Project 3 Proposal

The discourse community I choose to explore is my job working at Nelson Dining Hall. I want to show how the use of literature and writing effects the workers and how they interact with each other.

Project 3 Proposal

The discourse community I choose to explore is my job working at Nelson Dining Hall. I want to show how the use of literature and writing effects the workers and how they interact with each other.

Swales Dialectic Journal

Dialectic Journal – Swales (WAW, 464-78)

“A discourse community has a broadly agreed set of common public goals.” (471)

“The goals are public, because spies may join speech and discourse communities for hidden purposes of subversion, while more ordinary people may join organizations with private hopes of commercial or romantic advancement.” (471)

“A discourse community has mechanisms of intercommunication among its members.” (471)

“A discourse community uses its participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information and feedback.” (472)

“A discourse community utilizes and hence possesses one or more genres in the communicative furtherance of its aims.” (472)

“Discoursal expectations are created by the genres that articulate the operations of the discourse community.” (472)

“In addition to owning genres, a discourse community has acquired some specific lexis.” (473)

“The inbuilt dynamic towards an increasingly shared and specialized terminology is realized through the development of community-specific abbreviations and acronyms.” (473)

“A discourse community has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and Discoursal expertise.” (473)

“Survival of the community depends on a reasonable ratio between novices and experts.” (473)

“The members of the discourse community [HKSC] have, superficially at least, nothing in common except their shared hobby interest.” (474)

Shitty 1st Draft

How It All Began…

Reading has had such a love-hate relationship with me. From my young days in elementary school to now, my feelings have flip-flopped about reading. Some of my earliest and greatest memories of reading come from being at my first school, Taft Elementary in Cincinnati, Ohio. I can’t remember what grade I was in, maybe first or second, but I remember having to see alone with a teacher and reading paragraphs out of a book out-loud. I found reading very easy. I was told that I was on an eighth grade reading level at this time, which made me happy. I was one of the few children in my grade that tested this high, which was great to me. However, I felt alone because a lot of my classmates chose to goof off and not do work, so being considered “smart” isolated me a bit.

I started to enjoy reading when it came to video games at a young age. I remember playing systems such as the Sega Genesis and Playstation 2 with my brothers. It’s funny that I say “with my brothers” because I hated sharing the game with them and wish I could have had it to myself. Nevertheless, when we got stuck or wanted more things to do on a game, we turned to strategy guides. Two of my biggest memories would be from the games “Mortal Kombat: Trilogy” and “God of War.” Mortal Kombat is a fighting game about a tournament to decide the best fighter in the world and ultimately becomes a struggle between the Earthrealm and Outerworld. The game was filled with blood and gore, and being not even a teenager yet, I should not have been allowed to play. Anyway, the characters fought until someone’s health meter was empty, and then you could perform a fatality (a cool way to kill the enemy). These were virtually impossible to figure out on your own because of a complex combination of button-pressing required. To satisfy my gaming experience, I picked up a strategy guide and in no time I was electrocuting people to death with Raiden, for example.

Another game that led me to read was God of War. This game was based on Greek mythology and featured many gods and goddesses, such as Zeus, Ares, Athena, and Hades. The main character, Kratos, is on a mission to kill the Ares (the God of War). Along his journey he faces difficult enemies and puzzles, many of which I had troubles against. So again, a strategy guide was used. This showed me the tricks to the puzzles that I could not solve on my own; ways to defeat the different types of enemies; places to find hidden treasures and easter eggs; and strategies to pass certain levels of the game. No longer did the Hydra smash me, and Ares was no match.

Bell Hooks - Writing Autobiography

QDJ

1) When hooks said she wanted to "kill" herself through her writing, she meant that she wanted to get rid of all the bad aspects about her past that held her back. If you write an autobiography, it is sometimes hard to open up when you have not let go. hooks wanted to release her inner demons so she could accurately describe her life in her autobiography.

2) Bio-mythology is a retelling of life events, not just the way they happened, but as the person remembers the experiences. hooks' work is a bio-mythology because she was not trying to be completely accurate on her memories. In fact, she wasn't even sure if some of the memories happened, like the train incident. Her account of remembering these events showed her emotions and thoughts, like being affraid of getting stuck on the train tracks.

3) hooks uses the image of a hope chest to frame her autobiography; the hope chest holds all her inner memories with the most value. I would frame my autobiography with a fish aquarium. When I was younger, my parents always put leftover change in a fish aquarium. There were all kinds of coins and bills in there, usually small. However, every cent was important because it added up to a lot of money. I think of my memories in this way; that no matter how big or small, they add up to make out my life as it is today.

AEI

2) Identity is not something that a person can change through text. Though a writer may change his or her name, it does not stop them from truly being that person and still being associated with the other name. People change their names for many different reasons, but a name has nothing to do with identity. Identity is who you really are at heart, your soul and beliefs. bell hooks did not change her identity by taking up a new name. However, she did want to avoid the bad rep that came with her former name, Gloria Jean Watkins. This was her way of dissassociating herself with the past actions of her life.

Project #1 Peer Review

Sorry for the delay on the review Chris and Brandon. I am emailing you both the completed review or Chris's paper, highlighted and commented with my cover letter at the beginning.

Dialectic Journal

Dialectic Journal – Deborah Brandt, “Sponsors of Literacy”

Quotes

“Sponsors, as I have come to think of them, are any agents, local or distant, concrete or abstract, who enable, support, teach, model, as well as recruit, regulate, suppress, or withhold literacy – and gain advantage by it in some way.” (334)

-          The concept of a sponsor is any person who has something to do with another’s literacy learning.

“Literacy learning throughout history has always required permission, sanction, assistance, coercion, or, at minimum, contact with existing trade routes.” (334)

-          No one goes through literacy learning on his or her own; somehow, other people or organizations are connected.

“Most of the time, however, literacy takes its shape from the interests of its sponsors.”(335)

-          The sponsor’s influence usually guides the learner and transfers the same ideas onto that person.

“Literacy, like land, is a valued commodity in this economy, a key resource in gaining profit and edge.” (336)

-          Without literacy, it is highly unlikely for a person to be successful in society.

“A statistical correlation between high literacy achievement and high socioeconomic, majority-race status routinely shows up in results of national tests of reading and writing performance.” (336-337)

-          The higher you are ranked in society, chances are that you are a literate person, compared to lower ranked, poorer people.

“Economic and political forces . . . affect people’s day-to-day ability to seek out and practice literacy.” (339)

-          Depending on a person’s struggles, it may be harder for that person to become literate.

“As a result of wins, losses, or compromises, institutions undergo change, affecting the kinds of literacy they promulgate and the status that such literacy has in the larger society.” (343)

-          Institutions change as time passes and because institutions affect the literacy of some people, the people have to change as well.

“Where once the same sponsoring arrangements could maintain value across a generation or more, forms of literacy and their sponsors can now rise and recede many times within a single life span.” (344)

-          Times are changing faster in today’s society, which makes sponsoring strategies adapt quicker as well.