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TRANSCRIPT
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Sam Gehrlich
Professor McLaughlin
English Composition
November 19, 2019
Final Reflection
Community and genre are a big part of a discourse community. Over time I have
learned the definition of a discourse community which Swales states as “A group of people who
are trying to accomplish a common goal through inter-communication.’’ Through the course of
history, a discourse community has become more understood and has become even more
important for humans and establishing a system of communication. Genre has essentially
become the building blocks of discourse community along with values and text creation. Genre
stated by the article Genre in The Wild explains, “A genre is a typified utterance that appears in
a recurrent situation. A genre evolves through human use and activity to be a durable and
usable form for carrying out human communicative intentions in fairly stable ways.” Of course,
this is explaining that a Genre is characterizing a certain word or language that has been used
repeatedly. A huge part of a discourse community is text and language which of course has a
connection with genre. Of course, these two goes hat and hand. But helping understand what
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a discourse communities characteristic are and what the characteristics of a genre are can help
identify the two and will help develop text creation.
I used this picture to show that anyone can be apart of a discourse community. There is
no unique membership to join one and really anyone can go about developing a community.
An age can go about developing a discourse community. Its hard work but worth it when you
need to achieve a common goal that other people are also trying to achieve as well. The most
common discourse community that’s talked about are in the classroom. The reasoning is
because every classroom has students that are trying to achieve a goal that is similar to other
students. Students will use different forms of text and language to help accomplish and
develop a discourse community that connects many students and can help develop different
values and ideas.
When viewing the article about not seeing the color blue, it made you wonder why this
could occur with humans. People have never questioned if what they were viewing was its
actual color or not. People would have never pondered this idea if it wasn’t for
language. History has revealed that it maybe could have an influence on the color people
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see. Since the word blue was never thought of in earlier languages and never really discussed
in writing, some think that people living during these times couldn’t really see blue or
comprehend the color. Writings would show different terms or even different colors to explain
what type of color something may be. This of course reveals how important language is for
humans. Language has become a key communication tool with humans and is one of many
building blocks towards a discourse community. Of course, discourse communities can use
many different forms of communication such as text for inter communication. Many discourses
use text especially in today’s world as a quick form of communication. The article even shows
how dependent humans are. They are used to repeated language and this is an example genre
being used repeatedly.
When writing about genre in the midterm presentation I discovered interesting theories
about genre and what genre means in terms of language and creative writing. I also discovered
that genre and discourse are not the same thing, but they do help each other in creating a
community. Genre can be a vague term but is also very important in writing. As stated by
Discourse and Genre (the relationship between discourse and genre), “Genre refers to the type
and structure of language typically use for a certain purpose in a particular
context.” Structures, language features, and other characteristics help to formulate a genre
which helps form a discourse community in turn. A good example of something that has genre
is a classroom. When going to a classroom usually you have activities daily and these activists
are usually different daily but the way you go about these activities are usually the same. These
activities could be taking test, taking notes or even reading. All of these are re accruing events
and genre is used for recurrent events. Another example from the midterm was how an office
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is run. In an office usually memos and transcripts are given to employees by their bosses this is
a sort of genre that occurs in some workplaces that use this type of text and
communication. Genre is very important to understand and is very important in writing.
Also, text creation has become key in writing. When looking at different ways of
writing, you can see different genres that may be identified. Different writings such as poems
or a fact sheet are genres. When writing about a discourse community that may be found at
UCBA, I explained how The University of Cincinnati’s football team is a discourse
community. This discourse is full of genres and different writing material. When each player
comes to practice, they have a set goal and have repetitive activities over time. A coaching staff
will have different coaching material that they use every day with certain football language and
writing. Even the stadium that the football team plays in has multiple discourse communities
that are involved with the game or with the fans. This could mean the stores that are selling
food or even the cheerleaders on the side of the field. All of these are discourse communities
that are trying to achieve a common goal through communication. Of course, these
communities share values that are very important to help create a discourse community. Erick
Borg in Discourse Community explains “discourse community developed from the concepts of
speech community and interpretive community.” The difference between speech and
discourse is that a discourse community is usually a group that you join with your own free will
where a speech community will usually develop certain types of language when growing
up. Interpretative on the other hand is a wide range of communication through text. You can
see how these groups helped develop discourse communities into what they are today. Speech
and text are a big part of discourse communities and help build a connection between the
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two. The groups can be of course beyond an academic standpoint, it can also help with
different business techniques and help draw in a certain audience with text.
But how can a discourse community be made. It requires a lot of effort to help develop
a discourse community. Developing one in a classroom requires hard work and dedication. Lisa
Batista and Suzanne Chapin in Creating a Discourse Community explain, “Creating a discourse
community within a classroom enables students to share their ideas, and construct arguments.”
Discourse communities help students interact in unique ways that people may not have the
chance to do. This will create communication between individuals. Each student should know
what sort of actions they need to accomplish going forward and have a set of goals to
eventually achieve. And having respect in a discourse community can help develop the
community even more so and also have better communications that make a discourse function
so well. Being able to also write can help a discourse community. Text Creation requires
unique thinking and critical thinking, and this is very important in writing and helps any writer
develop more fluid sentences for the audience. As Ann M Johns states, “Writers should select
their vocabulary carefully and use it wisely.” All text should be straight forward and should
never leave anything important out.
From the midterm presentation a sort of community that I had used was living with a
roommate and how a roommate might have the same values as me. When having to live with
another person or even many other people, you must have the same values to be able to have
a functioning house or community. Each person will usually have a set of chores of certain
activities to do around the house and these are activities that will usually be
repeated. Roommates will connect via phone or text and this helps to maintain balance with
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chores and other household activities. This shows that anywhere discourse communities can
be made and established even in the house. A family can be described as a discourse
community when living under the same roof.
My theory on discourse community is that these communities are a very special and
unique way to communicate through common language and text. Anyone can be apart of a
discourse community and these communities can be developed by anyone. Genre of course is
a big part of this and can be described as a text that are known to a certain audience and are
repeated over time. There are many things that make up both and these can be different
values in a group, different text creation, and other important factors that help develop genres
and discourse communities.
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Work Cited
Aticka Dewi Follow. “Discourse and Genre (the Relationship between Discourse and Genre).”
LinkedIn SlideShare, 1 Dec. 2013, https://www.slideshare.net/TickMutZ/discourse-and-genre-
the-relationship-between-discourse-and-genre.
Borg, and Erik. “Discourse Community.” OUP Academic, Oxford University Press, 1 Oct. 2003,
https://academic.oup.com/eltj/article/57/4/398/455342.
Devitt, Amy J. ProQuest, NCTE,
https://search-proquest-com.proxy.libraries.uc.edu/docview/236891787?https://
proxy.libraries.uc.edu/login?url=https://lion.chadwyck.com/&pq-origsite=summon.
“Discourse Community.” Discourse Community - an Overview | ScienceDirect Topics,
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/computer-science/discourse-community.
Proxy Login,
https://www-jstor-org.proxy.libraries.uc.edu/stable/10.5951/teacchilmath.25.5.0298?pq-
origsite=summon&seq=2#metadata_info_tab_contents.
Swales, John. “The Concepts of Discourse Community .” Semanticscholar,
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/778e/5c87e6041903980d25449c9a2972947a351e.pdf.