Blog Post 4

1) A discourse community has a broadly agreed set of common public goals.

 

The shared goals aspect of a discourse community definitely applies to our class. The most common one, besides learning new things about writing, is that members  want pass the class and earn three credits. We also have to produce and present projects and assignments that apply to a particular curriculum. The need to understand and analyze class materials is also a goal of every member of the class.

 

 

 

 

3) A discourse community uses its participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information and feedback.

In our class English 3029  we have a discourse community because we use participatory mechanisms to provide information and feedback. We get feedback from our blogs. It gives us information daily regarding what we are learning in class. It also lets us see what other people in the class think about what we are learning. The syllabus used in the class also provides information and feedback. It lets us know the schedule for the entire semester, among other important things regarding the class.

4) A discourse community utilizes and hence possesses one or more genres in the communicative furtherance of its aims.

In our class English 3029 we utilize many different genres. Among these genres are different readings given to us by our professor. The Shaggy Dog Stories are a good example of stories given to us and discussed in class. Looking at and reviewing our classmates blogs is another way in which our community utilized genres. This furthers our learning process as a whole. In turn making us a discourse community.

 

5) In addition to owning genres, a discourse community has acquired some specific lexis:

Our class English 3029 is considered to be a discourse community. Many communities that are considered to be a discourse share common features, such as language. In every discourse community there is a particular set of vocabulary words that are used to communicate. Our class is a discourse community because we use words such as discourse, ethnography, lexis, and methodologies on a daily basis in order to communicate and understand one another. For someone who is not part of our discourse they would most likely not understand many of these terms.   

 

 

6) A discourse community has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discourse expertise.

The reason why  this applies to our class, is that as with all school classes, there is  always rotating number of new members, with new members who are always learning new things  from more experienced members. So the class will always have new members in the form of  a new semester of students, relevant material in form of education tools like scholarly articles, and discourse expertise in the form of a professor teaching the class.