february 22

Summary: in John’s “Discourse Communities and Communities of Practic”, she argues that there is conflict when joining a discourse community. She Fills in the gap that is left after reading Gee’s and Swale’s articles as she talks about the problems that one is faced with when joining an academic discourse community such as rebellion against conventions, problems with authority, and issues with identity.

1.     1.There is always going to be a cost to joining a discourse community because you have to make sacrafices in order to give up time to be apart of the community. By being apart of that community, they often have to drop things from other discourse communities. This means many cultural and linguistic tradeoffs ( para 53).  There are also authoritive utterances” that set the tone that the people have to listen to and be aware of. She talks about how to gain authority and who has the authority.

2.     2. Because we all have our own thoughts, when people joining a discourse community come in, they haven’t been trained to think in the way of the comm. So they have some different thoughts that may change the community. One thing I think of is when Martin Luther Separated from the Church.  I also think of Hitler and other world leaders who have been apart of a discourse and changed the view of the people

3.    3.  I have been apart of sporting teams where the coaches make it seem as though your life revolves around the sport and that it is the most important thing in your life which I completely disagree with but other than that, nothing has really effected me.  The only other one is conflicts dealing with religion in different churches.

4.     4 I think this is true because you can only identify yourself in so many ways. If you are pouring yourself into one discourse, it is hard to keep the ideas from the other.. that’s why she says tradeoffs

5.     5. I have about as much freedom as  I had in highschool.  All authority is placed over me because I do not have a choice to write.. I have to but sometimes I do get to express myself freely.

6.     6. Rule breaking is a minefield because it always blows up our papers. I have been punished many times for rulebreaking and have just been asked to fix it or my grade reflected it.

MMI think that this article helps one understand what the benefits and risks are of joining a discourse community. I think that it shows what you have to give up and who and what you have to deal with when choosing to be apart of one. 

Reflection: I thought this was really long but had good points and filled in a good gap that hadn’t been talked about before.