Describe your discourse community, how you learned about it, and why you chose it. Keep this part brief.

Most of you will write with a narrative, first-person tone. When something surprises you, tell me. Point out what you learned in your research and what you already knew. In the conclusion, tell me if you still have questions about the discourse community, if you want to join it, or if you have strong reactions to it. In other words, talk through the research in your own voice. If your discipline requires third person writing, however, you might want to use third person for this essay. Still, point out the surprising, knowledge gained vs. information known, and final thoughts about the discourse community. In this case, you will write from an observers perspective in the third person. Either way, your essay should have a clear beginning, middle, and end, and it must address the ideas listed below. You are welcome to organize your essay into these sections:

 

 Introduction. Describe your discourse community, how you learned about it, and why you chose it. Keep this part brief.

 

 

Thesis/conclusions drawn. Youll need to work backward from here for the remainder of the essay, but state your thesis, analysis, or conclusions about this communitys discourse early in the essay. This section should be brief but will definitely be more than a couple of sentences. Depending on your writing style, you might choose to go back and write this section after you have completed your in-depth analysis.

 

 

Discourse analysis. This section will comprise the bulk of your essay. Analyze genres and major publications (using that term broadly to mean print and multi-media sources) used by this discourse community in other words, how do they communicate and compose? Try to address as complete a variety of discourse as you can, including written and visual artifacts, and sources from multiple genres; make sure to discuss any discourse for which the community is well-known or famous. Highlight and discuss specific sources that led you to your analysis. The communitys discourse should be your focus. However, you should also use secondary sources to analyze discourse about this community; see the section on sources. To get started, you might ask these types of questions: What kinds of texts get produced and for what purposes? What genres are typically used and how varied are they? Are texts produced individually or collaboratively? What counts as discourse what does this community value as good writing, speaking, or communicating? What types of specialized vocabulary, jargon, or language is used? How is oral or visual communication used to complement the written or text-based discourse?

 

 

Conclusion. Connect your analyses to your thesis and wrap it up.

 

 

 You must use primary research; use as much as you can. Primary sources are those used by the discourse community in order to communicate. Gather samples of the texts produced by the discourse community. These will include traditional sources such as articles and books, Web sites, and films, but could also include artifacts such as bumper stickers, blogs, signs, photographs, brochures, Twitter posts, and posters.

 

 

 

The sources you analyze will depend on the discourse community you choose. Strive for a variety of genres, but dont force a source if a discourse community isnt known for communicating via the Web or for producing passionate letters to the editor, then dont rack your brain looking for those sources. See the list of possible genres at the end of this assignment. (Keeping a log of sources and citations will help when you are ready to draft your analysis.)