"Discourse Communities and Communities of Practice": Confusing, but understandable...

To me, the conversation between Swales and Gee is discussing what exactly is “discourse.” Swales talks about how a group can be discourse community if they meet a specific series of characteristics. He also talks about how other people can be partially assimilated into a discourse and then leave the community. Gee counters with how his beliefs are that a “Discourse” is more of a ongoing process that everyone is born into. People who aren't born into a specific discourse is doomed to only being a pretender to what they want to be a part of. Through life, Gee also discusses how mentors are “gatekeepers” of sorts that test their students constantly on their knowledge of a specific discourse. Swales focuses on the community while Gee focuses on the individual.

Johns comes in with an explanation of the deeper meaning of discourse and discourse community through the use of examples that students can relate too (Ie: AARP and Bicycling examples). She also talks about the reasons why people join groups and how their relationship to a discourse community changes overtime. She provides information on the items that help bring a person into s discourse, but she then provides the new material on how one can be pushed out of a discourse. She talks about the conflicts between being a part of a specific discourse and the sacrifices it might cause. In an academic discourse, Johns discusses that one must devote themselves to academia and distance themselves from social pursuits and family.

She also goes on to talk about the “who's in charge” factor when a new recruit is initiated, and how a person can change through evolution of a community and breaking the old, in place, rules that are there. Authority is that driving force in a community that provides the test to make sure the members are passing through the right gates and growing in the community as they should be. With breaking the old rules, Johns discusses how a student can be in higher praise because they can break the rules, only with that understanding of the rules themselves and “breaking them in the right way” so to speak. This rule breaking is what seems to be a “development of identity in a discourse community”.

"Literacy, Discourse, and Linguistics": Use the Discourse, young padawan...

I believe Gee is talking about “tests” that superiors use to make sure we are ready for the next step in the process of learning a Discourse. The tests that are provided are just a safeguard that the teacher has effectively taught one part of the discourse and that the student “apprentice” has a grasp and understands what is needed of the discourse thus far. If a student isn't ready to proceed, they will be forced to look elsewhere for a discourse or to stay in that particular stage of learning the Discourse until they can master that part.

An example I know first hand is any of the language courses here on campus (But for my personal experience, I will use Japanese Class). Every week, we have two quizzes. The Friday quiz is a review of what we've learned earlier in the week. The Monday quiz is normally based on what we learned last week, but the other half of what we learned. For example: a Friday quiz focuses on grammar learned in the week while the following Monday quiz focuses on the vocabulary. Eventually, you have the Final exam in the class. The rule is if you do not meet a certain grade on the final, you don't progress onto the next stage of the class. So: it's the school's (and the teachers) way of making sure that if the student progresses, he will be able to understand and survive in the next part of the class (or Discourse).

"The Concept of Discourse Community": ...I can't think of a witty subtitle.

In “The Concept of Discourse Community”, John Swales argues six different characteristics of a discourse community:

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

To me, Swales is arguing that a community has a set of goals (a purpose) that is known to everyone that is in the community. To a Facebook group, these goals could be promoting an object, idea, or club (the group ANIME [promoting Japanese television cartoons] for example). To a workplace, it's the common goal to keep the business running and functioning correctly.

2)“A discourse community has mechanisms of intercommunication among its members.”

This seems to be that members of any particular community have a way to get a hold of each other and pass on information one way or another. It has many different forms from word of mouth to a sophisticated newsletter. Using Facebook again, it can be the messaging feature to spread information or a post on the group wall. In a work environment, it can be a list of phone numbers if you need to find someone to cover your shift.

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

This seems to mean that members of a community pursue different advancements in information that could be beneficial to the group, or critiques on what's already there. In a rock band, for instance: members of the band sometimes pose questions to their audience to see if they enjoy a particular style or not. The band Avenged Sevenfold, for instance, has been touring with a new drummer due to the recent loss of their former drummer and they ask the audience to tell them if they approve of him or not; to see if the new drummer keeps the spirit of what the band was before their former drummer died.

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

This one is a little more difficult. I believe it's talking about how a community has different ways of meeting it's goals. In a workplace, it can be having some employees who are trained in more than one job. If service gets hectic or people don't show up to work, those who are trained in more places could go to where they are needed to keep advancing the business.

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

I believe this is talking about the language aspect of a group and the technical terms that it's used to make business run smoothly. In my own community of “Union Street Diner”, it can relate to how orders are called out. We have special terms meaning different things. For example: an “OM” is referring to “Over Medium” eggs, “Walkin' in” means “The next order is...”, “All Day” refers to everything a person should be working on at the time, and so on.

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

I believe Swales is talking about how membership changes over time. In a workplace, it can be when members get fired from the job. It can also refer to a senior member teaching new employees how to do their job correctly.

"From Pencils to Pixels": From Graphite hardness to Number of Bits...

 

I think Baron is saying that it's hard to envision what it will change, but there is obviously change that is going to happen. When he wrote on typewriters, I can imagine how frustrating it would have been to be typing away and then hear that “beep” saying that you've exceeded the memory available on the machine. Especially in today's age, there are many people who can type significantly quickly and would probably be exceeding that memory every other sentence. Reading has changed with the technology as well, switching from paper to digital words on a screen. I think that may be a good example of how the technology isn't always the best. I know a lot of people can't focus reading on the screen unless absolutely necessary because it's hard on the eyes and it's just not the same as a physical copy of the work. That's how I am, but I digress...

I do agree with Baron. New technology is being developed before current technology is being circulated, and current technology is being circulated faster than we can pay for the old technology. With any technology though, be it a new computer operating system or a new word processing software, there is always a reason for the change. Typewriters were replaced by word processing software that could keep up with typist. The spell check and grammar check functions were looked down upon because it would hinder student's analogue writing abilities (pencil and paper); Now it's expected with everything written that we spell check before even a peer review. It may not be apparent to us right at the beginning how a new form of technology will affect us, but we should be ready for change.

"The Future of Literacy": Advancement of Technology over print

I think I can relate most too the study on Danielle DeVoss. I remember getting a computer just about the same time that DeVoss did, but I was an only child so I got free reign on the computer. My parents were also focused on education and literacy development though schools. I was also the same way with computers as DeVoss. I would normally be on the computer playing games or looking around on social networks, but my time was always limited on the computers. In school, at least earlier school, there wasn't much need for us to ever use the computer for anything. As I got into high school, I was always on the computer for a presentation in one class or a paper in the other. 

At the same time, my high school relationship with technology mimics more of Brittany Moraski's story. I was always the computer student, and most of the teachers I had knew it. Whenever a problem came up, they would ask the class if anyone knew (which normally meant 'Eugene, come help me out'.) In one class in particular, I was asked to take the class a second semester in a row. This wasn't because I didn't do well, but because the teacher knew my work and wanted me to teach the class while he dealt with other parts for the senior class “End of the year” stuff (prom and graduation). High school was almost scripted through my computer, and I grew literate through schoolwork and through self-teaching through games and interfacing with the computer.

"Learning to Read" & "Superman and Me": Viva la Self-Advancement!

Both Malcolm X and Sherman Alexie were depraved (in the sense of comparison) in the sense of literacy compared to, say, a middle class white family. Both also were very much the same in how they came to their gaining of knowledge: self-motivation. Malcolm X read most of his works in prison, trying to emulate another prisoner who was respected. Malcolm wanted to be that person; to be able to control conversations and be respected. Alexie, on the other hand, read because it became available to him with his own knowledge. “...I first understood, with sudden clarity, the purpose of a paragraph....” Alexie discusses, “The words inside a paragraph worked together for a common purpose(WAW, pg 364)” When he used the paragraph metaphor to relate it to his life and the things around him, he began learning to read and began to understand his world around him. Literacy, to me, is defined by both as a means of self-advancement.

Race and economic forces were their driving force behind their learning. Alexie started reading everything he could get his hands on because of the social stigma in his reservation. While Indians were supposed to be inferior to non-Indian adults, he made sure he was known as someone who was knowledgeable. Alexie tried to promote knowledge to other Indians in the reservation to help show that Indians are just as knowledgeable. Malcolm X, once he began to understand more material, began focusing on Black history. He made himself learn about the history that was never taught in his time “I had never forgotten how... the history of the Negro had been covered in one paragraph. (WAW, pg 356).” This drove him to read about black history, which eventually helped him be a more influential speaker once he was out of prison.

"Sponers of Literacy": Brought to you by Writing about Writing

I would have to say my primary sponsors are mostly family and school.

Family was a big one, as both my parents are teachers and focused on academics and education. They were the ones that focused me on getting grades and making sure I was learning so I could be better prepared for the “real world” once I got there. They were the ones who taught me most of my types of literacy: reading, writing, manners (civil literacy I guess), work ethics, and money literacy (saving and budgeting). But through them, I also grew to be literate in different things like computers, video games, and religion. I had always lived with mom after my parents divorced, and she was always against computers (unless for school work) and video games. She also has a very defined sense of religion that I was forced to follow when I'm with her. I believe the reason I worked to make myself literate in the things she hates was in spite of her. It's not a matter of dislike to my mother, but more of making myself instead of letting her make me what she wanted. Computers and games were always more interesting than the arts and music that she liked. As for School, it has helped develop me more in reading and writing literacy, along with computer literacy.

Both have always been accessible to me. Family is mostly a forced sponsor so it's hard to avoid it. School has been helpful in developing because of the different classes focusing on different things to further my literacy in different areas. Both also try to help me develop as best they can. One of the only things I wish I could have had access to is a better sense of language literacy. By that, I'm talking more of different languages instead of just English. Thinking of the growing businesses, it might have served me better to learn different languages earlier on so I would be able to use them more often.

Project 2: A moment of reflection...

Wikipedia has always been a thing that has been almost front page on the internet since creation. Every time I did a Google search for something I didn't know, Wikipedia would be one of the first hits, and every time it helped me out of my jam. Wikipedia, obviously enough, is a mother-load of knowledge for anyone to come in and help themselves too. The thought of being able to be a part of that with something of my choosing was quite a thought. It's always been the same old song and dance through school of “Wikipedia is bad” this and “Wikipedia isn't a reliable source” that. True, it's possible to find an article that doesn't make sense and has obviously been subjected to vandalism. In “The Charms of Wikipedia”, Nicholas Baker provides a look on a past edit on the subject of aging: “Aging is what you get when you get freakin old old old.(1)”. Even though vandalism (like the previous example) is possible, Wikipedia provides a new and efficient outlet to distribute knowledge.

Starting on the article, I was having a hard time thinking about something local to do that would actually have enough information to squeeze out 1200-1500 words on. To my demise, I wasn't finding anything that I was interested enough in to do a paper on and/or had enough information on. When I turned to the “requested articles”, I easily found something that I could probably pull off. After getting my topic, the searching began. Although, when you research a religious “secret society” for a Wikipedia article, it's pretty difficult to find neutral, third-party sources. So, I delved into what I could find on the very biased site, and went at the situation from a different angle. Instead of finding information about the society itself, I looked at it's beliefs and how they related to it. A couple web sites and a couple books later, I had enough information to start writing.

The writing itself was rather easy since it was a topic I was interested in. Refining was the biggest problem in the process. It was hard to find information that would be neutral enough to pass on Wikipedia, but I was still having problems finding third party sources. Eventually, I found enough to satisfy the Wikipedia moderators and now it's up and going strong. Looking back, I can certainly say that Wikipedia writing is different from any other writing's I've done in the past. From earlier writing, it's quite a different process than writing a Wikipedia article. Retrieving sources (at least in preliminary stages), incorporation, summary, and quoting remain the same between all styles of writing in my opinion.

Wikipedia requires you to stay neutral, a change from the norm for most people. In revising: retrieving sources (for more details), incorporation, summary, and quoting seem the same, but evaluating the sources to incorporate and writing styles make the biggest changes. Sources become more difficult to find once you get into finer details, at least finding sources that aren't associated directly with the topic itself. More difficult subjects (secret societies and heavier religious topics for example) have a multitude of books on the subject, but are very closely related to the topic itself. Newspapers seem to be the best source of “third-party” sources, but those can be hard to find with the more “under-the-radar” topics. The writing style change didn't trouble me as much as expected, but it obviously was a big change. Wikipedia also shows the new take on one editor to a piece of work. In “Wikipedia is good for you!?”, James Purdy makes the argument that “Effective Wikipedia contributors revise articles frequently. They take advantage of the wiki capability to edit the articles they read. (219)”

Wikipedia is a social network for knowledge. As different editors find your page, they can make changes themselves or suggest changes through a discussion section. For example, if an editor has a question about a specific part of a topic you didn't cover, you can go look for it and place it in the article. Also, if you don't, there's a possibility for another editor to see the comment and do it himself. The more edits an article gets, be it with suggestions or straight edits, it's feasible to say more edits amount to a better article. Better articles provide more helpful information to those searching. With the different editors joining in, it helps with providing new insight to articles. James Porter, in “All Writing is Autobiographical”, would also say that the edits help show more personalities. “I have my own peculiar way,” Porter describes of his own writing, “of looking at the world and my own way of using language to communicate what I see....I have begun to understand...that all writing, in many different ways, is autobiographical (58).”

Starting the article, an article that was related (in article type, for lack of better description) was a good place to start to get a better sense of formatting the article. That puts a new facet on the thoughts of plagiarism. Is is plagiarism to use the template, or is it expected on a site like Wikipedia? It also adds to the social context that Wikipedia provides with templates being used by many different articles. With similar templates for related articles, it proves that Wikipedia also plays it's part in intertextuality.

Through edits, it also provides a new look on the “finished” article. In most papers in the past, there's a finished product that is graded and no more revisions or additions are accepted. Wikipedia doesn't discourage edits, but expects them. With possible edits at any time, it really shows that an article is never “finished” on Wikipedia (besides those articles that are 'semi-protected', but besides the point). Thinking about it now, I think it's amazing that knowledge for one topic can be changed all the time with additions or subtractions. It's understandable that such changeability like this puts Wikipedia in a bad scope for using in papers. Purdy discusses, however, that “As Jim Giles reports... Encyclopedia Britannica has errors in some of its articles, too; he claims that Wikipedia is almost as accurate as Britannica for a series of articles on science topics...(207)”

Encyclopedias are obviously neutral sources by nature. I would go so far as to say that the changeability of Wikipedia is more desired than print encyclopedia's. Print has to be redone over and over again if new information comes out. This requires lots of money and lots of time to go back and edit. Wikipedia makes editing as easy as sitting at a computer for an hour (also taking out the monetary costs).

I find myself now checking the posted article pretty frequently now, to see if any changes have been made or if the article gets deleted. It's an interesting feeling to be that third party observer, looking (monitoring) to see what others think of your own work and how they change it. This can allow for new insights to your own knowledge on how wide you should look at your topic and how in depth you should go into each part of your topic. From the drawing board, for instance, right off the bat someone wanted to make sure that I wasn't affiliated with the topic myself. It might just have been for the specific purpose of Wikipedia rules, or that it was a religious article and they wanted to make sure I was just staying as a third party and not just trying to “represent my brand” of sorts.

Wikipedia adds an entirely new world of knowledge distribution. You can get anything from in depth information on a band to a list of foreign holidays and practices, to in depth analysis of a song and how it was made. The world is at the fingertips of everyone who can get onto a computer. I believe it's a great addition and provides many advantages to working methods. Wikipedia allows you to search faster and find what you're looking for more efficiently. New information that arises (or wasn't thought of in the first draft) can be added quickly, making all articles more “up-to-date” since it can be added as things are happening. The social thoughts on writing are changing, and Wikipedia helps people adapt to the changes. Wikipedia provides that place where writers everywhere can share information and learn how to become better writers for future endeavors. In short, as Baker describes it, “Wikipedia is just an incredible thing.(1)”

References:

• Baker, Nicholson. "The Charms of Wikipedia." Rev. of Wikipedia: The Missing Manual by John Broughton. The New York Review of Books 17 APR 2008 1-3 Web. Oct. 3 2011
   http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2008/mar/20/the-charms-of-wikipedia/?page=1
• Purdy, James. "Wikipedia is Good for you." Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing. Parlor Press 2010. 205-224. Print
   http://writingspaces.org/essays/wikipedia-is-good-for-you
  
  
• Porter, James. “All Writing is Autobiographical.”Writing about Writing: A college Reader. Ed. Elizabeth Wardle and Doug Downs. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2011. 57-65. Print.

"Shitty First Drafts": A fun answer to writing!

Lamont want to say that most people start out their first drafts as if it was the final product and constrain themselves to, what ends up being, a horrible paper. She goes on to say that people need to take the time and just write “ a really shitty first draft” to get out what you feel needs to get out and work from there. She believes the actual process of writing is to write shitty drafts and eventually refining them into pieces that will actually mean something. I believe this is prevalent because of the pipe dream that is the “writer.” Stereotypes can paint writers in a way like writing is a breeze, aying that anyone can just sit at a computer and produce gold on the first go. We've all tried writing novels... Admit it, you have too. It's difficult, and Lamont shows us that writing is not quite as easy as stereotypes make it seem.

Wikipedia allows us to look at other shitty drafts by use of the “View History”. We can look back at the first submission of an article and compare it to what is the current or the latest that the author has written to compare and contrast. I find this to be very beneficial. It helps in the process of writing future articles or papers, showing our glory moments and our shortcomings. We learn from the writing, remind ourselves to not make those mistakes again, take a deep breath, and get started on our next topic.