Week 7 - October 7

Final Questions on Advocacy Feasibility Essays?

Work on the Advocacy Campaign aspect that will be presented to class on Wednesday.  This does not have to be a big deal, but it needs to quickly attract the student population to your cause and provide enough incentive for them to want to learn more about the issue and stand behind you in support.  Think along the lines of memes, t-shirts, pins...

"In addition to the written paper you will need to produce an Advocacy Campaign.  Change and knowledge cannot occur unless the information can be shared in a meaningful way, and often a group of you need to be behind this idea.  So, how can you spread knowledge about your specific topic?  Potential ideas could be: photo essays, t-shirts, short films, song, pamphlets, flyers.  Use your imagination.  You will need to create a tangible product that can be presented to our class and that I can collect (digitally is fine).  If you are creating something that would require an actual product purchase, such as a t-shirt, you can create a digital mockup and present that image.  Going back to my ice cream machine idea, I would probably make a poster of some sort to hang around campus, or create a witty t-shirt that I would force my friends to wear."

"The Concept of a Discourse Community" and the 6 main characteristics.

1. Broadly agreed set of common goals.  They may be formally written in documents or be more tacit in understanding.

2. Mechanisms of intercommunication among members.

3. Participatory mechanisms to provide information and feedback. 

4. Genres are used to communicate the aims and goals.

5. Specific lexis.

6. Threshold level of members with expertise and also newbies. 

*This is an example of genre and use of specific features and characteristics.

*This is an example of a complete discourse community.

This is one of my favorite discourse communities.

Brainstorm your own Discourse Communities. 

Pay attention to who you could easily interview. 

Make sure you can make a bigger claim of why this community matters and your role in the whole thing.

Looking Forward:

Monday, October 7

*Instructor's Copy of Advocacy Campaign uploaded to BB by midnight

Wednesday, October 9

*In-class presentation of Advocacy Campaign

*Come with materials to work on your DCE

*Read:"Good English and Bad"

Thursday, October 10

*DCE 1st Draft uploaded to BB groups.  (Note that this round of peer letters is slightly different and we will go over it in class on Wednesday).