Reference no: EM133239054

Case: For this journal entry, I'd like you to write in a stream of consciousness (Links to an external site.) fashion. Clear your mind, don't worry about syntax and grammar, don't self-edit, and just respond to the writing prompt below.

This prompt originally appeared in Writing About Writing: A College Reader, edited by Elizabeth Wardle and Doug Downs.

A) Write a dialogue between John Swales and James Gee in which they discuss their concepts of discourse communities and Discourse. In the work represented in this chapter, Gee pessimistically argues that it is not possible to join a dominant Discourse once you've been enculturated into a non dominant one, whereas Swales seems to believe that people not only join new discourse communities all the time, but can even successfully pretend to be part of a discourse community that they really do not want to join. Imagine what Swales and Gee might say to one another about this topic. Do you think it would be possible for them to establish common ground? If so, how?

B) As we saw with unit one, discourse communities and the discourses they create can be highly influential. In unit two, you'll start looking for groups you belong to and begin using the language of Swales or Gee to describe them.

After doing primary (or field) research and some secondary research, You'll need to pick one of the discourse communities you're a part of and write up an I-Search essay. The one i'm interested in is "social justice". An I-Search essay is an informal research paper, one where you use the first-person pronoun (the word "I"), describe what the research process you went through to answer a research question (or in our case, a few different research questions), what you learned, and in closing, what the experience means to you. This I-Search essay will prove to me that you've been researching during this unit and get you ready for unit three, where you'll craft a zine about your chosen discourse community. The core of this zine will be based answering the questions I ask you through the I-Search essay, so completing the I-Search will be doubly important.

Once again, here are our goals for this unit, which this time are the learning outcomes found in our syllabus.

Select appropriate social and collaborative processes for drafting and revising (outcome four).

Articulate what they know about how discourse communities make, communicate, and debate meaning, and how that knowledge can be used in their own academic, personal, social, and professional lives (outcome five).

Analyze how multiple discourse communities make, communicate, and debate meaning through various genres and writing practices (outcome one).

Use multiple tools and methods to conduct focused inquiry-based research and formulate original conclusions that are important to specific discourse communities (outcome two).