Two Peer Journal Entries That Helped Me
Jonathan Eisner On Swales, Discourse Communities Reading Response/ Discussion
John Swales' article was rather overwhelming for me to fully comprehend. I had to read certain parts multiple times and still wasn't quite sure I grasped the concepts completely. Prior to reading the article, I had never thought of the concepts of discourse communities or speech communities and the two different categories of them: sociolinguistic and sociorhetorical. While I understand the differences between the two - that "in a sociolinguistic speech community, the communicative needs of the group, such as socialization or group solidarity, tend to predominate in the development and maintenance of its discoursal characteristics" and that "in a sociorhetorical discourse community, the primary determinants of linguistic behavior are functional, since a discourse community consists of a group of people who link up in order to pursue objectives that are prior to those of socialization and solidarity, even if these latter should consequently occur" (Brandt, 24) - I am still not positive that I completely understand what each of the two communities actually are. Does Swale's example of New York City pertain to sociolinguistic speech communities? Or is it pertaining to a different kind of speech community? Swales' concept of discourses communities and the six characteristics of them were easier for me to understand. I specifically was interested in concepts of genres and lexis. His explanation of what a genre is and how it is used in a discourse community, along with how a unique language (lexis) goes hand in hand with genre's, helped me to grasp what a discourse community is. One of the first things that I thought of after analyzing genre and lexis was a discourse community of statisticians/actuaries, such as the Society of Actuaries. They present standard distribution bell curves to people. They use lexical terms such as standard deviation and correlation coefficient in their explanations. Their goals are to explain what survey/research data results mean. They release their results and information to other statisticians/actuaries in their community. The statistician/actuary also must take various exams to enter the community as novice members. Would this mean that a community such as the Society of Actuaries can be considered a discourse community? Based on Swales' example of the "HKSC," I would assume that the Society of Actuaries would, indeed, be considered a discourse community (Brandt, 27). However, due to my difficulty in fully understanding the concept of discourse communities, I can not be positive that the S.o.A. is or is not a discourse community. Overall, Swales was efficient in taking highly complex concepts, breaking them down, and then helping the reader's understanding of those concepts with solid examples. The ideas themselves are still rather complex. Therefore, I hope to read more about discourse communities to enhance my understanding of them. Citations: Swales, John M. “The Concept of Discourse Community.” Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings. Cambridge [England: Cambridge UP 1990, pg.21-32. Print. |
Skylar Munsch On Devitt, "Generalizing About Genre" Reading Response/Discussion
Genre has been a challenging subject due to the multi-conceptions spawning between the linguists and rhetorics. Devitt mentions that the reconception of genre will require diminishing previous notions of genre and its definition as a form and text type and allowing for new ideas of genre to be known, such as the "dynamic patterning of human experience, as one of the concepts that enable us to construct our writing world." (Devitt, p.573). Also, genre has been thrown into classification and dissection, meaning time has been spent in the effort to classify the types of genre instead of embracing all of the aspects of it. Genre is defined as the purposes and the relationship formed between the the reader and the writer. I can draw from my experience of college recruitment. Before I decided to apply to UCF I was bombarded with information from different schools via email and letters. Once I was able to identify the genre of the email or letter I was able to either embrace the information or just delete-throw away the information. I believe that is what Devitt was trying to accomplish in her drawn-out article of what genre really is and how it should be used in real-life situations. Another aspect of this article is about expressing new conceptions of genre. The recurrence of a situation prompts a comparable response, this allows for a genre to develop and are therefore established as generic conventions. Genres can also be a form or style of writing which constrain responses to a given situation,such as a lab report, each author of a report has a similar purpose in mind thus exhibits a particular form of writing. I can remember in Physics when I had to write up a lab report and document every scientifical even that occurred during the lab. I had a goal or purpose in mind, to write descriptively and technically in order to get my point across. In conclusion, the genre constructs the situation and the writer has to learn how to respond. It has been debated between two communities, the linguistic and rhetoric and then eventually reconstructed in Devitt's article. Genre is always developing and can be applied to certain situations if recurred. Citation: Devitt, A.J.,(1993). Generalizing about Genre: New Conceptions of an Old Concept. College Composition and Communication, Vol. 44 (4) pp.575-584 |
WHY?
I chose these two discussion postings because they were the most helpful to me when I was struggling with the reading. Genre was one of the concepts we learned about that I had the hardest time grasping. Both Jon and Skylar's posting on their understanding of genre helped me exponentially when I needed to write my Genre Analysis paper.