Genre Analysis
Hannah O’Rourke
In a world with so many opportunities to be taken advantage of and decisions to be made,
it’s becoming more and more difficult to make one concrete choice and stand behind it 100% of
the time. This indecisiveness that sits inside so many is often times something that is turned into
a joke rather than flaw that no one wants to admit they have. How many times have you heard
someone who’s stuck choosing between two alternatives say, “I just can’t choose, I’m so
bipolar”? This phrase of describing one’s self as bipolar is constantly thrown around and has
many consequences that most people are unaware of or choose to overlook. It has a sort of
desensitizing effect; hearing it over and over again. It also misconstrues the meaning of the word
as a whole. These outcomes are a result of the new context that surrounds bipolar disorder and
has the capability to completely transform how people interpret it. From medical analyses on
WebMD to news journal articles written by The Huffington Post, bipolar disorder is explained
and vocalized in numerous different ways. Examples of these different genres can be found
everywhere in the media and each particular interpretation of bipolar disorder sparks different
reactions, attracts different audiences, and upholds a unique rhetoric that can entirely change the
takeaway readers get from the source.
WebMD offers an extremely detailed analysis of bipolar disorder, covering every base
you could possibly think of. The website offers categories explaining what the disorder is,
different types, how to seek treatment, who it most commonly effects, and much more. The
unbiased explanation of things like symptoms to cures to causations gives this source the
credibility that WebMD has been able to uphold for many years. This document seems to be
written by doctors or professionals on the subject, but the website offers the assistance needed
for anyone to read it. It doesn’t quite fit the cookie-cutter outline of a typical medical document
that might include long Latin words preceding an immediate definition for viewers. Instead,
everything is put into layman’s terms so that it reaches a larger audience base. Because it is a
highly credible website that many viewers would like to take advantage of, WebMD has made
the necessary accommodations to attract many types of audiences. There are no exaggerations,
but rather an accurate and medically proven explanation as to what causes these drastic changes
in emotion. Although this source offers an interpretation of bipolar, it has little opinion and more
facts & statistics. WebMD’s medical analysis uses a distant and unattached tone that appeals to a
large number of viewers and reifies credibility of the source.
The mainstream news website, The Huffington Post, did an article on how the term is
