Blog Post 22

I. Rhetorical Overview of the Article

1. What is the author's exigence? Why does the author feel the article/argument needs to be made?

A: Swales exigence is that the term discourse community has been appropriated, and he wants to explore the term. He feels this is important because he wants to know how the discourse community works and why they work the way they do.

2a. What discourse community is the author speaking toward for the article? WHY do you think that? Provide textual evidence (e.g., specific language, tone, publication venue, etc.,).

A: Swales is writing to higher level students, most likely graduate students in college. He uses high level vocabulary and his tone seems very professional.

3. What is the author's thesis/argument/niche for the piece? If possible, quote specifically from the text.

A: Thesis: “We need then to clarify, for procedural purposes, what is to be understood by discourse community and, perhaps in the present circumstances, it is better to offer a set of criteria sufficiently narrow that it will eliminate many of the marginal, blurred and controversial contenders.”

II. Summary

1. Write a few sentences that summarizes this article in your own words; make sure to cover the main arguments AND conclusions.

In this article, Swales talks about the discourse community and how it works and how it has changed. He says how over time a discourse community can gain or loose followers. He shows how they all have common goals and he shows a six-part process for a discourse community.

2. Take the summary you just wrote and condense it into something “tweetable,” by which I mean a summary that is NO longer than 140 characters. Consider using the same conventions you would if tweeting, meaning abbreviations and informality in language.

Tweet: Discourse communities are very important to properly communicating with groups of people you want to reach out to.

3. What hashtags (#) would you use for this article? Stated otherwise, what key terms would you provide to describe the content of this article?

#discoursecommunnities

Burkean Parlor/Intertextuality

1. In what ways does this author and/or the ideas in this article connect with, (dis)agree with, speak to or against –I think you get the gist– previous authors and their ideas that we have encountered in this class?

This article shares a lot of similarities to Porters article in the way he describes discourse communities.  He says that a discourse communities are groups of people that study the same interest.  

III. Assigned Exercises

1a. According to Swales a first year college class and a graduate class would both be a discourse community because they are both on the same level with each member of the class.

1b. The problems you can have entering a new discourse community is that you might not agree with everything, and you might not understand everything, or even anything that the group is about. 

IV. Personal Reflection

1. This article is helpful in several ways but mainly do to the fact that it teaches me how to reach my desired discourse community.

2. This article was not all that confusing, some of the vocabulary was a tad confusing but that is it.