The Importance Of Discourse Communities

A discourse community has yet to have a solid definition; though some have come close. One of the people who have attempted to define discourse community is John Swales. Swales, rather than use a standard definition, chose to create a set list of criteria. With the help of the criteria and my interview of Dane (a member of my chosen discourse community) I will discuss how my chosen group, Communications 101, is a discourse community. Communications 101 (Comm. 101) is a college credit class that helps the students in the class learn the “fundamental principles of verbal, nonverbal, written, and visual communication with an introduction to relational and organizational communication, public communication, and media studies.

As I was reading Melissa Duffy’s “Inspiration, and Craig Vetter’s “Bonehead Writing,” I found myself connecting with Vetter’s paper more than Duffy’s. I found that the presentation in “Bonehead Writing” to capture my attention, and that Vetter’s feelings about writing was similar to my opinion on writing. Through his wording and humor, I think Craig Vetter wrote the best essay. I find that the wording and presentation of an article or essay influences my opinion of the writer, and it affects how I receive the idea they are trying to present to me. Craig Vetter uses a blunt approach to convey his idea that writing is nearly impossible to teach, and describes writing as “A blood sport, a walk in the garden of agony every time out.”

Everyone has a Discourse, whether they are aware of it or not. One might ask, “What is a Discourse”? James Paul Gee’s Literacy, Discourse and Linguistics: Introduction states, “Discourses are ways of being in the world; they are a form of life which integrate words, acts, values, beliefs, attitudes, and social identities as well as gestures, glances, body positions, and clothes” (6-7). Entering the writing Discourse may be difficult, as there are many styles and versions. It is common to come upon many styles of writing such as college level writing, scientific writing and technical/business communication.

The discourse community of St. Thomas More University Parish is a growing parish that is encouraging involvement and spiritual development. Before delving into the discourse community, it is essential to provide clarity for the term that is used throughout: Discourse community. In his analysis on Discourse communities, James Paul Gee defined Discourse by saying, “I use the term ‘Discourse,’ with a capital ‘D,’ for ways of combining and integrating language, actions, interactions, ways of thinking, believing, valuing, and using various symbols,

The University of Oklahoma currently supports several active student groups that can be classified as discourse communities according to the criteria set by John Swales. One such group is the Secular Sooners, a community on campus that seeks to “provide common ground for people with a secular world view” (Lunde). However, many of these groups differ in the ways that they accomplish their goals, and indeed in the goals that they have set. Additionally, they utilize varying methods of intercommunication to aid in attaining these goals.

Define Rhetoric. Rhetoric is the study and interpretation of any literary piece of work that has persuasive intentions to utilize language more effectively. Define discourse. Discourse is any literary work, whether it is literally written or orally spoken, that has meaning underlying inside of its text. It can range from books to images to music, etc.

Analysis of A Necessary Evil: The Inverted Hagiography of Shakespeare’s Richard III by Lainie Pomerleau Lainie Pomerleau is an English professor currently teaching at the University of Georgia. Before that she went to the University of Southern Maine for her Bachelor’s in English Language and Literature, and then to the University of Tennessee for her Master’s Degree. She is a candidate for receiving a PhD. She has studied English literature extensively and has a broad understanding of different uses of it. Therefore she has immense credibility in literature.

Davis’s text emphasizes on the connection between the target Discourse community

Discourse Community and 12 Episode of the Serial According to the lecture in the UWP 101 class, I have learned that discourse community is a group of people who communicate with one another to achieve a common. In addition, Porter who wrote the article “Intertextuality and the Discourse Community”, states that discourse communities creates its own collective meaning, and shares assumption about what objects are appropriate for examination and discussion. In the other words, discourse community is a group of people who build up an individual ideology. Ideology is a collection of beliefs about the world that held by a group of people who share the information together.

Mirabelli helped me decide what discourse community I want to study. Like Mirabelli, I am going to study a discourse community that I was a part of. After reading the extensive knowledge Mirabelli had on the community, I realized it aided his ethnographic study. Without prior knowledge of the community, an ethnographic study is harder to complete. I also noticed the passion Mirabelli had for the discourse community he studied.

An important discourse community that was a part of my life was my volleyball team during my four years of high school. I started playing my first year going into high school and continued until I graduated. Until now I wasn’t even aware that would even be considered a discourse community, but it fits all of the qualifications of Swales’ definition of a discourse community. Goals

A discourse community implies all kinds of communication adding to a specific established manner of thinking employed by a particular gathering of persons who utilize, and thus assist in developing a specific discourse. In the subsequent text, I will be discussing the perspectives from two dissimilar discourse communities; an online subscription discourse community and one that is essentially academic based. I will additionally express my opinions regarding these discourse communities, how I think I am connected to them and the manner in which I can be more beneficial to them. According to the article “Protect desert land by bill – or my monument designation’’ by the editorial board for the SBSUN, Dianne Feinstein has presented a nice method

I came to a conclusion that choosing a soccer team was a excellent example of a discourse community and fitted with all of Swales Characteristics . It was very clear that every soccer team has a common public goal which is winning their matches including scoring numerous of goals to the opposite team, and not willing to let their opposite team do the same. They have a specific lexis that are used off and on between the field like the scoreboard, through ball, and square which makes them communicate between their teammates . One last thing is the communication that is used throughout the team which lets them notify them through modern technology like smart phones, texting, e-mailing, and even sending pictures of their schedules of games and practices. After doing numerous of experiments, investigations, and interviews of a soccer team it is very evident that a soccer team fits the illustrative definitation of the Swales Discourse

This quote from Gee is quite a long quote but also quite a very important quote. It shows how discourses in writing is linked into almost everything we do. What this means is it’s not always about a specific language itself. It goes much deeper, rather the actions and experiences that make a specific group/community a discourse. For example being part of a football team itself is a discourse.

The modes of circulation, valorization, attribution, and appropriation of discourses vary with each culture and are modified within each. The manner in which they are articulated according to social relationships can be more readily understood, I believe, in the activity of the author function and in its modifications than in the themes or concepts that discourses set in motion.” In celebrating the birth of discourse, Barthes claimed that the contemporary notion of the language is “neither an instrument nor a vehicle: it is a structure". According to him, “it is language which speaks, not the author: “to write is to reach, through a preexisting impersonality — never to be confused with the castrating objectivity of the realistic novelist — that point where language alone acts, “performs,” and not