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.
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, Instagram4. 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
I agree with your assertion that genres are forms of communication which discourse communities use. That is a good way of distinguishing the two. After the reading, I was surprised by how inclusive Swales' definition of a discourse community was. I had expected his criteria would narrow down the number of social groups and organizations which qualify as discourse communities, but I was surprised to realize just how many I myself belong to, because of school and work connections. Using Swales' criteria, I am a member of three discourse communities just because of my status as an SDSU student, my ASME membership, and my work.
ReplyDelete- Joseph Cashman
I hope you are right because I thought along the same lines of what discourse community is. haha As for tying Devitt into this topic of Discourse Community, I feel like genre awareness is extremely important because if you don't know the structure/style then you're technically not int he community. right? Im saying this loosely because I'm not 100% sure if i'm right.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was looking over the characteristics, the first thing that came to mind was it was very thorough. At first i had to reread some of the characteristics because it sounded repetitive but it really gets to the root of what makes up a discourse community.
Brenda
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ReplyDeleteHey Selena! I also had a hard time understanding what a discourse community actually is too. Mondays class we talked about what it wasn't but never really got into what it actually is; which is probably why Professor Flewelling had us do this exact blog. I had a hard time distinguishing discourse community from the intended audience. The connection you made between genre and discourse community really helped me to understand what discourse community really is. The SDSU student body was a great example to choose to evaluate. I agree with your analysis and would have to say, based on these six criteria that Swales provided, that the SDSU student body would be considered a discourse community. Nice job!
ReplyDelete- Nick T