Blog #5

After struggling to read John Swales' chapter on "The Concept of Discourse Community," I honestly couldn't understand what the difference was between a genre and a discourse community.
From my understanding, genres are types of work that share commonalities including style and subject matter.
On the other hand discourse communities, as defined by Swales, are "groups that have goals or purposes, and use communication to achieve these goals."  

And then a lightbulb went off in my head.
Genres are the chosen form of communication that discourse communities use! (At least I hope my assumption is right otherwise I'm probably going to sound like a total derp)
Going back to blog #2, Devitt stressed the importance of critical genre awareness as a student learning objective. This ties in with our discussion for the week because Swales' actually describes the groups of people who utilize those specific genres - DISCOURSE COMMUNITIES.
For today's blog post task Professor Flewelling asked us to identify a discourse community that we belonged to and analyze it based on the six characteristics that Swales described. The boring science side of me wanted to talk about researchers/scientists as a discourse community but I decided against it because I talk about it way too much. Sorry :/
Instead, I chose to write about a discourse community that we can all relate to - the SDSU student
body.

1. Goals: Get a good education and have fun while doing it!
2. Mechanisms of intercommunication: Classroom interaction, sports events, social gatherings i.e. school club events, greek life, parties
3. Information exchange: E-mail, Blackboard, WebPortal, social media i.e. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram
4. Genre: Newsletters, e-mails, school advertisements, textbooks
5. Lexis: Bb, Cuic, Chappy, T-nasty, Aztec anything, EC, the dome
6. Membership: All SDSU students and alumni #AztecforLife

Blog #4

I chose to read the JSTOR articles, "Where American Public Schools Came From," "Viral Black Death: Why We Must Watch Citizen Videos of Police Violence," and "'Stranger Things' and the Psychic Nosebleed." Last Friday was the first time I've ever heard about JSTOR and it piqued my interest because I'm so used to reading lengthy scientific journals all focused under the same discipline that finding a database with shorter articles covering a broad variety of other topics seemed a lot less boring and strenuous on the eyes.
As an undergraduate research assistant for the Neuromechanics and Neuroplasticity lab her at state, I have A LOT of experience finding, reading, and even contributing to writing academic articles for scientific journals. I'm used to the structure, jargon, and word count of such articles so I thought that reading the three articles above were really interesting (as nerdy as that sounds).
The article by Gershon explaining the history of American Public Schools seemed to me like a reading from a high school textbook. He only had one citation and was very straightforward. I appreciated the conciseness of it and how he didn't have to unnecessarily  fluff up his writing.
Fain's article about Viral Black Death was a little on the lengthier side but it made sense because she had a lot more points to talk about. I feel that she was really good about establishing logos as she referenced the "Legacy of Lynching" as a parallel to white police brutality specifically targeting black civilians. She also appeals to the younger generation and establishes pathos by including the #staywoke which is known to be a powerful hashtag.

The last article written by Tracey discusses the extremely specific topic of psychic nosebleed in the new Netflix original series, "Stranger Things." I thought this was the most fun article out of the three just because it was such a "strange" topic. Tracey mentions how its such a common phenomenon for psychics to get nosebleeds when using their powers and attempts to explain it from a medical standpoint referencing a scientific article, "The Five Signs of Death.

Switching on to the three editorials - I read, "Why Facts Don't Unify Us," Trump’s history of corruption is mind-boggling. So why is Clinton supposedly the corrupt one?" and "Criminal rape cases should not be on a ticking clock."

After talking about each of the JSTOR articles I realized it's not that great of an idea to talk about each one individually since there's a strong likelihood that my classmates read other articles and have no idea what I'm talking about. So for the three editorials I'll talk about them in a more broad sense.

Maybe it was just Ms. Flewlling's choice of weekly readings but compared to the JSTOR articles, the editorials seemed to cover more pressing matters. They talk about climate change, politics, and social injustice whereas the JSTOR articles talk about anything else really. Editorials are opinion pieces written by established reporters who no doubt have a well-established reputation if they're featured in national newspapers such ad the The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times. Pathos is assumed almost immediately. Since these are opinion pieces they also have to have a good balance of ethos and logos. The authors build credibility by showing they can support their opinions with facts while simultaneously appealing to the their audiences' emotions.

Blog #3: Meme Analysis

From the list of memes that Knobel and Lankshear's used in their research paper titled, Memes and affinities: Cultural replication and literacy education" I recognized exactly none of them.

Each and every meme on this list was considered successful as indicated by their appearance in mainstream broadcast media, specifically regional newspapers (4). These memes are literally old news and its crazy to think how much time has passed since these memes were "the most fire." The oldest of which was at least 15 years ago! Times have definitely changed and the contents of memes have evolved accordingly. 

The meme I chose to analyze is Fan-based Drake's Hotline Bling Dance. 

I chose this specific meme because I actually like the song "One Dance" (before it was overplayed on the radio) and I find Drake's unique dance moves very entertaining. I also like how its a meme in the form of a video snippet instead of the standard still picture. 

This video clip has been remixed so much and have incorporated various multimedia forms which is a testament to its high fidelity. Remixes include references to Star Wars, Star Trek, the Carlton dance, pepperoni pizza, Pokemon, and even different types of sports! Unlike other more meaningful memes like "Rosie the Riveter" this one isn't trying to get a message across, its simply just making fun of Drake's eccentric dance moves. 

Blog #2: Genre Awareness

After reading Amy Devitt's research article titled, "Teaching Critical Genre Awareness," I realized how completely unaware I was of the problem in genre pedagogy in the first place. English curricula across the board have been traditionally one-dimensional in regards to genre teaching. In her paper Devitt states that if you were to, "Ask students to write about the current candidates for president or to apply feminist theory to a literary work, and many will write five-paragraph themes (341)." This claim is absolutely true since the five-paragraph theme is completely hardwired into students' brains – it’s simply second nature. Students abide by what genres they know, what they've been taught, and what they've been trained to master. Any deviation from the standard genres taught in the classroom, in my personal experience, have generally been met with criticism and negative feedback. This strict regulation demonstrates how current teaching methods are far from fluidity. To be fair, all of the English courses I've taken thus far have been lower division in which the instructors stress proficiency in basic rhetorical devices, strategies, and analysis. The easiest way for professors to teach these basic skills is through repetition of the standard five-paragraph theme.

Upper division writing, however, is a whole different ballpark. Being enrolled in a "W" class means that one already has a good understanding of persuasive writing. Breaking down Devitt's three generic genre pedagogies, I would say teaching genres as particles would be lower division writing, teaching genres as fields would be upper division writing, and teaching genres as waves would be a conduit between the two. Here we see a shift to a higher form of learning by changing our focus to "academic skills (such) as analysis, synthesis, and evaluation" and "to consider how different audiences and contexts shape the rhetorical situations" as described in our course catalog.

This is when critical genre awareness becomes wholly important. As students become more specialized throughout their course of professional development, it’s easy to become engrossed in one or only a few definite genres. We’re intrigued by the things that are pertinent to our specific interests and then render everything else irrelevant. Devitt’s claim that, "When writers take up a genre, they take up that genre's ideology" (339) explains how the genres a person uses help develop that person’s identity whether its personal, professional, or anything in between.

Devitt’s argument about the importance of critical genre awareness is something to take note of. Genre awareness allows people to have a liberal point of view when reading different types of literature intended for specific audiences. With genre awareness we become conscious of the writer’s intentions, are more adept to understanding text, and are more likely to form sensible conclusions and take deliberate action.