Discourse Community "Codes" & Meaning

EN111 - Comp2

Discourse Community, so far...

• Speech vs. Discourse com.
• Public goals
• Participatory mechanisms for communication
• Genres of communication
• Conventions and rules
• Acquires a lexis
• Threshold level of members; hierarchy, expertise
• Socialization; literacies; levels of discourse

Tremain's discussion brings...

• Forming and participating in the group
• Memes, textual genres of the group; communication genres
• Language, power, and identity within a group
• Trans-languaging
• Code-meshing
• Performing membership

- Their form/medium of writing...

- Their form/medium of communication...

- Serves the rhetorical needs of the group...

- Responds to the situations of the writer...

- Genres are action-oriented, they accomplish tasks...

- Genres have formulas (repeated similarities) but can be adapted by the discourse community...

- Rules of Genre are decided by the discourse community...

- Genres can be more CONTEXT-centered than always CONTENT-centered. In other words, the HOW things get done rather than WHAT gets done...

How do Discourse Communities use Genres?

Tremain discusses how Internet Memes are a type of "textual genre" that can express language of a culture or a particular group. Thinking about your discourse community, how can you apply Tremain's conversation about memes and relate it to the language, behavior, attitudes of your group. Spend some time searching for a couple of memes connected to your group by doing a Google Image search. How might you create a meme that shows aspects of your discourse community (e.g. goals, lexis, behaviors, levels of members, communciation?) What can this show us about the qualities and features of the discourse community?

"Red" Activity

We are concentrating on how we can "write with sources" this week using our readings on discourse community: Swales, Melzer, Gee, Tremain - Spend some time selecting a critical quote from each author that you may want to use for your upcoming essay on discourse community. How might you take the quotes and apply it to YOU? (e.g. Tremain talks about... "quotes" This connects to my discourse community because...

• Show an example of how your selected quotes could be applied via a social media post, website, artifact, news story, or example you might write about.

"Green" Activity

Both the Gee and Tremain articles talk a lot about the use of language, identity, and behavior that a group uses to demonstrate Discourse. Using the discourse community from your topic proposal, write about an experience (tell a story) that you've recently had or in the past that demonstrates having to "switch" the way you talk from one situation to the next. In other words, you may speak one way in class to your professors but then with your group how do things change? How might this discourse community look and act when they talk and communicate together?

"Purple" Activity

Some questions you may ask yourself as a researcher are: What type of membership do I have with the discourse community? How am I participating within my discourse community? OR you may be asking yourself: Why am I focusing on this group? What do I have to add to the conversation? Using your background, experiences, knowledge or even something you've accomplished, explore the question: WHAT CAN I ADD TO THIS DISCOURSE COMMUNITY? WHAT CAN I REVEAL ABOUT DISCOURSE COMMUNITY WITH MY RESEARCH? Using Tremain, how does she help you think about answering these questions about discourse community?

"Orange" Activity

What activity from today's color-coded slides did you choose to tackle? How did it make you think or brainstorm about your discourse community topic? What will be most critical to reveal in your upcoming essay?

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