journal 4 - matt schmeltzer

In Gee's essay, he starts off with defining the words "literacy" and "discourse".  He defines discourse as: "a socially accepted association among ways of using language, of thinking, and of acting that can be used to identify oneself as a member of a socially meaningful group or "social network". The discourse community that I am thinking of researching into is the computer science community.  This community uses a lot of terms and concepts that people who are not a part of the community will not understand. To become a member of this community, one would first have to learn a programming language and then start to create their own programs. Writing plays a major role in this community because people need to write programs, summaries of their programs, and also critique others' work. Finally, I want to become a member of this discourse community because I enjoy programming and the community of discussing computer programs interests me a lot.