(Keep it on the same subject the discourse community of Gig Harbor Lacrosse)
(And Attached Teacher Example)
(And attached screenshots of original essay)
(Rubric Below)
Purpose of the Assignment: To learn how discourse communities and communities of practice use language and writing to function. To learn why discourse communities have unique and specific ways of writing and using genres. To think about how rhetorical situations work inside discourse communities.
Intended Audience: Classmates. Instructor.
Discourse Community and Genre Ethnography: This assignment asks you to examine a discourse community you already belong to, like specific clubs, occupations, organizations, college majors, teams, church groups, support groups—to name just a few—and identify how the community meets Swales’ six characteristics of a discourse community. Your job is to apply Swales’ six characteristics to analyze the community. Using the characteristics as a “lens,” your job is to a) prove that the community is in fact a discourse community by showing–using examples–how it meets this set of specific characteristics. A discourse community could be a discipline for a course you’re in right now (e.g. history, sociology, business, computer science), your workplace, a specific group like a gaming community that uses its own kind of lexis or “language” and has codes of behavior, dress, etc,, your specific workplace (e.g. if you work in a subsection of a larger organization), a club, a subgroup within a larger social group…These are just some examples.
To do this, you will need to collect as much information about your discourse community as possible. Then, once you have this data, just like in the first two papers, you’ll generate a lot of ideas in the form of a very rough draft by answering some or all of the questions below. Answering these questions is just the start. You’re not finished with the paper once you’ve answered the questions; they are just meant as a guide for helping you analyze the information about your community. You will need to take the ideas generated from thinking through these questions and shape them into an essay from there.
Materials for analysis could be syllabi, publications, websites, apps, memos, emails, handbooks, resumes, training materials, etc.
In the essay, you will use what you learn from the readings and from the research you collect about your discourse community to tell us what you learned about your discourse community. The paper should reference the course readings and your data.
Ultmately, the goal is to think about how intercommunication functions in the community. Use the following visual from Colette Frommeyer to help you imagine the various communication forms that exist in the community:
Other Specific Requirements:
You will need to quote and reference any readings we complete on discourse communities like Dan Melzer’s piece, and use them in each body paragraph
you will need to locate and incorporate at least three additional source materials from the discourse community you are examining
Your final analysis should be at least five complete pages (see syllabus on page requirements–the page must be completely filled with text to count as a complete page, and Works Cited does not count toward the page count
12′ font, double-spaced properly following the Week 1 MLA formatting assignment
proper MLA format including proper in-text citations and Works Cited
First, start with some research and use these questions. If you answer these questions, you will have content for the final paper. The questions are not in any particular order, and they should not be used as a template for organizing your paper. The best way to get information about a discourse community is to conduct primary research, so let’s discuss what that can look like:
Questions for Gathering Data and Information about Your Community –these are just to help you take notes on your ideas; you then need to organize and develop the ideas you gather here and present them in an essay with a introduction/thesis, body paragraphs that contain evidence/examples from your materials as well as course readings, and a conclusion.
What are the communicative practices for this community?
How is information shared or transmitted in this community?
What types of specialized vocabulary or “jargon” do they use?
What language(s) are used in the discourse community?
How are texts produced within the discourse community?
For what purpose are texts produced in this community?
Who produces the texts for this community?
Do all community members produce texts or just a select few? Why?
Who gets to produce certain texts and why?
What guidelines does the community have for the production and acceptance of texts?
What evidence does the community value or not value and why?
What types of research do they do or not do?
How are individual texts related to each other in this discourse community? How do the texts carry out the community’s actions and will as a whole?
What genres are used to produce texts?
What are the conventions for genres?
What are the writing conventions for this community? APA? Chicago? MLA? ASA?
What are the basic assumptions that ground the community?
What is the purpose for the community and how is this expressed in writing?
What makes someone an authority in this profession or community? Degrees? Experience?
What other kinds of things are important for communicating in this profession?
How are images and sounds used in this community? Where are they used?
An Interview:
You might consider interviewing someone currently in the discourse community you hope to join to learn more about the kinds of writing and communication he or she does in the community. Ask them how long they’ve been there, how they communicate with others in the discourse community, and how they learned to write A, B, or C. Use some of the questions above to conduct the interview. The answers will generate content for your final paper. You do not have to conduct an interview. An interview can serve as at least two sources for this assignment.
Examples of vehicles used for communication that you you can analyze (also known as “genres”):
Locate as many genres from the the community as possible and analyze them. These publications include, but are not limited to:
Academic and trade publications (journals, newsletters, etc.).
Company web sites (Internet and Intranet). Screen shots are fine.
Professional society web sites (e.g., Federal or State Bar Association, the National Association of State Foresters).
Society for Technical Communication, etc.).
Internal correspondence (memos, reports, policy & procedure documents, forms, etc.).
External correspondence (letters, applications, descriptions, reports, etc.).
Training materials (menus, etc.).
Emails
Press Releases
Catalogs
Codes
Flyers
Pamphlets
Meeting Notes
Writing the Paper
Introduction: Start by identifying your discourse community, giving enough background information that your audience gets a good idea of what it is and your role in it. Then write a thesis statement that explains what you learned from studying that community. (To start, just write a “working thesis” that gets at what you feel is the main idea of your paper, and then keep refining and revising that thesis statement as you go along writing the paper, making sure the thesis and the body of the paper have a tight connection.)
Body:
Include a section that explains how your community meets the definition of a community, looking through the lens of Swales’ six characteristics. This section can be organized into paragraphs that each deal with one of Swales’ six characteristics. First write a topic sentence that tells your audience something unique or the main interesting thing about how your community embodies that characteristic. Find and include a quote (or paraphrase) from the course reading that best matches up with and supports that thing. Then, explain in your own words more about how your community does that thing, using examples from your data and, if applicable, other quotes from the readings.
Then provide a 1-2 page analysis section in the paper that examines something specific or unique you learned about your community. For example, you could extend our understanding of what mush faking looks like in a particular community, or what an identity kit looks like for that community. You could examine a variety of ideas in this final paper, but use the articles and quotes from the articles to frame your analysis. I don’t want you to summarize your data only. Instead, make a strong, clear claim about your discourse community that you can back up with examples and evidence from your data collection. To illustrate and support your claim about this unique trait of your community, use quotations from your interview subject if you conducted an interview, quotations from the documents and materials you analyzed, and/or other specific information from these documents, and quotes from the articles we read in this unit.
Look over this sample paper:
Example #1
Evaluation Method
A paper that earns an A to A- will analyze a discourse community and identify the characteristics for a discourse community. The paper examines at least three documents or genres from the community and references them in the paper to support an analysis of the community, or the paper references an interview with a member of the community and includes the transcript for the interview with the paper in the assignment drop box as an attachment. The paper examines a variety of ideas and conclusions from the analysis and connects those ideas to the readings and discussions in the course. There is a 1-2 page analysis section that examines something you learned about the discourse community more closely. The writing is clear and readable. The paper has interjected references and source materials using an appropriate writing style like APA or MLA, and there is a works cited page with citations.
A paper that earns an B to B+ will analyze a discourse community and identify the characteristics for a discourse community. The paper examines at least three documents or genres from the community and references them in the paper to support an analysis of the community, or the paper references an interview with a member of the community and includes the transcript for the interview with the paper in the assignment drop box as an attachment. The paper examines a variety of ideas and conclusions from the analysis and connects those ideas to the readings and discussions in the course but this section may need more development and analytical detail. There is a 1-2 page analysis section that examines something you learned about the discourse community more closely, but this section may need more development and analytical details. The writing is clear and readable. The paper has interjected references and source materials using an appropriate writing style like APA or MLA, and there is a works cited page with citations. There may be some minor issues with interjecting source material.
A paper that earns an B- to C+ will analyze a discourse community and identify most of the characteristics for a discourse community. The paper examines at least two documents or genres from the community and references them in the paper to support an analysis of the community, or the paper references an interview with a member of the community and includes the transcript for the interview with the paper in the assignment drop box as an attachment. The paper may need to examine a variety of ideas and conclusions in the analysis and connect those ideas to the readings and discussions in the course more directly. The 1-2 page analysis section that examines something you learned about the discourse community may need more analytical detail. The writing is mostly clear and readable. The paper may not have interjected references and source material using an appropriate writing style like APA or MLA, or there may be concerns with the works cited page and its citations.
A paper that earns an C to C- will analyze a discourse community and identify some of the characteristics for a discourse community. The paper examines at least 1 document or genre from the community and references them in the paper to support an analysis of the community. The paper needs to examine a variety of ideas and conclusions in the analysis section and connect those ideas to the readings and discussions in the course more directly. There needs to be a 1-2 page analysis section that examines something you learned about the discourse community more closely. The writing is mostly clear and readable. The paper may need to interject references and source materials using an appropriate writing style like APA or MLA, and the works cited page may need more accurate citations.
A paper that earns an D or below will not analyze a discourse community and identify several characteristics for a discourse community. The paper does not examine at least three documents or genres from the community and references them in the paper to support an analysis of the community, or the paper references an interview with a member of the community and includes the transcript for the interview with the paper in the assignment drop box as an attachment. The paper may not examine a variety of ideas and conclusions in the analysis and connect those ideas to the readings and discussions in the course. There may not be a 1-2 page analysis section that examines something you learned about the discourse community more closely. The writing is may not be clear or readable. The paper may not have interjected references and source materials using an appropriate writing style like APA or MLA, and there may be concerns with the citations on the works cited page.
