February 20th Homework

Swales Summary:
In his article, The Concept of Discourse Community, John Swales explains the six main characteristics of discourse communities, and how discourse communities differ from speech communities. His main point in this article was to clarify the reason why discourse communities are used and how they can help. He supports his argument by explaining each of the six characteristics of discourse communities and what each step does.

QD 1,3,5:
1.) The first characteristic involves everybody in the discourse community and each person has the same set goals to achieve. This relates to everybody in our ENG151 class trying to get the same good grade on a paper. The second characteristic is a certain way that the community communicates with each other. This is kind of like being on a sports team and everybody communicates with each other by using each persons nickname. The third characteristic is an effective way of being able to communicating with the community members. Nowadays, kids communicate by texting on their cell phones or by talking to each other over the internet. The fourth characteristic has to do with the members of the community helping each other to achieve each others' goals. Such as us students in this class giving peer reviews to help our fellow classmates' papers. The fifth characteristic is having your own type of lingo within the community to communicate with each other. And the sixth characteristic explains that each community changes in numbers of members, wether some leave the group or some are gained.

3.) According to Swales, first-year college classrooms wouldn't be considered a discourse community because they are just trying to focus on their own goals and not worried about others. However, in a graduate classroom it's more likely to have a discourse community. By this time the students understand that their fellow classmates are trying to achieve the same goals and they start to help each other.

5.) A discourse community that I once belonged to was my high school club hockey team. I had played with most of those kids since I was 7 years old, so we all knew each other very well. But we do gain new members to the team and lose some as well. We all had the same goal to win our league tournament and the state tournament. Our lexis was the plays we used during games, and calling out each others nicknames so that the other team didn't know who was going to do what.

MM:
This article helped me understand that I had always been in discourse communities without consciously knowing. This article also helps the readers know what they need to do to be part of a discourse community and the different aspects of it.

Reflection:
I found this article to be very useful. I found some things out about my own discourse communities that I didn't know before reading this. He also explain the concept of discourse communities much better than Porter did when we read his article earlier in the class.

Gee Summary:
In his article, Literacy, Discourse, and Linguistics, James Paul Gee explains what he thinks Discourse really means. He uses words such as meta-knowledge, dominant discourses, and mushfake to help explain his ideal of Discourses. His argument is that Discourses are different from discourse communities. He backs up his argument by saying that with discourse communities you don't need to be fluent, but you do with Discourses.

QD 3-8, 11, 12, or 13:
3.) With Discourses, you are either a member of the group or you're not. He says that with Discourses you are considered to be alone. With discourse communities, you are part of the group until you decide to leave it.

4.) Primary Discourse is the way of communicating that is normal for you. But secondary Discourse involves the mastery of dominant and nondominant Discourses.

5.) This saying means that each person has their own identity based on the discourse community they are with. He backs up this saying with his definition of Discourse which is dealing with the individual not the group.

6.) You cannot teach motivation to read or write, the motivation only comes from your identity. And your identity comes from the Discourse.

7.) In this paragraph, he is saying that you can generally tell if a person is a part of a discourse community or not based on the way they use language around other people. I have experienced a situation like Gee is explaining. On my hockey team, we run drills in practice that most teams don't do in their practices, and when we gain a new player they don't know what to do for the drills.

8.) This test is used to find other people that might be a good part of the community. The benefit to this test is that after the dominant members leave the group, they will know another person will be filling in for them in the community.

11.) Meta-knowledge is using your own thoughts and ideas instead of taking somebody else's ideas or thoughts. Its value is bringing up knowledge that we didn't know we had and applying it to everyday things.

12.) I know that I am part of the hockey Discourse community because I have played the sport for 14 years, I have coached the sport, and I am a referee for it as well. I know the different strategies within the sport and how different situations can unfold. I have also been a leader for many of the teams that I have played for and communicate with my teammates to help them and give them pointers to improve their play.

AEI 2, 4:
2.) The language that I use at home is completely different than what I use in my academic settings. Around my family, I will use terms that my family would understand. My tone is usually calm, or upset depending how I'm feeling, which could cause my tone of voice to be raised. But when I'm around my friends at school, I have a different language so that they can understand me. My tone would usually be excited since I am enjoying the company of my friends.

4.) Generally, if there is a conflict involving beliefs and values, I will try to defend my beliefs and values, and continue believing in my values. I will not let a little argument ruin my beliefs.

Reflection:
I thought this article was kind of difficult to read because most of the definitions were hard to decifer. But other than that, I thought this was a good article to read and had a lot of useful information in it.