Essay #2 Rough Draft Public Education: essentially the epitome of an average American’s first eighteen years of their life. Full of classes they are either forced to take, or classes they finally get to choose because of personal interests, all of these courses boil down to the two important concepts of reading and writing; the thing our kindergarten teachers were so focused on with us. They had good reason for it however, because think what were to happen if you were to go through middle or high school without these skills, or even into adulthood? Adults that lack this skill also lack serious social abilities, and to bring it to an even worse problem, how are they to teach their children to read and write? So what can be done to improve this ability, so children don’t struggle with an ability that some of us come to expect as a social norm, and even help them throughout schooling? The introduction of Discourses into education. With the proper understanding and application of Discourses, we as a society can change and grow the …show more content…
To do so, we will use James Paul Gee and his work Discourses and Literacies. Discourses, as described by Gee, is “... a socially accepted association among ways of using language and other symbolic expressions, of thinking, feeling, believing, valuing, and acting, as well as using various tools, technologies, or props that can be used to identify oneself as a member of a socially meaningful group or ‘social network’ to signal (that one is playing) a socially meaningful ‘role,’ or to signal that one is filling a social niche in a distinctly recognizable fashion.” (Discourses and Literacies, 161) Gee gives such direct examples of Discourses as “... a certain type of doctor, lawyer, teacher, African-American, worker in a “quality control” environment, man, woman, boyfriend, girlfriend, …” (Discourses and Literacies,
A discourse community has an agreed set of common public goals. It is a group of individuals that have a specific way of interacting and communicating with one another. It is also used as a means to maintain and extend a group’s knowledge, as well as initiate new members into the group. Specific kinds of languages are used as a form of social behavior. Such discourse communities vary in size, purpose and importance.
According to Swale’s (1990), a discourse community is a group of people who communicate with each other and share a common goal to which they will help one another achieve using specific mechanisms and lexis (p. 217). The six characteristics used in the identification process are as
A basketball team is a great example of a discourse community. In a discourse community you have a few characteristics such as the goals, lexis and genre of the team. Goals are the team’s main focus/points that they want to achieve. Genre is basically how the members of the team stay connected and in contact with each other. Lexis can be described as the language and terminology used between the team members.
When a person is asked what he or she knows about discourse community, they might not have any idea of what that means. However, they are probably involved in more than one discourse community. Discourse community in a general definition means that a number of people who have the same interests, values, concerns, or goals. The discourse community term spanned to include everything from religions and morals to sports and games. In all these various kinds of discourse communities, there are some common fundamental forms of communication that participate in keeping these groups related like written regulations, requirements, instructions, and schedules. Being a
Swales, Gee and Porter all give their understanding of how they believe a discourse community operates and contributes to society. It can be seen as a type of language used to connect between particular groups and integrate social identities into the world (Gee 484). The building of a discourse community starts with creating a type of communication plan. It is necessary that all members connect and confer alike in order to maintain a set of documented decisions and actions. A discourse community connects people to a lifestyle and provides a form of order that stretches the interconnections of words, writings, values, attitudes, and beliefs (Swales 220). Those interconnecting contacts though sometimes conflict with select purposes of other discourses, leading to confusion or even anarchy. When this occurs, awareness and a choice of acceptance or doubt sets into place (Porter 400). For a discourse community to continue all doubt and awareness have to be tracked and suppressed. The discourse community needs to insure that its values are well convinced and received by its members and potential new members, in order to remain accepted in a
Mantsios, Gregory. "Class in America." 2003. The Norton Field Guide to Writing. 2nd ed. New York: W. W. Norton &, 2010. 697-716. Print.
John Swales (1990), author of “The Concept of Discourse Community,” basically explains his own definition of what an actual discourse community is. Swales was able to break to concept down into a list of six characteristics that a group must have in order to be considered a discourse community. The first characteristic he mentions is that “a discourse community has a broadly agreed set of common goals”. (Swales, 1990, p. 471) He provides an example of an ordinary person joining an organization with “private hopes of commercial or romantic advancement.” The second characteristic mentioned is “a discourse community has mechanism of intercommunication among its members”. (Swales, 1990, p. 471) This basically means that communities don’t always have to meet in person on a regular basis in order to be considered a discourse community. They communicate in li...
As American’s we place a high level of importance on attending school and receiving a certain level of education. Across the world, the recommendations for attending school vastly differ based on the culture of the society. In America, we require our children to attend school until they are almost of legal age, push high school graduates to attend college and we constantly emphasize structured learning. Many children in today’s world lack many skills that would allow them to “teach” themselves outside of school leading to an increased interest in televisions, computers, and phones. Technology has taken away society’s attention away from independent learning such as reading, writing, and outside experiences. John Taylor Gatto’s emotional voice in his writing “Against School” has allowed me reveal my psychological voice regarding the educational system.
Discourse communities play a big role in life and how humans interact in general. A discourse community refers to a group of people who have language, life patterns, culture, and communication in common with each other. The idea of a discourse community has also been used to bring people of different orientations together, like family members, students, or committees. All of these types of people might have different standards of living, like their level of income, education, and work abilities. Discourse community can also refer to a speech community, because the main feature of a discourse community is communication. A discourse community can include groups of different regional areas that may or may not share norms and living patterns
Millions… millions of discourse communities exist all around us each and every day. Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, Tumblr, and Group Me are just a few of the many examples of the functional discourse communities that our world consists of today. A discourse community is a group of people who share a set of discourses that are agreed upon as basic values and expectations and use communication to achieve set goals. There are six requirements to have a true discourse community. They must include: a community of people who share the same goals, regular communication, steady feedback and advice from one another, at least one means of communication that will assist in achieving an aspired goal, a lexis which is a
Swales depicts that a discourse community must follow six characteristics in order to properly be labeled as a discourse community. These characteristics are: “agreed set of common public goal, mechanisms of intercommunication among members, uses its mechanisms to provide information and feedback, utilizes and possesses one or more genres, acquired some specific lexis, and has threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discoursal expertise” (Swales, 2010, 471-473). Porter, on the other hand, gives us a shorter definition that combines Swales’ characteristics: “A "discourse community" is a group of individuals bound by a common interest who communicate through approved channels and whose discourse is regulated” (2010, p. 38-39). Such things that would fall under a discourse community would be certain clubs like national honor society, thespian club or 4H club. Others could be sport based groups such as basketball, football or baseball.
A general definition of a discourse community is the different groups of people one socializes with, either voluntarily or obligatory. I believe that membership in a discourse community holds more value than any ordinary friend group. A “discourse community” is a group of people who share knowledge of a particular topic, similar backgrounds and experiences, values, and common ways of communicating. Gee defines discourse communities as a “form of life which integrates words, acts, values, beliefs, attitudes, and social identities as well as gestures, glances, body positions, and clothing” (Downs 484). According to Swales, there are six characteristics that mak...
A Discourse Community is a group of people that share a set of goals or discourses and within this group, find ways to communicate about these set goals. Discourse Communities can mean having a spot on a sports team, being a part of a school club, and even your workplace can be considered a discourse community. To be accepted into a discourse community, one must seen as a credible source, one that has knowledge on the topic at hand and can help the group reach the goals of the discourse community. When joining a discourse community, it is important that one learns how those in the group use effective ways of communicating.
The three short essays were subjectively confusing, dry, and simple to read. I was not impressed by the subject matter in Yiyun Li’s “Orange Crush.” Nor was I enthralled by the way “The Sanctuary of School” and Kingsolver’s “In Case You Ever Want to Go Home Again” were written. On the other hand, Lynda Barry had a pleasant ending to her lackluster essay in “The Sanctuary School.” Overall I was let down by the three treatise.
To examine various discourses, it is crucial that the idea of discourse and the way in which discourses operate is clear. A discourse is a language, or more precisely, a way of representation and expression. These "ways of talking, thinking, or representing a particular subject or topic produce meaningful knowledge about the subject" (Hall 205). Therefore, the importance of discourses lies in this "meaningful knowledge," which reflects a group’s ideolo...