Our final unit calls you to explore how communities of practice (also called discourse communities) shape communication. Think about it- whatever community one is a part of, there are different demands for communication. If one is an office manager at a law firm- there are specific writing conventions and communication practices that are deemed acceptable. Communication practices and writing conventions in a salon will demand different approaches than what would be considered acceptable for the law office. How you communicate at your debate club meeting will probably be different than how you communicate at your environmental activism meeting.
Swales (who you will read this week) identifies six criteria to establish what discourse communities are. I'm not in total agreement with Swales on these criteria, but this is a good starting point for our last unit.
Pick a community that you were a part of in the past or one that you are currently in. Briefly explain how you joined the community, what it was like for you to become a member, and what motivated you to join in the first place. Then, detail the extent to which your community meets Swales' six criteria. It is okay if the community you write about doesn't meet Swales' criteria. Swales' criteria is not universal, but it is a good jumping off point for our last unit.
Conclude your posting with an insight related to writing or communication that underpins activity within the community you wrote about.
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Respond to at least one peer's posting. You are free to respond to any aspect of the posting - keep in mind, the goal of the response is to bring a new insight, extend a point, validate a position, or challenge a claim.
A community I was once a part of was church affiliated and was called Outreach, Outreach consisted of a group of teenagers that came together to make a difference in our community. I became a member of the group by meeting a certain criteria by keeping a minimum 3.0 GPA also we had to stay out of trouble. What motivated me was knowing what people go through every day, made me realize I can possibly make a change in their lives. First off we met the first criteria by having a common goal to help others realize that there are people in the community that will help them. Our mechanism of communication was through email and group chats, it was participatory because I was able to reply and give them feedback. We didn’t meet the criteria of using genres throughout our communication. A lexis that we used on a daily basis were text slangs such as LOL. There wasn’t a specific skill level to meet.
ReplyDeleteWhat did you do in Outreach to help others? You talked about how Outreach consisted of a group of teenagers that came together to make a difference, but doing what? Do you think by having that certain critera of keeping a minimum GPA of 3.0 and staying out of trouble it helped show the teens you were helping to stay out of trouble as well. Do you really think that there wasn't a skill level you had to meet? I would think Outreach would want a particular skill level of participants so that you could help others.
DeleteWhile back in Ohio I become part of a community in the form of a summer camp. It was a christian camp named Camp Akita. I went to four summers of this camp and I still pride myself in being part of it. I was introduced to it when my church youth group had held a event at Camp Akita in the winter. I loved it and soon after was begging my parent to let me go my freshman summer. They didn't have any criteria you had to meet besides you couldn't go to camp past your summer before your college freshman year as a camper. You had to be 18 or younger to be a camper. If you were older you were considered as a counselor. I think the fun atmosphere the camp websites video gave me was what motivated me to go to. I really enjoyed the group games they did. These included a huge water slide, foam dome, and mud/mashed potato fights. I think my community did meet some of Swales criteria. We all did have a broad set of common goals through out the camp and this was Swales first defining characteristic. We all know that Akita is a place where you can leave your troubles and worries at home and that Akita is the place to show who you are and not be judged. We have the common goal of not shunning anyone. We also had our own language or mechanics of intercommunication. We use words only Akita people would know. This included little chants and names for specific places around camp. But besides that my community didn't really meet the rest of Swale's Criterias.
ReplyDeleteYour experience sounds really interesting! I can relate because my dance team community also made me feel like I was not judged and could truly be myself in the environment. Do you think that this camp had a huge impact on who you are today?
DeleteAwesome post Olivia ! You did a great job explaining how your summer camp fit into parts of Swales criteria for a discourse community. I'm glad you enjoyed summer camp, I hated it!! You could totally step this post up by adding how your community affected you and if you are still part of it! Again great work
DeleteDuring sophomore year, I wanted to come out of my comfort zone and experience new and exciting things. I was apart of a dance team at school the previous year, and attended dance classes at a local studio for nine years. I saw a flyer for a commercial dance team in New York City, and auditions were being held a few months after I discovered this opportunity. I tried asking friends to try out with me, but everyone was too scared but I decided to be brave and audition alone in a very unfamiliar place. Fortunately, I earned a spot on the team after hours of auditioning and I was nervous to go through with it, but I am happy that I did. My teachers main goal was to help dancers of all shapes and sizes become more confident by performing at huge events, such as halftime show for New York Knicks, Nets, and concerts. There was no criteria that needed to be met, the director opened the audition to slightly experienced or highly experienced dancers, but it was recommended to have experience since it was a challenging team. There were two teams, and one was for 16 and under, and the other was for 17 and older, being more advanced. I was 15 at the time, but the director appreciated my skills and moved me to the more advanced group that got the chance to perform at more events, which was very exciting. I think my new community of dancers met some of Swales Criteria. We all had a goal to gain confidence as well as perform for many people and improve ourselves. We all learned that we could come to dance practice and not feel judged, because it was a very fun environment and I did not feel the need to compete with anyone because everyone was very genuine and focused on improving themselves, as I was also. In addition, to everyone speaking english, we communicated through dance in a way since some of our pieces told a story to the audience.
ReplyDeleteI was also part of a dance team in high school! it was such a great experience and I really relate to when you said that you guys would communicate not only through words but your movements in dance.
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DeleteThat sounds like an absolutely amazing experience! I wish I was a part of something that exciting! Did this group provide a better experience than the first dance group you were in? Which one of them made the biggest impact on you?
DeleteThis was posted by OlaToyin Olasimbo.
I joined in many communities when I was in high school, such like “Chinese Honor Society”, “Chess Club”, and my favors one is “Asian American Club”. “Asian American Club” is a high-school proved community and it’s meeting always involved many fun stuff that I enjoyed. For example, the club holder will buy some Asian food for member to eat, we play games to let members know more about Asian cultures, and we watch movies about Asian history, etc.
ReplyDeleteAsian American Club can be easily join in without any criteria. That means you don’t have to be Asian to join in, as long as you want to eat Asian food or you want to know more about Asian cultures, you can join. In Asian American Club, we trade each other as family members. We don’t have disrespect, we don’t have racist, we don’t crowd out any one. I believe Asian American Club has meet many of the swales’s criteria about community. We share information between members, we have the same goals and the same point of thinking, and we don’t feel any judge or embarrassment to enjoy the club activities. We always make some fun jokes and we continued to make the same joke but I don’t know why everyone laugh at the same thing over and over again
I really like the day I had with those friends. I love the atmosphere to be part of a club members.
Posted by ziwei huang
10/12/2016
I have been dancing for almost my entire life, so when my dance studio had auditions for the competition team I had to try out. When I was growing up I was inspired and looked up to the older dancers on the competition team. I wanted to be just like them when I became their age. I was so excited when I had made the team and could not wait to start practicing. As a part of the team I learned how to learn choreography quickly and how to work with a group of other dancers. Teamwork was one the most important parts of the competition team. My favorite part of competitions and conventions was when we won a trophy or a scholarship. We came together as a group and won because we communicated/ worked well together. As a group we could communicate without having to say a word to each other. Off the dance floor we became life long friends because we spent so much time together in rehearsals, dance classes, competitions, and conventions. I learned so many things on the competition team that I can take with me even when I am not dancing.
ReplyDeleteThat sounds like the same type of communication scenarios I am dealing with in a fraternity. Everyone comes together for a common goal, and it really is about all working together. I am sure you have had some things where it took everyone to work together to learn or understand. I hope you keep dancing, it really sounds like you enjoyed it.
DeleteDuring highschool I was a part of a very similar club. It was a step team in my school. To participate you had to have excellent team work and communication as well. To get through new choreography, we needed our team mates to help each other out to make sure each member got the routine down. Also, timing is very important so we needed the team to master each step at the exact same time. This club taught me how to work as a team to be successful as well. I agree with you when you say you learned things that you can take with you for life that isnt related to dance. It was a very memorable few years.
DeletePosted by Angeleke Kelaris
The community that I have chosen to write about is the Green Team which I was a part of my sophomore and junior year of high school. This community revolves around environmental activism. Our main goal was to promote sustainability and practice a green lifestyle by creating different projects that could be implemented within the town I lived in.
ReplyDeleteIn terms of John Swales’ piece on discourse community my group focused heavily on number one “ a discourse community has a broadly agreed set a of Common public goals.” Our public goal was as previously stated to create awareness of environmental threats and engage in sustainable development. As president of the club I would travel with a team to the State House in Massachusetts (where I lived at the time) to speak in front of local government workers and present our ideas on sustainable living. We hosted many local events such as a community cleanup day and a beach cleanup.
The club consisted of numerous mini teams which created one big team- the Green Team. Each team would pick a focus, a few examples being: solar energy, hydroponics, and public relations (my team). It was of utmost importance that we interacted effectively with each other. We relied heavily on email, in which we wrote formally. Our community also wrote grant proposals to provide funding to our club. These proposals had to be extremely professional and persuasive.
Another criteria that we met was the acquiring of a lexis. Do to the environmental nature of our community we had to learn new vocabulary that went in hand with our mission. It was important for us to keep up on environmental jargon, this enabled us to communicate with others that shared our purpose.
Overall, the Green Team met multiple criteria for community discourse which surprised me. I never thought about my club in that way. After analyzing this it is clear that writing and communication played a major role in the running of the group. We used emails on a daily basis to send information to each other, as well as partners in the local area.
Coming to UCF I had no idea on what I wanted to do while at college. Obviously I wanted good grades, meet new people, etc., but I felt as though there was more that should be done to expand myself. Five weeks in and I am now a pledge in a fraternity. I never thought I would of joined a fraternity, not because I was against it but rather I knew very little about what it actually means. Getting into a fraternity takes lot of work, and I can easily say that these past couple weeks have been the busiest and yet productive times I had in my whole life. Looking at Swales Six Characteristics of Discourse Communities, I instantly saw a similarity.
ReplyDeleteTo start off, everyone in the fraternity has all a set of common public goals. Wether it is through the learnings of the fraternity to everyone wanted to workout, many have very similar common goals. These is also so true about intercommunication. Over time, everyone starts to communicate with each other in a communal way. Everyone has there own style of confidence, and it definitely plays well of everyone.
I really like being apart of something that makes a difference in my life and many that surround me. I have learned something new everyday, and the groups unique communication and process has shed light on that.
A community that I am a part of is my sorority ADPI. There is certain lexis used inside the community that is only unique to us. We have certain secret motto's with different meanings that i cannot share at the moment. We also have to have some expertise to stay a member of ADPI (like you have to keep an average GPA to stay off "Grades") We all share a common goal with our philanthropy to get as involved as we can. You have to go to a certain number of minor events to be able to go to the major ones so you have to participate inside the sorority as well.
ReplyDeleteI know exactly what you mean. In my sorority we have a lot of things that are ritual based so we cannot share it with others. We also have to take care of our grades if we don't we can be sent to our academic excellence chair.
DeleteI like your initial posting it tells me what and why you joined the sorority. Also I believe you state the common goal that you guys share and how you guys came about the goal that you all share. You explain the importance of this sorority and the requirement that you have to meet in order to be in this sorority.
DeleteThroughout middle school and high school I was a member of the National Honor Society (NHS). The way the club gains members is through searching the school for students who meet certain GPA requirements (3.5 and above) and sending them letters to join. When I got the letter I didn't really know if i should join or not, and if it was really worth it, so I asked around getting input from teachers and friends. It turned out that it was a club centered around academics and community service which looks really well when applying for colleges. Along with looking good for schools, and some friends joining as well, I decided to join. NHS did meet most of Swales characteristics, for example the main goal of everyone in the club was to have excellent grades and to give back to the community. As for communication, the club used email, texting, and social media to get event information out to everyone if you didn't attend the meeting that introduced it. In terms of participation the club would go as a group and volunteer for places such as clean the world,and second harvest food bank. The president and the officers of NHS had the highest GPA's in the class as well as volunteering the most, which qualifies as the club having the threshold of expertise. However, NHS didn't have any of its own lexis, there wasn't terms that outsiders wouldn't understand.
ReplyDeleteYou did some hard work throughout high school, lifetime experiences. Do you still have to meet the GPA requirements? Did you continue with the Honor Society's activities after graduating from high school?
DeleteWhen I first accepted UCF's offer to attend their school for fall 2016 I had no idea what that was going to entail. I wanted to know all the clubs and ways to get involved that UCF offered. While searching for something that I really wanted to do I found it, Panhellenic recruitment. I had no idea what would be the outcome of this and what the process was even like but more than 2 months in and I am so happy I chose to go through recruitment. I am now apart of Kappa Kappa Gamma which is a panhellenic sorority. When reading about Swales and the 6 different types of ways to define a group I instantly knew that my sorority fit into his description.
ReplyDeleteEvery sister in Kappa Kappa Gamma (KKG) has a common goal we want to win all the IM games, we want to raise the most money and we want to be the best sorority on campus. So every sister does whatever she can do contribute to make this goal possible. Our lexis is all ritual based which means that anyone who is not a sister of KKG can know our lexis.
Being of a discourse community according to Swales is great and being apart apart of something bigger than myself is an great feeling.
I was a member of the Math Honor Society during my junior and senior years in high school. I joined this community because I really love math. This club also provides me opportunity to challenge myself and help other students as well. I think this community meet some of the Swales’ six criteria. The main goal of the Math Honor Society is to help every students succeed in their math classes. To make sure all of its members have the ability to assist others, it set up certain criteria for those who want to join. Students must have 3.0 GPA and at least 2 math credits in order to be a part of the community. We have meetings on every month and tutoring on every Monday and Tuesday during lunch. We helped and taught students who struggle with any math problems to solve their questions. Sometimes we went to competitions against other schools in that area. In addition, we also collected money to improve the community by selling pies. Whether when communicating with members or tutoring students with math problems, we often used some lexes such as pi, square root, log, and also mathematical formulas in our conversation. Being a member of this community had brought many benefits to me, and I very enjoyed this experience.
ReplyDeletegreat example! You said that your team helped teach other struggling students with math, but do you think that you also pushed each other to improve your math skills within the club? As with other clubs (like sports for example) it is very common to see other members of the group or team pushing others in the group to self improve and become better to strengthen the team.
DeleteThroughout my years of high school, I was part of the soccer team all 4 years. I joined because I had been playing since I was a kid and I would be playing with kids from my school. Joining the team as a freshmen was a little bit intimidating at first, but I'm glad I did because I gained some lifetime friendships from it. As a team, we all had a certain goal set, which was to win the district title at the end of the season. All students had to have at least a 2.0 GPA and have enough skills to make it onto the team. As far as lexis, there were a few plays we had memorized by unique names and a few words that the team knew that let us know to cover a certain area or play a specific defense. There was a lot of intercommunication between the team members, as most of us have been friends for a while. We had a group chat on our phones that we would always be talking in, soccer related or not. All the players participated as well, wether it be a fundraiser for the team, practices, scrimmages or a game.
ReplyDeleteI think all of Swales 6 criteria apply here except for genre. But since it isn't universal, I think it is enough to have it still count as a discourse community.
When I was a Freshman in Highschool, I started to volunteer for the library. I joined this community, because I wanted to help the local community in my city. I wanted to help and I also wanted the experience to help me with future jobs. When I joined, everyone was very welcoming to me and I was introduced to the other teenage volunteers. During my volunteering experience, I learned to work with others. Eventually, I felt that my efforts had meaning and I was making a difference. The community I joined in the library followed a few of Swales' Six Criteria. We all shared a common goal, intercommunication among the members, participatory mechanisms, and specific lexis. We all wanted the library's processes to run smoothly and we often had to converse with each other to achieve that goal. This included meetings and talking in the backroom about important topics. We also used different words, like the Dewey Decimal System that are not commonly used in normal conversations.
ReplyDeleteWhen I helped there, I often had to lead people to books they wanted to find. I learned a large amount about popular books for specific age groups and genders. Talking with these people really taught me the importance of diversity and how different each person is. Communication is the key to meeting and eventually understanding all different types of people in a community.
This was posted by OlaToyin Olasimbo.
This is a great experience. I had also done the community hours in library. It is a requirement for all high school students. The groups of people in the library form a really nice and smart discourse community. They know way more books than others who are not in this discourse community. So, you can always communicate with those who like to read books, like what is the newest book that just came out, and what is it about. It will be really fun and interesting to have conversations with people within this community.
DeleteWhen I was a senior in high school, I was a part of an organization called “West Welcomers.” In this club, my peers and I were in charge of providing new kids with guided tours and other valuable information about the school in order to help them with their transition. To be able to join this club, you needed to have enough prior knowledge about the school and be involved in a good amount of extracurricular activities in order to answer every question a new student may have. After being a new student myself at this particular school, this organization intrigued me. I’ve personally been to about eight different schools, and because I related to these new students so much, I immediately wanted to join this club. I can relate the West Welcomers club to Swales’ six criteria to an extent. For one, all of my peers and I had a common end goal when joining this organization: we all wanted to make new students feel as comfortable as possible in a new educational environment. As far as intercommunication goes, we constantly had meetings about appropriate ways to approach new students and how to stay as enthusiastic as possible when talking to them. From what I can recall, the West Welcomers organization didn’t have any specific lexis nor any genres. All of us, however, participated in helping new students, no matter the time of day. Whether we met a new kid for lunch, or passed by them in the hallway, we were always willing to help and answer any questions they had for us. Though we didn’t have any unique lexis, we knew how to properly communicate with each other and new students in order to provide a pleasant school environment.
ReplyDeleteI was able to participate in different nonprofit organizations in the same community. It does not have criteria that you have to meet, however, if you volunteer it is well appreciated that you take it as a job opportunity and willing to help others. The nonprofits work with schools, churches and individual families to aid anyone that is in need. It allowed me to discover how the nonprofit community works, how members communicate, and how they work together to make a difference in their communities; especially in the lives of children. One might think that nonprofit are just organizations that receive free money without any hard work. Every nonprofit has the same goal keep the funds secure to make sure they cover their community goals needs every year. To be honest, most of them are still running because people in the community volunteer for certain tasks such as receptionist, babysitter, etc. Each of the nonprofits that I was part of, have in common its important to be transparent and letting the donors know exactly where their money is going towards. One of the main events that I was involved every year was the Christmas programs. It main purpose is to provide Christmas presents for low income families in the community. For this event all the nonprofit organizations such as Salvation Army, Soup Kitchen, among others, communicate with each other in order to serve to as many family in the community and also, avoid providing services to same family twice. Every year, around 500 families attended registration days. I think that an example of lexis, is that I had always to have a smile on my face and be willing to help the people in need. Even though I had families asking for unrealistic presents such as video game console, brand clothing, etc and sometimes heard “my child would not wear the jacket if it is not a north face brand”. Overall, I think in my personal experience it help me to appreciate more everything I have.
ReplyDeleteJoining a fraternity was an eye opening experience to say the least. I have learned so much about myself and the world around me. I have also strengthened my time management and organizational skills. The recruitment process was exhausting. I rushed a top fraternity so it took me weeks to be noticed and bids were handed out on the last day. It's crazy to think how far I've come. Instantly it's a total culture shock. You meet a ton of kids that one day could be your brothers. The alumni network is also fascinating. History is something a fraternity prices themselves on so the content is extremely rich and interesting. My days went from leisure time and studying to a constantly blur of sleepless nights and exhaustive mornings. However I can legitimately say it was one of the best decisions I have made in my life.
ReplyDelete