Kazi Ahmed 

ENGL 21007

Professor Susan Delamare

April 14th, 2021

Rhetorical Analysis of a Research Paper in the Field of Robotics

The paper (Nuovo, A., et al, 2017) seemed to fit the requirements because it includes sufficient information needed in a research paper, and also it was one of the first ones that popped up upon searching. This paper appealed to me first by the “Robotic-era” mentioned in the title because I am interested in the field of AI technology, secondly, it highlights that this paper conducts research that would be helpful for the elderly. The use of pathos in the title drove me to do the rhetorical analysis. It also can be found in the very first line of the introduction, “The growing number of older people living alone in need of care is one of modern society’s great challenges.” (Nuovo, A., et al, 2017). The purpose of this rhetorical analysis is to spread the message of the initial effort of using robotic technology in assisting the elderly. 

This paper follows the format of an IMRaD paper but not the exact pattern, such as the headings are not exactly like a conventional research paper. The last paragraph of the introduction explains what each section highlights. There you can see the use of the word “methods” in the description of section 3 and the use of words “discusses” “results” in the description of section 4. This means section 3 highlights the methods and section 4 has the results and discussion, which makes the paper’s flow an IMRaD paper. The language used by the authors throughout the research paper is pretty simple and straightforward, except for some use of engineering terms (i.e. MMUI, multi-modal user interface). By the language of the paper, it can be told that this paper was not necessarily made to attract not only the engineering field-related people. Any average person can understand the message behind research and how it can be beneficial to the elderly. Although, certain sections (such as section 2.1) are mainly for people with prior education in this field. Also in the introduction, it highlights what framework was used to carry on the work in this paper; EU FP7 Large Integration project Robot-Era.

 Throughout the paper, the authors kept mentioning “in the research of” or “in the study of” to maintain credibility and also grab the reader’s attention to provide that enough study and research was made to write and present this research paper. Table 1 in section 2 highlights the “Overview of the user-centered design approach for designing, testing and refining the MMUI for the elderly users of the Robot-Era system” (Nuovo, A., et al, 2017) to provide evidence of the research and methods used. This is evidence of credibility aka the use of ethos. Another appeal, logos, can be determined by the following sentence. “It has been estimated that, by the year 2050, there will be three times more people over the age 85 than there are today and more than 20% of the population of most developed countries (e.g. Japan, USA, Europe, Australia) will be over 65” (Nuovo, A., et al, 2017). These statistics suggest the logical reasoning (logos) behind the purpose of this research, which is helping the elderly with the use of robots. This article was published by Springer Berlin Heidelberg, a renowned publishing network that has their majority of articles in the STEM field.  It was also a part of the Intelligent service robotics, 2018-01, Vol.11 (1), p.109-126. 

This research paper is written by a total of nine authors, Alessandro Di Nuovo, Frank Broz, Ning Wang, Tony Belpaeme, Angelo Cangelosi, Ray Jones, Raffaele Esposito, Filippo Cavallo, Paolo Dario. These authors are affiliated with many universities all over the world such as (1) Sheffield Robotics, Department of Computing, Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield, UK (2) Faculty of Engineering and Architecture, University of Enna Kore, Enna, Italy (3) School of Mathematical and Computer Sciences, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, UK (4) School of Computing, Electronics and Mathematics, Plymouth University, Plymouth, UK (5) IDLab, IMEC, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium (6) School of Nursing and Midwifery, Plymouth University, Plymouth, UK (7) BioRobotics Institute, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna (SSSA), Pisa, Italy (Nuovo, A., et al, 2017). The exigence of this paper derived from the reason that the field of AI is advancing rapidly and vastly and in the title, the use of the phrase “Robotic-era” suggest that we are in a world where the use of artificial intelligence is being used in assisting us in our daily lives,  and the authors’ implementation is that we take advantage of this robotic technology and help create human-like interface elderly assistance. The services that are discussed in the paper are; Shopping, Reminding, Garbage, Communication, Laundry, and Food Delivery (Nuovo, A., et al, 2017). Fig. 5 and Fig. 6 highlights the dialogue flow test of the food delivery service robot, both previous and upgraded versions. 

Throughout the paper, the authors kept the language comprehensible to make it easy for various audiences to read without having trouble understanding the main idea of the paper. The paper was well organized and the idea was distributed thoroughly throughout the paper and divided into each section making it easier for the reader to know which section highlights what exactly. Also, the use of appeals such as ethos, pathos and logos are properly provided, grabbing the audience’s attention and also making the research paper more credible. Analyzing this paper has taught me that it is very important to know who your audiences are and how to use specific rhetorical devices to communicate effectively. I also learned that your writing style and language matters a lot when it comes to getting your point across. You have to prove your argument and clarify why it is necessary, that is by being persuasive but also informative enough to make your argument more reliable and credible. 

Reference

Nuovo, A. Broz, F., Wang, N., Belpaeme, T., Cangelosi, A., Jones, R., Esposito, R., Cavallo, F., & Dario, P. (2017, September 2). The multi-modal interface of Robot-Era multi-robot services tailored for the elderly. Intelligent Service Robotics, 11(1), 109–126(2018) https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11370-017-0237-6?error=cookies_not_supported&code=3cdd163d-c81a-47b9-b4db-545dbe9accc4