DISCOURSE ENC 1101
You’re going to have to create a profile in Linkedin if you haven’t done so already...
DISCOURSE COMMUNITY ETHNOGRAPHY Objective: To analyze a discourse community which has impacted you or interests you (via linkedin) and discover its goals, values, and characteristics. You will specifically analyze its writing practices. I will assess your paper based on a specific rubric you will receive. However, there are other important considerations to bear in a mind or bear in mind as you write: • does this essay demonstrate a clear sense of its rhetorical situation? • is the research you did careful, thoughtful, respectful, and thorough? • do you use examples and quotes from your field research and from outside texts to
• do you analyze the writing practices of this DC, its multiliteracies, and its genres? • do you analyze this dc’s values and goals and how its texts and writing practices reflect these? • do you have a clear, specific focus in this ethnography? • Do you make a clear claim (thesis) about this DC and its writing practices?
support your claims?
• do you incorporate support from our texts clearly, accurately, and insightfully?
• do you demonstrate a clear understanding of what scholars have said
• is your use of language sharp, crisp, and concise? (remember your audience agin)
about DC as that applies to your own analysis
• Are you paragraphs coherent and developed? Is each paragraph complete?
of a DC? • Does your paper build off these scholars’ research and add something new to it?
Does it connect logically with the paragraphs before and after it?
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Assignment You will analyze what this community’s values and goals are and how its writing practices and genres reflect those values and goals.
Step by Step Guide to Writing This Ethnography There are also some helpful handouts in your textbook, so refer to them as much as possible. 1) Select your discourse community from LinkedIn (using the “groups you may like” feature. Your chosen discourse community is due next class period, along with a defense of it as a discourse community based on Swales’s 6 criteria. You definitely want to find out NOW if your chosen discourse community (DC) isn’t a discourse community. 2) Because we are choosing groups from LinkedIn, we will probably not be physically present with the group; however I want you to pick a group that you could find a representative local body to interview as well (in place of the LinkedIn group). You will have to obtain 4 sample texts from the group. 3) Make a research plan. We will talk about this in class. To begin with, first, plan a research question to guide your observations and interview. For now, it should probably be general and based on the 6 characteristics of
genres and lingo do they use, and how do these express their values and goals?”
DC’S
4) Collect your data. You will need to collect samples of all the texts (genres) used in your discourse community to analyze in class very soon! be Prepared to do this right away! You will need at least one observation, with typed up notes, and at least one interview (2 is even better), recorded and transcribed. 5) Analyzing your data. We will analyze the genres of your discourse community in the next class session. You will be looking at how they reveal the d.c.’s goals and values. 6) Planning and Drafting. You will need to choose a specific focus (use Establishing a niche from CARS) for your essay, going beyond just proving that it is a discourse community based on Swales. 7) Drafting your ethnography Your final draft will include an Introduction (with a brief review with the previous research done already) and how you occupy that niche (fill the gap, add something new, & old). Due dates will be decided upon in class.
Swales. For example, “What are the goals and
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characteristics of this discourse community?” or “How do members communicate, what
Surf’s up dude! Wait, that’s not right Different DC! Your Task You will observe a discourse community and then write an ethnography of it. Ethnographies are texts that anthropologists usually write. Ethnographies involve observing a social group or culture and analyzing your findings to discover how and why the group functions as it does.
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