Sociology 311

Our goal is to have lively discussion of this weeks reading on discourse community and to help each other develop and deepen our understanding of why knowing our audience, context, and purpose are crucial to successful writing. My hope is that discussing as a class the who, what, and why of written communication will motivate your work this term and help you get to know what your colleagues value in this work. Note: I will usually break up the discussion board into smaller groups of 5 or 6, so the reading is more manageable. But for Week One, I’d like us all to introduce ourselves to each other.

Task

Develop a primary post that responds to the following prompt by Thursday, 11:59pm. I encourage you to post earlier in the week to get our discussion going!

Introduce yourself to the group and describe a community to which you belong or would like to belong that has significance for you. It can be any community: one connected to school, your family, a fan community, an interest/hobby group, an online group, a professional group, a religious group, etc. You are welcome to post a pic of yourself or a pic related to the community you’ve chosen to discuss.
Answer the questions: What are the unique characteristics of communicating within this community? What purpose(s) does communicating serve in this community? You might think about languages spoken, group-specific terminology, online versus in-person communication, written communication, casual versus formal communication style, who gets to speak, sharing ideas/knowledge, accomplishing tasks, etc.
Conclude your post with a specific, open-ended question* for the rest of the group about discourse in your community or the concept of discourse community, drawing from this weeks reading. Your question should develop logically from your response to the prompt.