3.29 Characterizing a discourse community

Today's class connected to Gee's discussion of Discourse as an "identity toolkit."  in particular, we talked about college teacher writing Discourse and identified the categories or dimensions you would need to talk about in order to fully describe "who" a college writing teacher is, how s/he behaves and what s/he does.  Pasted below is the list Kathryn compiled from our class discussion (thank you Kathryn).  The bold headings are the features or general classes of intentions, behaviors, beliefs, and practices that characterize Discourses in general, and the lists beneath are the particular characteristics of college writing teacher Discourse.  We noticed that some of the characteristics conflicted with each other - and that in many cases different college writing teachers practice college writing teacher discourse differently.

purpose
- teach writing
- effective communication
- engage students in process
-develope students skills and attitudes
-connecting to students already existing naturals and knoweldge

goals
-aware of audience
-wants to create positive environment
-full participation

values
-correct grammar
-paying attention  
- participation
- conversation
- engagement
-interaction
-rights to/respect for home language
-”teaching’ the language of power
-tradition -- connect to scholarship
-own your education
-meet standards

power structure
-teacher decides what’s “right”  --- gives grades
-student directed learning
-negotiated
--
how knowledge is created
-negotaited
-created through language

what counts as “fact”
-text as authority
-teacher’s interpretation priviledged
-interpretative logic
-quotation/citation

authority - created/communicated
-logic citation quotation
-how participants represent themselves


hierarchy/organization for talk/writing

what kinds of documents characterize written discourse

appropriate vocabulary topics for talk


Characterizing a Discourse community.
At the end of class, we talked quickly through your final assignment (posted to the right). The purpose of this discussion was to give you a heads up for where we are going - and to set you up with the information you need so you can think about which Discourse community you want to choose for this assignment.


For Monday:
I will look through your draft autoethnographies and get back to you with comments and a grade so far.


Read: Swales, 466.


Write: choose a Discourse community for your final project.


Have a good weekend!