Premium Essay

Discourse Community Research Paper

Submitted By
Words 913
Pages 4
Evan DeMarco

Professor Butcher

COMM -122

September 18, 2024

Running Through Pages

While often overlooked, discourse communities play an influential role in how people write and communicate with one another. A discourse community is defined as a group of people who share a set of basic values and beliefs. These individuals find themselves amongst one another, working together towards a common goal. As Seeley, Xu and Chen stated, discourse communities are defined by a set of standards, including: “a broadly agreed upon set of goals, ways of communicating within the group, member participation that provides information, feedback, and initiates action, and a core group of experienced members” (Seeley, 3). Discourse communities play a huge …show more content…
The community spans across a wide range of individuals. From some of the fastest people in the world to casual everyday runners, the community is one of the most inclusive discourse communities that you can become a part of. I first expressed interest in this community when I was in middle school. My dad suggested that I start running to better my condition for Lacrosse. Running a mile seemed like an insane feat to me at the time because I had never heard of people running distances longer than those on a track before. The desire to improve my physical condition for Lacrosse helped me take my first step into the community. While everyone within the community has their own specific goals tailored to their own running journey, the community shares many similar goals such as improving physical condition, clearing one’s head. or simply getting faster (How Running Can Reduce …show more content…
Helping me find my audience through my passion for health and physical education, running helps me share my health and physical education are some of the topics that I’ve developed a passion for through running, giving me an audience and purpose for assignments I write. Helping others understand more about the community allows me to direct my writing to a specific audience, while also making it understandable for individuals who are inexperienced in the community. The community offers a wide variety of information, allowing you to find the topics that you’re passionate about. The running community has impacted the way I approach my writing and influences the content of my writing. When I am tasked with a writing assignment, I find myself going back to the same things I tell myself when I am struggling on a run “even if you’re not feeling 100%, give your 100%”. Whether I am motivated towards completing an assignment or not, I still put forth my best possible work because of the ethics that I’ve developed as a member of the running community. Being a part of this community has developed my values and principles to always do my best, no matter how hard the task is, because if I find myself lacking in my work, I feel as if I cheated myself.

Discourse communities influence an individual’s style and approach to writing. While they may seem insignificant on

Similar Documents

Premium Essay

Discourse Community Research Paper

...are many people who belong to more than one discourse community. Discourse communities are groups of people that use communication to achieve certain goals or purposes. A purpose, genre, vocabulary, convention, membership and an audience are essential for writing professionally in any discourse community. Every community is different from each other as well as essential for writing. The language or vocabulary that we use in a discourse community differs from others and that’s because every community has a different way to communicate. Every single individual on Earth belongs to at least one discourse community. The most important community for many people including myself would have to be the Family discourse community. Family discourse communities are very different from each other as their vocabulary, language and many other things vary. Family discourse communities are very exclusive and in order to be part of one you must be born, married or adopted into this community. There are two ways to communicate within this community, the first one is formal Spanish and English and the second one is informal Spanish and English. Formal vocabulary is used with the elders such as grandparents and informal vocabulary is used with your cousins, parents and uncles. The conversations within...

Words: 722 - Pages: 3

Premium Essay

Discourse Community Research Paper

...Now when reading thru the “Concept of a discourse community “ I found it a very difficult piece to write about. Really just reading thru it I found myself having to go back over it many times. So for this paper we were soppose to analize a part of the writing. So I decided to go over thse 6 chartestics that swalles talked about. Like I said swales came up with a set of guidelines that a discourse community has to meet to be actulla considered as a discourse community. The six characteristics that are to be included in a discourse community are common goals, participatory mechanisms, information exchange, community specific genre’s, a highly specialized terminology and a high general level of expertise (Swales, John. "The Concept of Discourse Community." (1990): 119-28. Print.)....

Words: 423 - Pages: 2

Premium Essay

Dave Chapelle and Maida Galvez Talking About Food Scarcity and Socioeconomic Disparity

...Victoria Morgan English Composition 101-3716 Dr. Hernandez 11/24/2014 Rhetorical Analysis of Dave Chappelle’s Stand-up and Maida Galvez’s Research Paper Insufficient intake of healthful food and consequences is a topic of many academic and non-academic talks. Whether authors are writing to share information with readers, like a group of researchers from Mount Sinai School of Medicine, or tell an amusing story, like Dave Chappelle in his standup routine, they make appeals to emotions, authority, or logic to persuade the audience. The choice of persuasive strategies depends on the author’s purpose and expectations of the intended audience. In the article, Race and Food Availability in an Inner-city Neighborhood, first published online in 15 October 2007, a group of researchers from Mount Sinai School of Medicine argues that the availability and price of quality foods in grocery stores varies from neighborhood to neighborhood. Conducting a walking survey of food options in East Harlem, NY, they came to conclusion that low-income areas, minority communities, are dominated by fast food restaurants and small stores offering limited selections of healthful foods, when Caucasian neighborhoods are located in close proximity to full-service restaurants and grocery stores offering wide selection of foods. Researchers believe that this food disparities have “implications for racial/ethnic differences in dietary quality, obesity and obesity-related disorders” (Galvez et al. 624). ...

Words: 921 - Pages: 4

Premium Essay

Writing With Authority In Social Work

...others may see it as a curse. Not knowing how to accurately write in sociology can define one’s credibility as a professional writer. Therefore, just because some knows how to properly write in APA formatting doesn’t define the paper to be well written. In order to write a well written paper and mastering your research papers, the writer should learn how to write with authority. This could mean changing your writing styles, the tone of your writing...

Words: 860 - Pages: 4

Premium Essay

Discourse Community Reflection

...I believe that my discourse community helped with picking a topic before writing and researching for this annotated bibliography. My previous education never prepared me for writing an annotated bibliography. However, I feel my professor made this process very difficult and unrealistic in developing writing skills for this assignment. I thought some assignments were a bit pointless, they required a lot on my part to stay focus with the course lessons or withdrawal from the class. After applying the rules of a discourse community help me to identify my topic’s discourse community for my research, I felt stronger towards my opinion because the topic was interesting and related to my career field. However, I learned the importance strategies for...

Words: 359 - Pages: 2

Premium Essay

Business Dilemma

... Technical writing is something that is learned. In school everyone was taught how to format an essay or different types of writing like poems or stories. Anything that I did in class I was always given a template of how the instructor wanted the paper to be written. This would have word count, the format, and what the paper should be about. All throughout school we learned the fundamentals of writing starting with letters, words, sentences, paragraphs, to structures of writing like essays and poems. The thing that is learned from writing is technical. As my English education grows the technical side is less focused on while the content is the most important thing. Content is the writing that I am doing now. The content portion of writing is not learned but influenced by others. My writing becomes influenced through examples like essays. In this English class, I believe that that’s how these three previous essays worked out. The Scholarly Discourse Unit paper was a paper that had us synthesize how we thought the writers Gee, Swales, and Porter connected to each other. I used transferability to apply the knowledge that I got from each of the three sources and created an argument that I could synthesize with each other. This paper gave me the opportunity to express my ideas but what I had to write about was more about the three sources rather than using those three sources too support my ideas. Writing may be learned at first but...

Words: 1003 - Pages: 5

Premium Essay

Discourse Analysis and the Media

...connotations.............................................................................17 VI. Conclusion.......................................................................................................19 I. Introduction The same-sex marriage movement deals with what is arguably a leading social issue in the United States today. In 1996, the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) legally fixed the definition of marriage to be that which includes one man and one woman, including the provision that “states need not recognize a marriage from another state if it is between persons of the same sex” (www.domawatch.org). Grassroots organizations began to form on both sides of the debate concerning same-sex marriage reform. Most discourse research on the issue focuses on the ways in which the media and reform oppositionists (DOMA defenders) use language to display and perpetuate their social and political dominance over the pro-reform...

Words: 7680 - Pages: 31

Free Essay

En1420

...rhetorical situation during the planning phase of writing a paper? They can all use TRACE to analyze all of those objects. 3. Why is the audience important in argument? What types of positions might an audience initially hold? What possible outcomes are associated with arguments directed to each of these audiences? The audience is important because without the audience you have no argument. You’re trying to convince people of your beliefs, hence why you need an audience. The audience may initially be a friendly audience, an undecided audience, a neutral audience, a hostile audience, an unfamiliar audience, or a linked audience. Possible outcomes are convincing people to your cause, pushing people away from your cause to the opposing side, people could remain bias, and people could become angry and/or violent towards you and your argument. 4. What is a discourse community? To what discourse communities do you belong? How does a discourse community help establish common ground for its members? A discourse community is a group of people who share a set of discourses, understood as basic values and assumptions, and ways of communicating about those goals. I belong to several discourse communities of which I don’t know how to label them. It helps to establish common ground for its members by having resources and peers interested in and sharing in your same beliefs and ideals and having peers to converse with to learn and research subject matter than you all enjoy and share interest in...

Words: 347 - Pages: 2

Premium Essay

My Writing Reflection

...Throughout the course of the semester, my writing as drastically improved through analyzing and understanding the course goals, its objectives, the topics of the papers, and grading rubrics. Utilizing the syllabus allowed me to see what was expected of me as a writer, and how I would be critiqued in my writing, starting with the first paper which asked me to explain the moment or experience when I knew I was a part of a discourse community. At first, I did not understand what I was supposed to write. Once we talked about it in class and went over discourse community characteristics and sample papers, my paper began to flourish from draft one all the way to draft four. In draft one, I finished my paper with “I became so good with weave that...

Words: 1030 - Pages: 5

Premium Essay

Marketing

...Downloaded from mtq.sagepub.com at Glasgow University Library on July 5, 2011 Volume 8(4): 339–366 Copyright © 2008 SAGE www.sagepublications.com DOI: 10.1177/1470593108096540 articles Marketing the hegemony of development: of pulp fictions and green deserts1 Steffen Böhm University of Essex, UK Vinícius Brei Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS), Brazil Abstract. In this paper we analyze the role of marketing in the construction of what can be called the hegemony of development. Through an investigation of the marketing practices of the pulp and paper industry in South America and the resistances that are articulated by a range of civil society actors against the expansion of this industry, we problematize marketing as a political and contested discourse and practice. By using Laclau and Mouffe’s (1985, 2001) theoretical framework, which is centered on the concept of ‘hegemony’, we highlight the crucial role marketing plays in the social and cultural legitimation of the highly controversial development of the pulp and paper industry – regarded as one of the most polluting industries in the world – in South America. We build on...

Words: 13036 - Pages: 53

Premium Essay

Pyswar

...alternative theoretical framework for understanding student learning. Higher Education, 55(3), 321 - 332. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10734-007-9057-5 Alienation and engagement: Development of an alternative theoretical framework for understanding student learning Jennifer M. Case Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Cape Town Abstract In this paper it is suggested that the themes of alienation and engagement offer a productive alternative perspective for characterising the student experience of learning in higher education, compared to current dominant perspectives such as that offered by approaches to learning and related concepts. A conceptual and historical background of the concept of alienation is presented, followed by an overview of some contemporary perspectives. Drawing on this literature, a framework is then developed for characterising student learning. It comprises three categories, referring to the alienation resulting from 1. entering the higher education community, 2. fitting into the higher education community, and 3. staying in the higher education community. Each category has an associated set of theoretical tools that can be drawn upon in analysing this aspect of the student experience. Keywords: alienation, engagement, student learning, tertiary education, approaches to learning Address for correspondence: Dr J Case, Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Cape Town, Private Bag, Rondebosch, 7701, South Africa ...

Words: 6385 - Pages: 26

Premium Essay

Humor in Workplace

...Final Project Proposal This paper aims to explore how humor, a site of construction of gender identity and power relation, is employed by both males and females to negotiate their power relations and either subvert or confirm their gender roles. I believe this topic is of particular interest because though a number of studies have been conducted to examine the relation between gender practice and occupational practice, and ways of constructing gender roles via humor. Concentration is rarely deployed on humor use by males and females at workplace. This review is important because there is a growing number of female practitioners participating in different sectors and industries. They are frequently confronted with paradoxical situations of their gender role of feminity and their professional competence and leadership, usually tagged with masculinity. This paper will offer some insights to professional females about how they can resolve such paradoxes at their workplace through the employment of humor. Besides, this topic is of particular interest because it can be seen through the review of the body of literature, that the meaning and effect of humor, as a linguistic means can never be captured nicely. It can have different functions in different context, which is in accordance with the “ambiguity” and “polysemy”put forward by Tannen (1993), so this paper will probes into the fluidity and ambivalency of this linguistic means. Moreover, one big context in this review...

Words: 1195 - Pages: 5

Premium Essay

Philippine Englishes

...and parents, is how to approach the teaching of English using the first language (L1). This presentation hopes to address these concerns by proposing a World Englishes (WE) approach to English language teaching (ELT) in the Philippines. Introduction ! Just recently, a college freshman who interviewed me for his research paper on mother-tongue based multilingual education (MTBMLE) asked why I supported its promotion even it meant possibly losing my job as an English teacher. The question did not surprise me as it was something that I often encountered whenever teachers, especially English teachers in Metro Manila, are confronted with this unfamiliar creature that is MTBMLE. ! To many stakeholders of the English language--lawmakers, school administrators, teachers, and parents--MTBMLE is perceived as a threat. It is specifically perceived to be anti-English. These perceptions may be traced to beliefs about English that may largely be considered as myths. Facts about the English language ! What do we know about the English language? Let’s consider some facts. Paper presented at the Panel Presentation on ENGAGING ELT IN THE MTBMLE DISCOURSE 2nd Philippine Conference - Workshop on MTBMLE, 16 February 2012, Iloilo City (page 1) • There are approximately 375 million English L1 speakers, 375 million L2 speakers, and 750...

Words: 2996 - Pages: 12

Premium Essay

Genre Analysis: Citation and the Construction of Sub-Disciplinary Knowledge

...in order to compare the disciplinary differences in styles of expression. The research paper is an important example of the research genres and a typical way of constructing new knowledge in academic discourse. According to Giltrow, successful writing depends upon readers’ recognition of features of genre. Therefore academic writers do not only need to make the results of their research public, but also persuasive. (Ken hyland, 1999) Citation, which is one of the most remarkable features appearing in scholarly articles, brings out a common ground shared by readers and writers to review the validity and novelty of both previous and current argument.(Ken hyland, 1999; Giltrow, 2009) The relationship between different citation forms and different disciplines has been investigated by many researchers. Hyland, who is a professor of applied linguistics, has done immense amounts of research in investigating the similarities and variability of citation in 8 disciplines. He suggests the disciplinary convention of citation usage and the motives behind those patterns. However, Hyland neglects the variation of citation practice that may occur in journal articles of different research directions within a discipline. The main purpose of this study is to examine the potential citation patterns of introduction sections employed by the articles in clinical and experimental subfield of psychology. Method This paper is...

Words: 1984 - Pages: 8

Premium Essay

What Is Gender and Development?

...This small abstract underscores the main conceptual meanings of gender and development.lt shows the heated debate among scholars and substantiates how elusive these concepts are in development discourses. In the 1970s the word gender became a buzzword both in development discourse and policy making. The feminist movement challenged the existing theories of development which neglected women and excluded women in the mainstream development. It is in this backdrop that women like Boserup (1970) championed or spearheaded the women in development approach (WID) as a means of inco-operating gender analysis in development. However, the main thrust of this abstract is not on theoretical approaches but rather a definition of concepts such as gender and development. A limited understanding of gender using some dictionary denotations would mean being male or female. If such, then gender studies would not be of any sociological interest. According to Cornwall (1997) gender relates to the various relations between men and women, boys and girls, mothers and their sons, fathers and their daughters, men and men, women and women and so on. Gender refers to the roles and responsibilities of men and women that are created in our families, our societies and our cultures (Schech and Haggis 2000, Razavi and Miller 1995; Kabeer 1995). According to Oxfam (1999) the concept of gender also includes the expectations held about the characteristics, aptitudes and likely behaviours of both women and men (femininity...

Words: 859 - Pages: 4