“Materiality and Genre in the Study of Discourse Communities,” Amy Devitt et. al

IWA: 3/28/13

Summary: In their article, “Materiality and Genre in the Study of Discourse Communities,” Amy Devitt and colleagues attempt to tell their audience, mainly scholars, students, and teachers, that the idea of genre analysis can help people better understand their discourse community. They argue that becoming familiar with these different discourse genres will help professionals better associate with their discourse and become better equipped to fit in with the crowd and argue it through the use of their three essays, which each look at the idea from a different aspect.

Synthesis: This article is like Gee, Swales, etc. because they all discuss different pieces and concepts of the discourse community. This one showed us yet another piece of it.

QD 1: I suppose one of the discourses I am part of would be the English 1510 discourse community. Some of the genres imposed upon us are the horrible grading contract and scholarly language used in class such as discourse community. We are definitely forced into using these for any and all situations with the class.

QD 3: I would say some of the genre sets on campus would include things like sorority girls, frat boys, ROTC individuals, townies, or maybe even our grade level. Of all of these listed I would definitely fit in with the last one; freshman. However I’m sure I have many other genres but I can’t think of them.

AE 1: We clearly can see that sometimes in order to properly understand what a group is trying to tell you, you need to have some understanding of their discourse. Oftentimes you can become confused if say a member of a theatre company told you to sit stage right. You would probably sit on the right side of the auditorium when that is in fact house right (stage left). I’d say the misunderstanding definitely depends on the situation. In this case it’s simply a fact of not understanding the discourse and having a lack of knowledge on the material.

AE 2: Bawarshi essentially says genre is the language people use in a discourse community that would define the group while Swales says it’s a group’s language that guides the way they act. Although they seem to say the same I believe Swales’ makes it seem more like a guideline others in the discourse use and Bawarshi’s is a way of showing how others view them. For a classroom I would say Bawarshi’s is better.

MM: Ethnographic fieldwork is hands down the best way to understand a discourse community. I have always been taught that it is easier to learn something when you experience it hands on. Oftentimes while reading you can zone out or be confused on the wording so don’t get the full effect about what the author is describing.

Afterthoughts: I think this article will be very helpful for our project 3 and gives us more information to think about when examining our discourse communities. I also think it’s evident we can use this source since all three gave their own input with their essays. However I am really sick of reading about discourse community so my brain sort of went dead while reading this.