HW for Weds (9/25)

For Weds:

1. Read the chapter handout I gave you on Monday (“L. McMillan-RhetoricalSituation” by Laurie McMillan),  using the K-W-L reading strategy.

2. (1pm class) Review the points below (from the second half of the chapter handout) on John Swales’ defining characteristics of a discourse community from 1990 and then his subsequent revision of those criteria.

3. (1pm class) Jot down ideas about a discourse community that you would like to explore further for Unit Two. Write out a list of several possible discourse communities, or a paragraph about one (Informal writing, for credit).

  1. A discourse community has a broadly agreed set of common public goals.
  2. A discourse community has mechanisms of intercommunication among its members.
  3. A discourse community uses its participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information and feedback.
  4. A discourse community utilizes and hence possesses one or more genres in the communicative furtherance of its aims.
  5. In addition to owning genres, a discourse community has acquired some specic lexis.
  6. A discourse community has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discoursal expertise. (Swales,Genre, 24–27)

Recently, John Swales revisited his thinking about discourse communities and he created a slightly new list. I paraphrase his revisions in italics just below. Part of the reason I share the versions published in 1990 as well as 2017 is to show that even ideas published, read, cited, and used by a lot of people can undergo revision.

  1. A discourse community has a broadly agreed set of goals; these goals may or may not be explicitly stated, and there may be sets of diering goals for dierent segments of a single community.
  2. A discourse community has mechanisms of intercommunication among its members; these mechanisms may be digital; some kind of communication is necessary for a set of people to be dened as a “community.”
  3. A discourse community uses its participatory mechanisms to provide information and feedback; members communicate in order to keep the community functioning or help it grow; communication helps things to get done.
  4. A discourse community utilizes and hence possesses one or more genres in the communicative furtherance of its aims; the word “possesses” is unnecessary, though a particular community might rene a genre in a particular way.
  5. In addition to owning genres, it has acquired some specic lexis; the lexis of a community develops over time and often includes abbreviations.
  6. A discourse community has a threshold of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discoursal expertise; the newer members of a discourse community gradually advance into full membership.
  7. A discourse community develops a sense of “silential relations” (Becker 1995); some things can go unsaid because they are assumed.
  8. A discourse community develops horizons of expectation; the community develops a value system to evaluate work, and a history and ongoing patterns lead to expectations of when and how things will happen. (Swales, “Concept of Discourse Community”)”

 

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