Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Discourse Community Analysis (DCA)


Important Dates:
Rough draft due: Wednesday, July 17 ~450 words
Final draft due: Monday, July 22 at 9:30 am in D2L Dropbox
Formatting:
MLA formatting (including in-text citation and works cited)
Double space
12pt Times New Roman
1” margins on all sides
Length:900 – 1500 words (Three (3) to four (4) pages)
The purpose of this essay is to analyze the Discourse Community that is your major (or major you are interested in). To complete this analysis you will choose two of Gee’s Tools of Inquiry and explore the pertinent details needed to understand academic language in your major. This will include details both as an insider and an outsider. In other words, you will need to interview a member of the discourse community as well as research your major through outside resources to learn about their communication style.Click Here To Get More On This Paper!!!!
For this essay, you must do the following:
1. Choose the major you wish to study during your academic career.
2. Interview/Email a member of that DC and include this information in your essay– We will create questions in class that will help you know what to ask.
3. Provide Background information (when was the major formed? Who created the major? Was it always the same as it is now?)
4. Use Gee’s text to guide your essay and analyze your DC according to two of his tools of inquiry –this means you’ll need a two paragraphs concerningeitherIntertextuality, Social Languages, Conversations, and/or Discourse and should use the “They say/I say” method discussed in class.
5. You should describe the members (i.e. who/how manystudies this and what do they end up doing after college), the environment (where do they study?), the purpose of major, and any other important features of that site.
6. Include any social aspects of the major – activities, clubs, gatherings etc.
7. You should conclude with a sum-up of the DC that tells your reader if they should be a part of this DC or not.
8. Your goal should be to give all the information needed to help someone who knows nothing about this major understand what it takes to study it at OU.Click Here To Get More On This Paper!!!!
Discourse Community Characteristics
• It will be identified with a particular physical (and perhaps virtual) location at the University of Oklahoma
• It will have identifiable practices or rituals
• It will have a definable language – a way of communicating which may be oral, textual, visual, or physical or all or some of these
• It will either have a specialized vocabulary or make use of language in a way that is unique to the group
• It will have a history or legacy which can be investigated
• It can be observed and researched and a discourse community member can be interviewed
RESEARCH HELP
Inquiry Questions:
These questions will help you begin to investigate your discourse community. Some will end up being very important to your research and your paper and others may become less significant, depending on your topic selection.Click Here To Get More On This Paper!!!!
• What physical or virtual spaces does this community inhabit?
• What are its practices / rituals?
• Who belongs? How do we know? Who doesn’t belong?
• How do members of the group recognize each other?
• What physical traces, if any, does this community create? What is the nature of these traces?
• How does the community use language to communicate? What about other ways of communicating?
• How has this discourse community evolved over time? How fast does it evolve?
• What is its history?
• How does this discourse community function within the larger community of OU or Norman or the United States or ..?
• Does this discourse community act in the world? How does it act?
• What other communities does it act upon? Are its actions ethical? Effective?
• What is the significance of this discourse community – what does it tell us about human nature?
• How does the discourse community shape its members’ identities?

Click Here To Get More On This Paper!!!!

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