To complete this journal, you should start by reading James Gee's essay, "What is Literacy?" As you'll notice, Gee uses the term "discourse" instead of "discourse community," but his definition of discourse aligns with how we're talking about discourse community.
Based on your reading of Gee's article, what keywords do you notice him using? In other words, what terms does he focus on? how does he define these terms? what are the connections among them? What connections do you see between our class discussion about genre, audience, and knowledge and Gee's article on discourse?
I notice Gee using keywords such as discourse, learning, and acquisition. He defines discourse as a social norm, the way you act or speak that hints people at to what culture you are apart of. He continues to connect discourse to the other keywords, learning and acquisition. He defines acquisition as collecting knowledge through everyday activities. He then connects learning to both key words as defining learning as unlimited and has a great deal to do with acquisition. I see these key terms connected to the terms we discuss in class because genre has a great deal to do with knowledge from the author and what the audience can learn from the text.
Next, consider the discourse community that you are interested in researching for project two. What is the discourse community? What "ways of using language, of thinking, and of acting" (Gee p. 29) distinguish this discourse community from others? How does one become a member of this discourse community? What role does writing seem to play in this discourse community?
Finally, what interests you about this particular discourse community, and how can you use that interest to develop your research project? In other words, think about why you want to become a member of this discourse community and what you need to know and be able to do in order to join it.
The discourse community I am researching is Nursing. A lot of the language in nursing is rooted from latin because of all the medicine used in the field. Nurses also take very quick short notes that mainly other nurses can distinguish. To become a member of this discourse community you need to pass the nursing exam for whichever state you live in and apply for a job. Writing is a huge part in the community because it helps communicate to the doctors what is wrong with a patient or to the pharmacist what prescriptions they need to hand out. Im interested in this discourse community because it is my intended major and that interest will drive me to push myself to research on this topic.
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