Annotations Analyzing Rhetorical Techniques

Annotations Analyzing Rhetorical Techniques
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Date:
S. Salamatpoor and S. Salamatpoor. (2014). Evaluation of Babolsar Sand Behavior by Using Static Triaxial Tests and comparison with case history, Najafabad: Islamic Azad University.
Introduction
Liquefaction is one of the most important, complex and debatable phenomena in geotechnical earthquake engineering that its destruction affects due to lack of shear strength of soil have serious economic and environmental consequence on civil projects. Determination of liquefaction potential due to an earthquake is a complex problem in geotechnical engineering and entails a myriad of factors such as specifications of sand layers, high level of underground water and earthquake components.
CATEGORY: Specialized Language
TECHNIQUE: How specialized is the jargon used in the text?
HIGHLIGHTED: I have highlighted the first paragraph of the introduction.
ANALYSIS: The writer largely employs the use of engineering jargon without any attempts to explain what the jargon means. The writer remains technical throughout this section and it may require further consultations for one to extract meaning from the article. The writer begins by highlighting the fact that liquefaction is a serious phenomenon in the geotechnical earthquake engineering. The writer points out that, liquefaction has economic as well as environmental consequences on the civil projects. The writer also acknowledges the fact that liquefaction is indeed a complex problem in geotechnical engineering. It has been argued that there are a number of factors that associated with liquefaction. According to the writer of this article, some of the factors are high level of underground water, specifications of sand layers and earthquake components. By the fact that the writer identifies liquefaction to be a complex problem, one could argue that the writer is an experienced person in geotechnical engineering and he has worked on many civil projects for a while.
Castro (1969) [1] observed that cohesionless soils of different densities exhibit three basic phenomenological behaviors termed liquefaction, limited liquefaction and dilation under sufficient strain levels. These characteristics, along with the requirement of constant velocity, shear and confining stress has been defined as the steady-state [2]-[5]. The locus of the steady state in e ‒ p' ‒ q space (where e, p', and q are void ratio, mean effective stress, and deviatoric stress, respectively, at large strains) yields a state criterion for determining the susceptibility of sand to flow liquefaction or flow failure.
CATEGORY: Specialized Language
TECHNIQUE: How specialized is the jargon used in the text?
HIGHLIGHTED: I have highlighted a section of the first paragraph in page two of the article.
ANALYSIS: The writer gets even more technical in this section than in previous sections of the article. No attempts are made to help the reader infer any meaning except through reference to other sources. On the language use, the writer does not rely entirely on his creations. He borrows Castro’s PhD thesis about liquefaction. This is a very crucial technique when writing any academic work. The writer concurs with Castro that there are three phenomenological behaviors of cohesionless soils. Based on the manner in which the writer advances his arguments in this section, it comes out that the writer is an expert in geotechnical engineering and the content in this article is purposely developed to help those who may want to practice in the field of civil engineering. Giving reference to other people’s content is a professional way of doing things and this concept takes into consideration the ethical neutrality that should be prevalent in professionalism. This technique also makes whoever that is reading this article to have confidence that indeed the author researched well before compiling the article. The writer is seen to be using this technique throughout the article.
The sand that is used for experiments is Babolsar natural sand, which underlies a densely populated, seismic region of the southern coast of Caspian Sea in Mazandaran, Iran. The reconstituted specimens of the sand were prepared using the bulk samples taken from the borrow pits on the beach. Figure 1 represents the location of sampling. The basic properties of this sand as determined in the laboratory are given in the Table 1.
CATEGORY: Word Choice
TECHNIQUE: How are adjectives and adverbs used in the text and for what p...