Devitt Reading

Devitt Reading:

Questions for Discussion and Journaling:

2. There can definitely be many conflicts when switching genres. A way you can see this is how it is very different when say you are asked to write a paper for your English class and then your Art History class, ironically I happen to be currently taking both of them. It seems as though the things that your English professor asks you to write could be extremely different than the things your art history teacher would be asking you to write about. Your English professor could be looking for perfect correct grammar and spelling when your art history teacher could simply be looking for the time and information you have in your paper with a less focus on perfect grammar. Writing papers definitely differs from class to class because each teacher is different and in a different discourse community that could be asking for a different approach to the paper or different set up of your information. This causes conflict because you could be better at writing a research paper in art than English maybe because you are more interested in art. So, even though you are a great writer it is harder to write about English than art and so you struggle with your English writings.

3. Some genres inside of Ohio University are seemingly endless. They could be all sorts of things like, classes your taking, the dorm you live in, if you are in a sorority or fraternity, if you play a sport, if you’re in a club, a group or organization, what your major is and your gender. All of these things could be genres that you are in and these are probably not even half of them. The purposes of these are they give you a place that you belong in at the university. They pair you with some groups of people and set you apart from a different group of people. Although it seems that I am not a part of a lot of groups or organizations, I am apart of some of the genres. I am a part of the genre of where I live, the people in my dorm and even on my floor are parts of a genre that nobody else is. I am part of a genre with my learning community. We all take the same three classes and have a class all our own where we have our own rules and language.

Applying and Exploring Ideas:

3. I think I can discover something completely different about discourse communities and their genres by researching more through ethnographic field world as opposed to reading scholarly articles because it opens up the discourse so much more. Instead of spending your time in the library reading articles and trying to dig deep into the discourse, why not go out and really see what the discourse is all about? Why not talk to the actual people, go into the field and see what is really going on. You can gain so much more from the actual group itself and talking to the members of that discourse than you could reading books about it. The people are your main source of correct up to date information. Even though it seems different because it is “scholarly” articles, the people in that actual discourse are just as good of a source if not better. They are people you can directly hear the information from rather than books or the internet.

Meta Moment:

Although this basically ties into what I said in the above question, I definitely think that the best route to understanding discourse communities occurs through ethnographic fieldwork. You can read a million and one scholarly research articles or books but nothing will compare to actually going in and deep researching on the particular discourse in which you are interested in. That way it gives you real life depictions and shows what it really is like to be in that group. Also what it takes to get into that group is going to come from putting in the hours and doing the fieldwork for it. You have to pull as much from the people in the group not just sit at home and wait for it to come to you.