Devitt, et al.

Getting Ready to Read

Last time I was at the doctors and had to fill out one of the medical history forms, I actually did think about why they had me fill in certain areas. I know that because certain members of my family have had serious health problems, this could in turn affect me and might be a reason for why I am hurt or sick. It is important that the doctors have the most relevant information they can about the injury or problem that his or her patient may have.

Summary

The article is composed of three different authors and the essays that they each wrote on their take on discourse communities, and communities in general. The first is Devitt, who brings up the difficulty of the jargon used in certain communities and how this might be a challenge to understand this vocabulary when not in the same community. The example predominantly used in this essay is a jury. The next author, Bawarshi, discuses how the vocabulary used in a discourse community determines what sort of discourse community it is. Finally, the last of the authors, Reiff, regularly refers back to the ethnomethodological approach and it's importance in both genre and the communities.

Synthesis

Over the past week, we have done a lot with authors and their studies on discourse communities. Swales and Gee both discussed the importance of the discourse community. Swales also discussed the importance of the language which is a key point in Bawarshi's section of the article, along with Devitt's. Another author that is able to relate is Wardle, who again talked about discourse communities and their importance in writing.

Dialectical Notebook

Response	Quotation
People in different discourse communities might have a hard time understanding what the other is saying, especially if one of the discourse communities is a professional one, while the other is a common discourse community.	“While their purposes seem to be inclusive, to give nonmembers access to the community’s knowledge, genre analysis strongly suggests that the specialist and nonspecialist users have different beliefs, interests, and purposes as well as levels of knowledge.” (99)
I too find it important to be aware of what a piece of legislation actually means. When someone votes, they should not just base their opinion on what others think, but should be able to form their own opinion by understanding legal jargon.	“Doing our civic duty depends as much on our ability to understand and use genres accurately as it does on our willingness to be good citizens.” (100)
What I did not like about this section of the essay is that it is throwing the legal system under the bus. She is studying the jury, sure, but she is not studying the entire legal system as a whole. The jury members are average people, however, they still come from all different backgrounds and more than what may first be assumed may understand the words used by the lawyers and others. Just because they do not have as extensive of a degree does not mean that they do not understand what is going on.	“By the time the judges gives a jury instructions, those instructions contain presumtions, implications, specifications known well by the law community but unknown to the unsuspecting jury members. The genre thus has a significance for the legal community that it does not have for the jurors. As a result, juries do not and cannot interpret the genre that way its creators intended, as lawyers would, and cannot render verdicts that follow those instructions fully and accurately, thus resulting in significant consequences, particularly for defendants.” (100)
When giving this quote a lot of thought, it makes more sense. When looking at different cultures and even dialects of the same language, there are different attitudes and mentalities of the people using the language.	“Hence the idea of discourse community is built on the premise that what we know and do is connected the language that we use.” (104)
This example helped me to understand a little bit more where Bawarshi was trying to go with her article.	“A physician’s office might be considered a local discourse community and part of a wider one insofar as its members share language practices and have comparable purposes.” (105)

Meta Moment

I think the best approach to really understand a certain community or any subject for that matter is ethnographic field work. When someone actually experiences something, it is easier to better put yourself in the place of the people that have been in that community longer and understand why they act the way that they do. For example, it is one thing to sit behind a computer and try and understand a tribe in Africa, than to actually go to Africa and experience the tribe and their practices first hand. Learning by example definitely is more beneficial than trying to learn in a "scholarly" way.

My Thoughts

I liked that the article branched off into the different essays. Each of the essays showed a different importance of the discourse community and what each contributes to the successfulness of the community. I found that Devitts was the easiest to read and to get through, I think this is because I like learning about things having to do with law so it caught my attention from the beginning. I found the last article (Reiff) to be more of a challenge to get through, maybe because the information being discussed was a bit more dry.