9.10 Part 2: Defining Discourse Communities & what to do for next class

Important notes: 
1.  To read notes on analyzing shaggy dog stories, scroll down to the next post.
2.  The reading for next class, "Coaches can read, too" was sent to your Kean email as a pdf. 


Reading Swales essay.
We started out by acknowledging that this was not a "easy read".  At the same time, it has lots of important information about discourse communities.  So I asked you to notice the different moves the essay makes (as a way of identifying where the information you are going to need is located).  You already know how to do this - so very quickly you identified:

1.  an introductory section (about 20% of the essay's total length) where he states what other researchers have done and points out what he will add to this "conversation" (distinguish between speech + discourse community & define discourse community),
2. a long middle section (about 60%) where he gives is data/presents his "findings"/makes his point,
3. a (surprisingly long) conclusion (about 20%) - which was in my text but was not part of your assigned reading.
This is one pattern for a writing studies data.  Important consideration for you: does this essay include primary data?  Where would you put your primary data if you used this form?  How much "space" should your data take?

We then noted that this introduction was really written to people already IN the conversation (in that it really didn't give background on all those "famous" researchers who have written about discourse, relativist or social construcionist views of language etc) and that most of his "background" was presented in terms of ONE of the major researchers.  He then stated what he would add.

The presentation of his points - was pretty clear.  He used headings and numbers to identify the main points.  And the six points in part 2.3 were what we focused on in our discussion (and what you needed to pay attention to in your reading.

Defining a discourse community.
In our discussion of Swales features of a discourse community, we used his features as a way to "check" whether our ENG 3029 class was a discourse community (according to his criteria).
I've pasted in our observations.

A discourse community:

1. has a  set of common public goals -In the syllabus=public + we all know them

 

2. has mechanisms for intercommunication among members

Blogs, class meetings, emails, conferences, through drafting + commenting

3. Uses participatory mechanisms primarily for information + feedback

Commenting = TALK in class
+ common goal

4. uses and possesses one or more genres in the communicative furtherance of its aims (we translated this to mean that a discourse community uses genres for its own purposes, and in ways that change or "re-purpose" the genre so that it belongs to the group).

Genres we use:

Brainstorming + drafts + revising, research essays, interactive analysis, blogging (we do this a little differently than most social blogging),

Genre we read/analyzed :

Shaggy dog stories, academic essays, our own writing, or blogs, emails,

5. has a special lexis (one that belongs to the group)

You pointed out that we used the words: blog, analysis, community, methodology, critical, discourse (and other words) in ways in this classroom that are slightly different from the ways they are used other places. 

6.  has a threshold level of members with a suitable level of relevant content & expertise
We kind of skipped this one.  The point here is that the group is big enough so that the "practices" (the special ways we use genres, language, and communications) are "passed on" and used.  In some ways, the fact that this is a class with a teacher (a presumed expert) and students (participants) kind of ensures the membership feature – or does it?  Will we still be a discourse community after you leave this class? 

So - it looks like we are a discourse community.

What to do for next class.

Read: Branick: "Coaches can read and write, too" (sent to your kean email).
Write: Blog 2: group post discussing your findings about the essential features of shaggy dog stories.  Post your analysis (the names of the features in the four jokes), the essential features, and the variants.

Come to class prepared to give a presentation on your analysis of the shaggy dog stories where you identify their essential features + the variants - and give some examples (show your data in your blog post) to support these findings.

We will start class with your presentations.

Then you will do some more brainstorming to think about your research topic. 

We will spend the second part of class discussing Branick - and talking about ethnographic method.