Swales/Gee

Swales

Getting Ready to Read

I feel out of place when I do not see a familiar or friendly face where I am. I like being in an atmosphere where people are welcoming and open to meeting new people if I am not in a group of people where they already know each other. When I am in the right state of mind I can be a very outgoing person, however other peoples attitudes also affect how I am in situations, and when I feel out of place people are definitely able to tell by my expression and how I carry myself.

Summary

Swales looks at the different Discourse communities and explains the process of entering and leaving such communities. A main focus is the speech community and understanding this specific Discourse community and how it works. Swales also offers six defining characteristics which allows for the audience (students and those new to the idea of discourse communities) to have a better understanding of what a discourse community is and how they can apply this to their lives.

Dialectical Notebook (even though we didn't have to do one)

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Response	Quotation
Different discourse communities rely on each other, at least that is how I look at this quotation. It takes other Discourse communities to form a new one, or even prevent the formation of one.	“Conversely, the absence of any one (different subject areas, conflicting procedures, no interaction, and multiple discourse conventions) may be enough to prevent discourse community formation – as international politics frequently reminds us.” (469)
Speech communities come together because of people understanding the linguistic rules and all in all involve the English-speaking world.	“At the outset, a speech community was seen as being composed of those who share similar linguistic rules (Bloomfield, 1933), and in those terms we could legitimately refer to, say, the speech community of the English-speaking world.” (470)
This example helped me to better understand what they meant when talking about this particular Discourse community. Everyone has heard a New Yorkers accent, so imagining that while reading this made it that much more obvious what Swales was trying to explain.	“’New York City is a single speech community, and not a collection of speakers living side by side, borrowing occasionally from each other’s dialects’ (Labov, 1966:7)” (470)
The goals are going to be most important part of the discourse community, they are more important or at least take more dominate role over the development of the community.	“In a discourse community, the communicative needs of the goals tend to predominate in the development and maintenance of its discoursal characteristics.” (471)
We learn to speak from a young age, this is where we enter into the discourse community of speech. Others can enter the community be learning from others, maybe even looking up to a sponsor.	“A speech community typically inherits its membership by birth, accident or adoption; a discourse community recruits its members by persuasion, training or relevant qualification.” (471)
People learn the ways of the community all of their lives and when they leave it is usually because that person is not alive anymore.	“Discourse communities have changing memberships; individuals enter as apprentices and leave by death or in other less involuntary ways.” (473)

Synthesis

One obvious author that Swales is able to relate to is Gee, who also uses his article to explain what a discourse community is, however, Swales and Gee differ on opinion when it comes to some of the characteristics of discourse communities. Another author that Swales is able to relate to is Brandt who talks about sponsorship, which though not directly spoken about, Swales talks about learning and entering into the discourse communities by ways of watching others. Finally, Porter is another author who talks mainly and about the discourse community.

Questions for Discussion and Journaling

5. I am part of the Alpha Xi Delta discourse community, which I just recently joined. This specific discourse community is a sorority here at Ohio University. The common goals that all the girls share is the volunteer work that we partake in and the amount of money we try and reach for autism. Also, we have goals that involve our grades and specific goals that include living in the house. Intercommunicating among the members crosses over to another discourse community, with that community just involving being a woman. We all come from different backgrounds and some may have a different dialect than others, but we can still communicate well. Next is the feedback, which can come from attending the chapter meetings and actually partaking in the events that the sorority puts on. Following that is the furtherance of aims in the community, which for the sorority is making sure that grades are kept up and not falling into academic probation. The specific lexis involved include understanding the greek alphabet and the different sayings that we need to know for the group. Finally, learning what it is to be a sister in the community is something that I am still doing seeing as I am not an official member just yet.
6. When I joined a soccer team but did not connect well with girls, I felt outcasted and did not try and make friends with them. I think when you do not feel like you belong to something, there is not going to be any effort put forth so the success of being in that discourse community might not be possible.

My Thoughts

In the beginning, I thought this was going to be an article that was going to be hard to follow. After actually concentrating and allowing myself to read, I found that it was actually a lot easier to follow than I thought. I understood after all the examples what exactly it meant to be part of a specific discourse community and what causes one to enter into one. I also liked reading the six different characteristics of one because I was able to apply this to my life now and understand where exactly I stand in the discourse communities that I am part of.

Gee

Getting Ready to Read

I partake in academics, soccer, and just recently joined a sorority. Each are completely different but by just being involved, it affects each one of the communities. I am able to better relate to different types of people and each discourse community has allowed me to be better open when it comes to meeting new people and trying to better understand them. 

Summary

Gee in his article talks about how discourse communities come from a more social aspect than a literary aspect. When one is learning to come a part of a certain community, this is a stage of apprenticeship which may never be mastered, so it may not be completely possible to fully enter into certain discourse communities. Gee gives his readers (students and those learning about the idea of a discourse community) different examples of discourse communities and the difference between primary and secondary communities. 

Synthesis

Gee is able to relate back to Swales because together, Porter, Swales, and Gee all discuss the importance of discourse communities and how they affect each of us. Another author that relates is Bryson who speaks of the language, which Gee studies and understands. 

Meta Moment

Gee's claims to help me to understand my experiences more, or at least make me look at them in a different way. I can look at my experiences now and think about the communities that I belong to and understand who else may as well. When entering into another community (which I am not sure that with what Glee said, is even possible), which would be another setting, then I would know better what to expect. 

Dialectical Notebook

Response	Quotation
I think this is a good way to look at a discourse community. When it comes to a community I think of them as more of a social place rather than the people’s literacy of that specific grouping.	“These papers, though written at different times, and for different purposes, are, nonetheless, based on the claim that the focus of literacy studies or applied linguistics should not be language, or literacy, but social practices.” (482)
I know this for a fact. When I went to Spain and had to use the Spanish that I knew, I knew that what I was saying was just the appropriate terms that I learned, not necessarily what one would say who uses the language every day.	“’Language’ is a misleading term it too often suggests ‘grammar.’ It is a truism that a person can know perfectly the grammar of a language and not know how to use that language. It is not just what you say, but how you say it” (483)
The situation that one is in also affects the language that is being used.	“It is not just how you say it, it what you are and do when you say it.” (483)
Every person is part of discourse communities. It is inevitable. Several discourse communities may over lap one another and maybe even cause one to not be fully part of one type of community.	“Discourses are ways of being in the world; they are forms of life which integrate words, acts, values, beliefs, attitudes, and social identities as well as gestures, glances, body positions, and clothes.” (484)
When you feel most comfortable is when you are able to truly express yourself, especially when you are surrounded by your friends.	“Our primary Discourse constitutes our original and home-based sense of identity, and, I believe, it can be seen whenever we are interacting with ‘inmates’ in totally casual (unmonitored) social interaction.” (485)

Thoughts

I found this article to be very informative. There were certain points that kind of contradicted themselves to me a little bit. I could not follow whether or not it was possible to become part of discourse community or not in his eyes. He changed his opinion or at least worded it in a way where it seemed like he did, a few times. I was able to follow along with this easily and it was not hard to read like some of the authors proved to be.