...So what is a discourse community? When you google discourse community, you read, “It is a group of people sharing a common goal using communication to reach that common goal.”Getting more into detail what exactly is a discourse community, we have John Swales’ academic essay, ‘The Concept of Discourse Community’, which breaks it down into six characteristics: “1. A discourse community has a broadly agreed set of common public goals. 2. A discourse community has mechanisms of intercommunication among its members. 3. A discourse community uses its participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information and feedback. 4. A discourse community utilizes and hence possesses one or more genres in the communicative furtherance of its aims. 5. In addition...
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...Now when reading thru the “Concept of a discourse community “ I found it a very difficult piece to write about. Really just reading thru it I found myself having to go back over it many times. So for this paper we were soppose to analize a part of the writing. So I decided to go over thse 6 chartestics that swalles talked about. Like I said swales came up with a set of guidelines that a discourse community has to meet to be actulla considered as a discourse community. The six characteristics that are to be included in a discourse community are common goals, participatory mechanisms, information exchange, community specific genre’s, a highly specialized terminology and a high general level of expertise (Swales, John. "The Concept of Discourse Community." (1990): 119-28. Print.)....
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...What would you say is Swales’ overall thesis for this article? What is he trying to prove? I believe Swale's overall thesis is that, the current definition for discourse community is vague and suggestive; centered around some main ideas but is still not well defined. I believe he is trying to prove that a specific set of characteristics must be present in order to define a discourse community. What discourse communities do you belong to professionally and personally? What discourse community do you hope to belong to in a future profession? Name at least one from each category. Professionally, I belong to the retail discourse community because I am currently working at Victoria's Secret. Personally, I belong to the discourse community of business...
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...Robert Kelly Holly Kopcha ENGL 2089 106 3/6/2016 Marching Band The marching band is a community all their own. They all speak to each other in a language that is all their own. It was always easy to spot someone in school who was a “band kid” because of the way they carried themselves or the way they talked or the people they associated with. Kids in the marching band hang out with each other during and outside of school. They are a community all their own with unique characteristics. The marching band has specific goals that they set for themselves as well as for the group. Individually the members of the marching band have their own goals that they need to accomplish for the ultimate goal of making the group better. Each member will practice their music at home or in the practice rooms during class in order to get better at memorizing and accenting their music. They do this to help the group sound better when they are at competition. Band member also have a goal to memorize their drill sheets. This helps them to where they are supposed to be on the field at a certain time. Doing this helps the group look more unified in their formations. The group’s goals are to perform well at competitions and ultimately win a trophy for their school. To obtain this goal the group will practice for 2-4 days a week. Depending on the day or what needs work they will either work on drill or their music. Drill is the position in which the person should be in a specific time during...
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...Micro-Ethnography discourse communities exist worldwide from communities who represent single mothers, to employees working within the workforce, to those who commute to work every day where they may be involved in either leadership or support roles, to those who participate in sports, or those who simply participate in extracurricular activities such as a church group or simply groups of people whom share the same goals, language, interests, or practices, or religion. Social discourse communities encompass any group of 2 or more members which share a common set of goals or duties or simply share a similar group dynamic. Within Gee’s “What Is Literacy?” Gee identifies the broad definition of a discourse. Gee writes, A socially accepted association among ways of using language, of thinking and acting that can be used to identify oneself as a member of a socially meaningful group or “social network. (1) Most can easily identify with many separate discourses as a result from their raising such as in “Speaking in Tongues” or as a result of their education and adaptability to their environments as in “First They Changed My Name”. Human’s ability to adapt uses our “Get in where you fit in” mind set. Acting as one’s camouflage allows us as humans to avoid sticking out and instead encourages our abilities to blend in with the crowd and not be treated differently or singled out from the majority. While working within a very upstanding company, I was recently promoted to Environmental...
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...To maintain order in a community, one must adapt to the way of life in that community. In this sample discourse community analysis, the author speaks about joining the band community, and what kind of things he/she had to adapt to, and learn in order to successfully be part of said community. The author begins to build his/her credibility by effectively using the following strategies: diction, point of view, and tone. With the use of these devices, the author is able to appeal to their classmates on a more personal rather than professional level. In this essay, the author talks about having to learn about “the pyramid of sound,” which he/she states is very important in the band community. When describing the importance of this skill, the...
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...notion that the prison institution has failed as an establishment has been gradually gaining some popularity in consideration of the recent times, especially in this ‘postmodern’ era, where society is becoming more open to the discourse and discussion of the deconstruction of our many traditional and long established components of civilization, such as our typical ‘correctional’ establishments, or prison facilities (Davis 2000). In fact, there is already what is commonly referred to as the ‘prison abolition movement’ which is a collective, but not necessarily organized, worldview that is inclined to subscribe to the belief that a society can function better without prisons, and without prisoners thus. This position is backed up by a comprehensive set of criticisms against the modern form or structure of the criminal justice mechanism, which is argued to be predominantly predisposed allow racism (Davis 2007), sexism and reinforcement of the disadvantages of being part of the lower economic class of the society. More importantly, the anti-prison discourse argues that the prison system is an ineffective and costly means of preventing crime and rehabilitating the criminals, and thus goes to advocate alternative forms of Penalty such as those related to community service. Such a worldview is believed to have at least influenced the change in correctional policies of state governments in the last half decade, probably in...
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...Students Name Professors Name Course Date Discourse Community Ethnography The introduction of the notion of communicative competence has been positive in the sense that communication is now conceived as a result of the successful application of not only grammatical but also pragmatic knowledge and skills. Nevertheless, this has not changed the perspective many instructors had of language, because pragmatic information has usually been presented as an auxiliary component which is to be used only when grammatical explanations are difficult or impossible. The result is that for many language educators here is still a core clement about which they have to be especially careful grammatical competence. The communicative approach to language teaching...
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...students connect with individuals in the community who are directly related to the social issue they selected in the exploration phase. For example, if an English course is focused on the notion of African American identity in society, one may select a forum where they are in direct contact with members of the African American community and participate in related activities around their college. Directly involving a student in the community shows that there are a variety of different options for students to get involved. No matter what college course a student enrolls in, it allows the students to fully immerse themselves in the civic interests they have pursued. In regularly updating the instructor of the college course on their involvement, students provide a timeline of progress, while also displaying the connections they make with members of the local community associated with the social...
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...People and their personalities are sums of all of the experiences they have had in their lifetime. I am who I am because of all the people I have met, the situations and circumstances I have been exposed to, and the activities that I have engaged in. In What Is Literacy written by James Gee, he discusses that individuals are simply meeting points of multiple, and sometimes conflicting historical and social discourses. This statement really hits home with me, especially the word conflicting. I am an Egyptian-American who was raised in a very cultural and traditional family, but went to school and made friends in a community that felt almost entirely different. My friends never understand why I go to church with my family three times a week,...
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...Preface/Unit Reflection I had many thoughts about my audience and the format of this essay before I started, but as I haven’t done essays in a long time (business majors usually focus on projects, not essays), I decided that I wanted to write my first project in a straightforward fashion. I feel that I need to get the rust off my writing, so to speak I chose to write to the rest of the class because 1) They will be peer reviewing it, so it’s convenient for them that they are the target audience and 2) I could express my thoughts in a straightforward fashion that my audience can relate to very well, as they are in the same position as I am. I wrote this essay as if I was writing to an intellectual friend who is also taking this class, is very interested in English and entrepreneurship, and wanted to see how the two topics coincided through the lens of genre analysis. I assumed that the reader knew the definitions of materiality, genre and genre analysis, and discourse community, as the intended reader is in this class and has done the readings. Surprisingly, I learned a lot about my field through reading and writing for this unit. I really loved the challenging readings, as it seemed as if I were “getting smarter” reading them. Pushing my brain processing abilities is great for my brain’s capabilities, which I value. As I wrote, I would constantly think of new ideas about my field, such as the materiality of online articles in an entrepreneur’s life, and think hard. I appreciate...
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...Intercultural Ethics 1 Intercultural Ethics: A Constructivist Approach Richard Evanoff This article originally appeared in the Journal of Intercultural Communication 9:89-102 (2006), published by the Society for Intercultural Education, Training, and Research (SIETAR)–Japan. Copyright © 2011 Richard Evanoff. Abstract While a considerable amount of research in the field of intercultural communication has been devoted to empirical and theoretical studies on cultural differences, comparatively little work has been devoted to normative studies which consider how problems which arise because of cultural differences might be resolved (see, however, Evanoff 2004 for a bibliography of recent publications in this area). Normative research differs both from empirical research, which is basically concerned with describing existing patterns of beliefs, values, and behavior through the use of statistical data, interviews, case studies, and the like, and from theoretical studies, which attempt to make generalizations about cultural differences and how people respond to them by abstracting from such data. The methodology of ethics is neither empirical nor theoretical, but rather normative, which means that it basically concerns itself with a consideration of what beliefs, values, and forms of behavior might be plausibly adopted. Metaethics concerns itself with broader issues of how such decisions can be reasoned about, justified, and, indeed, debated across cultures. Intercultural...
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...International Journal of Arts and Sciences 3(15): 238-254 (2010) CD-ROM. ISSN: 1944-6934 © InternationalJournal.org Filipino Philosophy and Post-Modernity Raymundo R. Pavo, University of the Philippines Mindanao, Philippines Abstract: Post-Modernity, with its stress on freedom and creativity, is a vantage point that can dispose Filipino thinkers to philosophically formulate, construct and develop thought systems. This liberating milieu can be reckoned as a fertile occasion where Filipinos can explore the conditions of possibilities that grant a philosophical status to thoughts, statements or constructions that either come from or pertain to the Filipino mind. Such that when we use the concept Filipino Philosophy, we are well-conscious of these two interrelated points – The Identity and Referential Nature of the concept Filipino, and the connotation/intension of the term Philosophy. Is it Filipino? Is it philosophical? These are the questions that have guided the ruminations in this philosophical treatise. And as an initial insight to such questions, we propose a kind of vantage point that can address the identity and referential nature of the term Filipino in a Filipino Philosophy and the philosophical substance of its claim. This perspective, we shall argue, may be construed by a social-scientist-philosopher. As a social scientist, this thinker is mindful of the descriptions or characteristics that may be regarded as telling of the Filipino milieu. As a philosopher, this...
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...Reading reflection: Week 10 Seeking a Pedagogy of Difference: What Aboriginal Students and their Parents in North Queensland Say About Teaching and their Learning, written by Brian Ellis Lewthwaite, Barry Osborne, Natalie Lloyd, Helen Boon, Linda Llewellyn, Tammi Webber, Gail La n, Megan Harrison, Cathy Day, Codie Kemp, and Jennifer Wills, is a study that presents the outcomes of the first phase of a three phase research initiative where Aboriginal students and community members expressed their views of the characteristics of effective teachers and effective teaching. Considering that the national education discourse in Australia is monopolised by discussion on teaching and teacher quality, they problematize this discourse based upon what members of the local Aboriginal community assert as characteristics of effective teachers and their practice. The overall aim of this research was determined by the Diocese of Townsville Catholic Education’s aspiration to better inform their educators in seeing the realisation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait objectives for education in the practice of teachers within the district. The initial intent of this North Queensland Catholic Education initiative is to respond to the critical awareness of the possible injustice such as education, that historically and disputably, currently, marginalises Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander students through the classroom pedagogies influencing their learning (Dunn, 2001). The first project of importance...
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...Research problem and question: Dealing with Orient characters in English drama as reflection of the political situation in England during the renaissance era makes many critics think that what comes after this age is a continuation of the enterprise of the Empire. Despite the imperialism that the political situation has created in Elizabethan and Jacobean drama, we could also add that political situation played a significant role in shaping the drama in restoration era. The discourse in restoration drama has an extreme change and has not followed the discourse of the renaissance drama. In Shakespeare's The Tempest when Prospero told Miranda to go to the Orient character Caliban she tried to escape "'Tis a villain, sir, I do not love to look...
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