Your goal is to compose an interesting description and insightful analysis of the language practices (spoken and written) of a discourse community of your own choosing.
Your goal is to compose an interesting description and insightful analysis of the language practices (spoken and written) of a discourse community of your own choosing.
Your Topic: Purpose The purpose of this assignment is to help you more fully understand how discourse communities use language to function and accomplish their purposes and goals.
Assignment Details: Description
Your goal is to compose an interesting description and insightful analysis of the language
practices (spoken and written) of a discourse community of your own choosing.
Getting Started
Identify a discourse community that interests or intrigues you. You may be a member of
that discourse community; you might be an outsider. For our purposes, a discourse
community could be any group of people who identify themselves as a group. Some
possibilities include a church group, a fraternity or sorority, a club or team, a social
organization, an academic or professional organization, etc.
If you are uncertain whether a group is indeed a discourse community, see if you can find
answers to the following questions:
√ Why does the group exist? What does the group do? What are its shared goals?
√ How do group members communicate with one another (e.g., meetings, phone
calls, e-mail, text messages, newsletters, reports, evaluation forms, blogs, online bulletin
boards, etc.)?
√ What are the purposes of the group’s communications (share information,
reinforce values, make money, improve performance, offer support, declare identity,
etc.)?
√ Which of the above communications can be considered genres (i.e., textual
responses to recurring situations that all group members recognize and understand)?
√ What kinds of specialized language (lexis) do group members use in their
conversations and in their written genres?
√ Who are the “old timers” in the group with expertise? Who are the newcomers
with less expertise? How do newcomers learn the appropriate language, genres, and
knowledge of the group?
Collecting Information
Once you have identified a discourse community to study, you will need to engage in the
following research activities:
• Observe and take detailed notes of members of the discourse community while
they are engaged in a shared group activity. (What are they doing? What kinds of things
do they say? What do they write? How do you who is “in” and who is “out”?)
• Collect anything people in that community read or write (i.e., their genres)––
“official”publications, newsletters, blogs, forms, IMs, texts, etc.
• Interview at least one member of the discourse community. (How long have you
been involved with this group? Why are you involved? What do the terms X. Y, and Z
mean? How do you communicate with the group? How did you learn to write things to
the group?)
Analyzing Information
As you gather and review information about the discourse community, what catches your
interest most? What stands out to you about that community? What surprises you? Listed
below are some additional questions that can help you dig more deeply for your analysis
of the group:
• Are there conflicts within the discourse community? If so, about what? How do
their genres address those conflicts?
• Which genres help the discourse community work toward their goals most
effectively?
• Do some participants in the community have difficulty speaking or writing
within it? Why?
• Who has authority in the discourse community? How was that authority
established? How authority demonstrated in written and oral language?
Planning and Drafting
Because your goal is to compose an interesting, insightful analysis of a discourse
community, you will use the material you have gathered from your observations and
interview(s). An analysis is your interpretation of all the information you collect. Strive
to make sense of everything you learn about the discourse community and convey that to
the reader.
Adopt the impartial, analytical stance of a researcher conducting a study. Writing in
third-person is appropriate (unless, perhaps, you are a member of the discourse
community). Render others’ words fairly. Your comments and explanations should
provide your readers with important background information and connections to the
course readings where appropriate.
As you draft your analysis, there are many ways you can arrange your material. The
suggestions below are not a template, but they may help you consider the types of
information you should include:
• Begin by explaining what a discourse community is by quoting and
paraphrasing some of the readings in our textbook (e.g., Gee, Johns, McCarthy)
• Identify the discourse community you studied by explaining what makes it
discourse community and what makes it worth studying
• Describe how you studied the discourse community
• Discuss in detail what you discovered about the discourse community (use
examples and quotes from your notes, interview, and texts you collected) and analyze
what makes it significant to understanding that group
• Include a works cited page (for interviews, genres, etc.)
What Makes It Effective?
An effective analysis is vivid: rich with details, examples, descriptions, and insights.
A reader should finish reading your analysis and have a clear sense of the discourse
community you studied. If asked, a reader could find answers in your analysis to the
following questions (in no particular order):
What makes this a discourse community? What makes it unique? Interesting?
What matters to members of the community? What do they do? What do they
value?
How is membership in the community established? Maintained?
How do members use spoken and written language to accomplish their goals?
An effective portrait will demonstrate that you have done sufficient research; organized
the material to present key ideas; and edited and proofread to eliminate grammar,
spelling, and punctuation errors.
I want to talk about how the Delta Sigma Sorority helps the community .
Preferred Format: MLA
Number of Sources: 3
Number of Pages: 4
PowerPoint slides:
Preferred Spacing: Double spaced
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