Discourse Community Ethnography

Discourse Community Ethnography Project

Due Dates:

Thursday, October 10 - 1st draft uploaded to BB groups

Monday, October 14 - DCE workshop.  Bring marked up peers' papers as well as one copy of their peer letter

Monday, October 21 - DCE due by Midnight.  Uploaded to BB assignments

 

Choose a discourse community that has made an impact on you.

You will be finding a preliminary answer to this research questions: What are the goals and characteristics of this discourse community and how do I fit into it.  In addition, you will need to make a larger connection to the world around you – why does this community matter?

Write a 5-6 page report that tries to answer this question, based on careful observation of the community.

1.  To write this effectively you will need to collect data.

-       Observe members of the discourse community while they are engaged in a shared activity.  Take detailed notes – what are they doing, what kinds of things do they say, what do they write, how do you know who is ‘in’ and ‘out’?

-       Collect anything people in the community read or write (the genres) – even short things like forms, sketches, lists, notes.

-       Interview at least three members of the discourse community.  Take detailed notes and get direct quotes.  You might ask things like “How long have you been involved in this?  Why are you involved?  What do these specific words mean?  How did you learn to write this specific way?  How do you communicate with other people that are in this same network? Why is this community important to you? 

2.  Once you have collected the data, you will need to analyze it.  Use the six characteristics of a Discourse Community as set forth by Swales to get started.  You do not need to address each aspect if it is not important to the larger goals of the paper (the research questions in bold).

1. What are the shared goals of the community?  Why does this group exist and what does it do?
2. What mechanisms do members use to communicate with each other (meetings, phone calls, e-mails, text, newsletters, reports, evaluation forms, etc)
3. What are the purposes of each of these mechanisms of communication (to improve performance, make money, produce a better product, share research, etc…)?
4. Which of the above mechanisms can be considered genres – textual responses to recurring situations that all group members recognize and understand?
5. What kinds of specialized language (lexis) do group members use in their conversations and in their genres?  What communicative function does this lexis serve?
6. Who are the ‘experts’?  Who are the newcomers with less expertise?  How do the newcomers learn the appropriate language, genres, knowledges of the group.

3.  Once you have done the basic data analysis, you will need to further analyze.  For example:

-       Are there conflicts within the community?  If so, why?

-       Do some participants in the community have a difficult time interacting and engaging?  Why?

-       What are the ‘modes of belonging’ that newcomers are attempting to use? 

-       Are members of this community stereotyped in any way in regard to their literacy knowledge?  If so, how?

Keep in mind:

*You will want to clearly explain your discourse community and describe your research methods early on in the report. 

  

*You will also want to discuss your findings in detail – quote from your notes, interviews, texts you have collected, etc.

*Include a work cited page.

 *This should be an engaging paper.  It is about a community that you belong in that is important.  Dig into a bit deeper.