Name _______________

Project 1: STEP 1: Choose and Introduce Your (discourse) Community Handout

Choose a (discourse) community that you are a member of. 

 

Think about the rules of a discourse community that Dan Meltzer explained as you introduce your community.  

  1. A Broadly agreed upon set of common public goals 
  2. Mechanism of intercommunication among its members 
  3. Use of these communication mechanisms to provide information and feedback 
  4. One or more genres that help further the goals of the discourse community  
  5. A specific lexis (specialized language) 
  6. A threshold level of expert members 

 

Does your community meet these criteria? DESCRIBE! EXPLAIN! PROVE!

Introduce your community to outsiders.  

 

Introduce your community. Describe it. 

 

What details do outsiders need to know? Think particularly about the criteria of a discourse community that we have looked at.  

 

Describe for an outsider the rules of the Community, how you gain entry (if you can!), the group’s values and beliefs. Is there a unique “identity kit”? Do they have a unique way of communicating? 

 

Write an introduction to your community. It should be about 250 words. It might be helpful to FOCUS on the SPECIFIC LEXIS (specialized language) and other unique criteria.