing the name of the product which sometime is creative like fruit loops for example, and then the label for the can of corn will just say corn.

2. What rhetorical appeals are used? What appeals to logos, pathos, and ethos appear?

…Logos is used in many food labeling situations. The company will simply say hey, this butter is low fat, so if you are on a low fat diet, you will buy the low fat butter. Another example would be a cereal throwing the vitamin content on the front of the box. If you are looking for something healthy or u are malnourished and your doctor tells you to eat more of those types of vitamins you will logically make the choice to buy the product. Pathos is used again in the example of cereals, either showing a testimony of some old guy that had heart disease and now eats cheerios ever morning claiming it saved his life. If some cute lil old person tells you it saved their life you are going to feel for them and believe it. Ethos is also used all the time. Again going back to cereal, frosted flakes is always showing their involvement in the community and helping out the children. Maybe the box say that the company donates X amount of money to this cause or whatever.

3. How are texts in the genres structured? What are their parts, and how are they organized?

… There really isn’t a structure for this sort of genre. There is typically a spot to put the name of the particular product, typically that is a given. Anything else could be put anywhere on the packaging. Again, we simply have facts, just a single word, a testimony, some sort of tidbit about what the company does, etc…

4. In what format are texts of this genre presented? What layout or appearance is common? How long/big is a typical text in this genre?

… The format just depends on the food item that you buy. Boxes, cans, bags, etc…

5. What types of “sentences” do texts in the genre typically use? How long are they? Are they simple or complex, passive or active? Are the sentences varied? Do they share a certain style?

…Much of the time you may have one sentence on there giving you a bit about the product. Sometimes there are no sentences at all. You might have to little catch phrase written on there for that particular product. It is also possible the sentence is simply stating a fact.

 

6. What diction is most common? What types of words (or symbols, images, etc.) are most frequent? Is a type of jargon used? Is slang used? How would you describe a typical writer’s tone?

… On food packaging there is a mixture of symbols, images, wording, etc… Sometimes it is clearly written out and sometimes they use play on words or cute little sentences to grab your attention. The writers tone can be straight to the point like this is a bag of potatoes, or it may be trying to convince you like hey, buy me, I taste good and I might just also be healthy.

 

Analyze What These Patterns Reveal About the Situation and Scene

1. What do these patterns reveal about the genre, its situation, and the people who use it?

… It reveals that there are some things that clearly need creative labels to grab attention and convince people to give the product a try. There are however, some items that do not require any creativity. These are the essential items. How many times have you seen milk or eggs trying to convince you to buy them on the label. It says what it is, how much or how many, and gives the name of the company that supplies it to you. Other things such as sweets need to convince you like hey cmon, im not really good for you at all but just buy me.

• What do participants have to know or believe to understand or appreciate the genre?

… People have to know what they want to begin with and the label should help them to make that decision. Of course, again, there are some things we don’t need that we end up buying because some creative label convinced us that we need it .

• Who is invited into the genre, and who is excluded??

… everyone is invited into this genre assuming you have ever been anywhere that sells anything.

• What roles for writers and readers does it encourage or discourage?

… It encourages creativity in some situations, in others transparency, but of course it can occasionally be misleading.

2. What can you learn about the actions being performed through the genre by observing its language patterns?

… You can figure out who the particular product is aimed towards, such as which consumers, which age groups, sometimes even male or female.

• How is the subject of the genre treated? What content is considered most important? What content (topics or details) is ignored?

… it again depends on the product being presented, if the product is healthy or unhealthy, or if it is one of the essentials. In some things simply the name of the product is all that needs to be thrown on there along with a nice picture of whatever the packaging contains. So a pack of cosmic brownies is not going to say like ooh only 6843 carbs in one brownie, but a box of Atkins bars will tell you like hey look only 3 carbs.

• What values, beliefs, goals, and assumptions are revealed through the genre’s patterns?

… If the company chose to add some information about themselves we can occasionally find out about their beliefs and values, they add info about where they help out or donate money, what they goals are in making the product in the first place etc…

• What actions does the genre enable? What actions does the genre constrain??

… Basically just enables consumers to figure out what a product is, what is contains, what it looks like, what the purpose of buying it is for, etc… does not really constrain unless it is a bad label.