Sample Discourse Community Analysis

When the multimodal project was announced I immediately knew that I wanted to my analyzation of a discourse community using James Paul Gee’s methodology through code. The first step of the assignment was simply determining what discourse community we wanted to discuss. Originally, I had chosen the gaming community to talk about since I was a part of this community and enjoyed their work. However, when it came to the presentation process I realized that creating something about someone within the gaming community was difficult. Gaming usually takes place in solace, therefore I wouldn’t have any dialogue between the anyone. Eventually, I teamed up with a classmate named Tom who was a graphic designer. Once we were a team we decided upon

They establish a focus and allow for easier communication. The purpose of a genre is not only to organize the language of a discourse community, but also it distinguishes other discourse communities from one another. Individuals will have certain expectations for a game that is set under a certain genre. I don’t expect parents to by a rated M horror game for their twelve-year-old. Why don’t I see this? Well, I don’t see this because parents know that this game would scar their child beyond belief, and they cannot afford therapy because they don’t have stable jobs. Genres are mentioned by the game developer in Digital Playground in which he talks about his department deciding upon the genre they would like to aim for. He understands that this choice will affect his audience interpretations of the game. Speaking of developers, the player may be confused why there is a game developer and a lead game developer. Well, this touches upon the final point of Gee’s discourse community distinction called, “levels of

By doing this, the user is introduced to interworking systems of feedback, communication, genre decisions, lexis, as well as levels of membership. The only element missing from Gee’s description of a discourse community is the goal of the community. This is never said directly since I never found a way to implement what the company’s goal was within conversation without it sounding awkward. However, it is a company so it’s primary goal is to put out a well-liked product that will, in turn, earn the company money. The final product was rather rushed therefore; the player has my upmost apology for any bugs they encounter. As far as I know the game is completable within its current state. Time was one of the only constraints that became a burden and overall prevented us from including more information. My classmate and I learned to cut content that wasn’t necessary to meet our deadline. Personally, I’m proud of the final product and I enjoyed the process to create