Discourse Community Analysis
English 1301: Rhetoric and Composition I
The Rhetorical Situation
One of the most difficult challenges you’ll face in college is learning to join various academic discourse communities. A “discourse community” is a group of people who share knowledge of a particular topic, similar backgrounds and experiences, values, and common ways of communicating.
Discourse communities seem particularly mysterious and intimidating when you are an “outsider,” but the good news is that we all have experience joining discourse communities. You successfully joined a discourse community any time you learned to participate and feel comfortable in a new school, a new church, a new circle of friends, or a new interest group (e.g., people interested in a certain sport or sports team, a band or type of music, a television show, gaming, cooking, yoga, dance, etc.)
The purpose of this paper—and a primary purpose of ENGL 1301—is to demonstrate for you that the process of joining an academic discourse community is not so different from the process by which you’ve joined other discourse communities.
Write a paper to me and your classmates about a time when you successfully joined a discourse community. Show us how you learned to make ethos appeals (i.e., establish and draw on your credibility), logos appeals (i.e., draw on factual knowledge and ways of reasoning), and pathos appeals (i.e., draw on the values and emotions of other members) that were specific to the community.
Invention (i.e., discovering what you’re going to say in this paper)
1. Your audience for this paper (your classmates and I) will want to know the main point of your paper right off the bat, so, after deciding what discourse community you want to write about, come up with a claim that you were successful in joining that community.
- It’s not enough just to make a claim—your audience will expect you to prove it. Thus, you need to explain why your claim is valid by supporting it with reasons. Your reasons should state that you mastered ethos, logos, and pathos appeals that were specific to this particular community.
- Even after you’ve made a claim and supported it with reasons, your audience still won’t be satisfied. Readers will expect you to provide evidence that you really did master ethos, logos, and pathos appeals specific to your discourse community.[unique_solution]
Where will you find evidence for this paper? You won’t find it in the library or on the internet because it must come from you! Reflect deeply on your own experiences. Come up with specific examples and significant anecdotes that will prove to your audience that, indeed, you learned to make successful ethos, logos, and pathos appeals to other members of the community.
- What if readers remain skeptical? Imagine them saying: “I’m not sure your accomplishments really qualify you as a full-fledged member of this discourse community.” Is there merit to that
objection? How would you reply?
- Think about how you’re going to come across to me and your classmates as a person of good character, good sense, and good will. Here are some tips:
- Know what you’re talking about. Provide details that show you’ve reflected deeply on your experiences, and supply enough evidence to support your reasons.
- Show regard for your readers. Try to come across as approachable and thoughtful, not arrogant or insensitive.
- Treat skeptical readers with respect—don’t ignore or demean their opinions just because they expect more proof.
- Be careful and meticulous in your writing, not sloppy or disorganized.
- Think about the values and emotions that your classmates and I share, and consider how you might appeal to us. Here are some tips:
- Draw on the lessons of Ch. 9 in They Say/I Say in order to mix standard written English with “the kinds of expressions and turns of phrase that you use every day when conversing with family and friends” (115). No need to stick to stuffy academic prose in this paper, but you also don’t want to be so informal that your classmates and I can’t understand you.
- Try to evoke emotions (sympathy, outrage, anger, delight, awe, horror, etc.) in your classmates and me that make your paper more moving.
- Try to evoke sensations (seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, smelling) in your classmates and me that make your writing vivid and help us to experience things imaginatively.
- Appeal to values (freedom, justice, tolerance, fairness, equality, etc.) that your classmates and I share.
Arrangement (i.e., organizing what you’re going to say in this paper)
Ultimately, you want to organize your paper in the manner you think will prove most effective with your classmates and me, but here are some general guidelines:
- Heed the lesson of Ch. 1 in They Say/I Say: “To give your writing the most important thing of all—namely, a point—a writer needs to indicate clearly not only his or her thesis, but also what larger conversation that thesis is responding to” (18). In this case, the conversations you’re responding to are the ones we’ve had in class about rhetoric, the rhetorical situation, and rhetorical reading and writing. Indicate at the beginning of your paper—before you state your thesis—that you’re writing in response to those conversations.
- Also mind the lesson of Ch. 7 in They Say/I Say: “Regardless of how interesting a topic may be to you as a writer, readers always need to know what is at stake in a text and why they should care. . . . Rather than assume that audiences will know why their claims matter, all writers need to answer the ‘so what?’ and ‘who cares?’ questions up front” (88-89). As harsh as this may sound, don’t assume that your classmates and I care about what you have to say—make us care by explaining what is at stake in your paper and why it should be important to us.
Style (i.e., choosing the appropriate language for your paper)
One reason I’m asking you to write to your classmates and me is to break you of the habit of writing all your papers to some vague, generalized audience and/or attempting to make all your papers approximate some objective ideal. If you approach this paper in that way, your style will be ineffective because it won’t be tailored to your specific audience. When reading your paper, it should be obvious to your classmates and me that you’re writing to us specifically.
As mentioned earlier, heed the lesson of Ch. 9 in They Say/I Say and mix standard written English with “the kinds of expressions and turns of phrase that you use every day when conversing with family and friends” (115). One of the purposes of this paper is for your classmates and me to get to know you better, so you should write in an informal style that is distinctly your own—just make sure you’re communicating clearly.
All readers appreciate coherent, unified paragraphs, so your paragraphs should include a topic sentence that clearly states the main idea of the paragraph and supporting sentences that cluster around the main idea without detours.
Proofread carefully; avoid errors in grammar, spelling, punctuation, and mechanics. Use appropriate links and resources on MyTCC for questions you have regarding style.
Other Requirements
Your paper should be no longer than four pages—anything beyond that length will be considered a failure to adhere to one of the assignment’s basic requirements. It should be double-spaced, typed in Times New Roman font, with 12-point character size and one-inch margins all the way around.
Evaluation Criteria
Final Draft:
- Includes a snappy title that catches the reader’s attention and indicates the topic and argument.
- Identifies a particular discourse community appropriate to the assignment.
- Explains how the essay contributes to the class conversation about rhetoric and discourse communities.
- Includes a contestable, specific, detailed claim that the author successfully joined the selected discourse community.
- Provides at least three well-developed reasons that the author mastered ethos, pathos, and logos appeals specific to the selected community.
- Answers the “so what” and “who cares” questions by explaining why the argument is significant and to whom.
- Supports reasons with carefully selected, well-developed examples and anecdotes from her/his experience.
- Anticipates counterarguments, considers them carefully, and responds to them fairly, conceding where others are right.
- Comes across as a credible writer, and appeals to the values and emotions of the audience.
- Develops a seamless, coherent, and well-organized argument.
- Sentences are lively, engaging, and relatively error free.
- Essay is 4 pages in MLA style (no Works Cited necessary) in 12pt. Times New Roman font with 1-inch margins.
Writing Process:
- Submitted complete drafts on time. Drafting process shows evidence of revision of content and style.
- Provided adequate help to peers during peer review.