Discourse Community Essay
Overview
For this assignment, you will write a personal narrative about a time when you successfully joined a rhetorical discourse community. To do this, you will show us through personal experiences and anecdotes how you were able to learn the language and reasoning specific to the community, navigate the values and emotions of this community, and build your credibility as a community member or leader. In other words, you are tracing your movement from an outsider to an insider.
Technically, you have already done the “research” needed for this assignment– you are certainly a part of multiple discourse communities, so you have already done the work! Now, you need to think about one of your discourse communities carefully, including determining its “unwritten rules” and terminology. Basically, you need to figure out the main things that people in this discourse community say and do that have meanings that are specific to this group. You should consider including quoted material from readings we do for this class or from texts produced within the discourse community, though this is not required.
The audience for this paper will be to your instructor and fellow classmates. Approach this paper in a way that helps us (your readers) get to know you better and helps us to understand a discourse community that we may not be a part of ourselves. (In fact, you should assume that we are not a part of it!) The rhetorical situation for this assignment is a little different from most academic writing, in that it allows for the use of first person pronouns. So, make it your own, and show us who you are and what this discourse community that you are a part of is all about!
In its final form, your essay should tell your story of becoming an insider in your discourse community using descriptive language, a clear sequence, and pertinent details. (See Personal Narratives, pages 58-61 in The Little Seagull Handbook.) Keep in mind that you want to show that you understand the complexity of the discourse community.
Include appropriate in-text citations, if necessary. (See me about this if you will be quoting anything written by someone other than yourself– we will not cover proper MLA citations prior to the due date of this assignment.)
Requirements:
• Proper MLA format (TNR 12, double spaced, 1” margins, etc.)
• Minimum length: 2 and a half pages
• Maximum length: 3 and a half pages
Tips
• Choose a discourse community that you’re very familiar with and comfortable discussing with your peers.
• Choose a discourse community that you’ve actively joined, rather than one into which you were born.
• Consider the tensions and limitations of the rhetoric utilized in the discourse community. For example, do some members demand or disapprove of certain language use?
• When writing a description about a specific event or tradition, don’t forget to show rather than just tell. Use sensory (visual, auditory, olfactory, tactile, kinesthetic) cues to describe details about the community.
Examples of Discourse Communities
• People working together in a particular company
• Athletes playing a particular team sport
• Students studying a subject (e.g. arts students)
• Musical performers or actors
• Readers of a particular magazine or journal
• Groups that follow a particular religion
• Group of teachers teaching the same academic level
• Fans of a celebrity, game, cuisine, music, etc.
• People residing in a specific area of a city
• Enthusiasts of gadgets and technology
• People who have the same hobby (e.g. philately)
