Project #3: Discourse Community Ethnography

For this assignment, I will ask you to choose a discourse community that interests you and conduct an ethnographic study to examine how language use is enabled and constrained. Who has authority? How is that authority composed/demonstrated? How is authority restricted? What genres are used? How are new members welcomed/excluded? What identities are enabled or excluded? Theories about discourse communities, which youll be exposed to in Chapter 4 of Writing About Writing, demonstrate how texts in various forms both govern and are governed by socio-material and socio-cultural relationships and structures. Like the other assignments in this course, becoming familiar with these theories should enable you to develop a complex view of what makes writing effective within particular communities. Your final essay should be 2000-2200 words in length and incorporate 3-4 sources from the book as well as the primary research youll do of your community (interviews and observations).

Purpose
I hope this project will help you learn that any writing task requires an understanding of the community in which the writing participates. Because youll be expected to understand, analyze, and develop an original idea about the functions of language in a particular community, youll want to pay close attention to the conversation on discourse communities in the textbook and how each author extends and or complicates the ideas and arguments of other authors. Youll also be directing your own writing toward another discourse community: undergraduate, graduate, and professional writing scholars. You need to imagine this community as an audience and think about how it effects what types of language you use and what youre trying to accomplish in the essay.

Data Collection
Ethnographic research requires significant immersion into the community youre studying. Data collection methods for this project might include but are not limited to the following processes Observe members of the discourse community while they are engaged in a shared activity; take detailed notes. (What are they doing? What kinds of things do they say? What do they write? How do you know who is in and who is out?) Collect anything people in that community read or write (their genres)even very short things like forms, sketches, notes, IMs, and text messages. Interview at least one member of the discourse community. Record and transcribe the interview. You might ask things like, How long have you been here? Why are you involved? What type of documents do you regularly produce? What rules for communication are members of your community expected to adhere to? What do you consider most important in good writing or good communication? What do X, Y, and Z words mean? How did you learn to write A, B, or C?

Data Analysis
The data you collect for this project cant stand on its own. Youll need to analyze it and interpret this data using various frames and theories from the readings in Chapter 4. A good starting point for this analysis is an application of Swales six characteristics of discourse communities (WAW, 47173). What are the shared goals of the community; why does this group exist and what does it do? What mechanisms do members use to communicate with each other (meetings, phone calls, e-mail, text messages, newsletters, reports, evaluation forms, and so on)? What are the purposes of each of these mechanisms of communication ? Which of the above mechanisms of communication can be considered genres (textual responses to recurring situations that all group members recognize and understand)? What kinds of specialized language (lexis) do group members use in their conversation and in their genres and what function does this lexis serve? Who are the old-timers with expertise? Who are the newcomers with less experience? How do newcomers learn the appropriate language, genres, knowledge of the group?

Applying these criteria can help you understand how language functions within the discourse community, but youll also want to move beyond these characteristics to study a particular issue or problem, using the works of Gee, Wardle, or Mirabelli to help you zoom in on that issue. Possible research questions might include the following: Are there conflicts within the community? If so, why? Do some participants in the community have difficulty? Why? Who has authority here, and where does that authority come from? What are the modes of belonging that newcomers are attempting to use? What sorts of multiliteracies do members of this community possess? Are members of this community stereotyped in any way in regard to their literacy knowledge? If so, why? How are members identities influenced by the writing or language use within the community?

What Ill be looking for

An interesting introduction that frames your ethnography within some ongoing conversation. A brief review of the existing literature (published research) on the community.

What do we know about discourse communities? This section will require synthesizing the conversation about discourse communities as it emerges in the work of Swales, Gee, Johns, Wardle, and Mirabelli. Name a niche, what Swales calls a space that needs to be filled through additional research (WAW 7). Explain how you will occupy the niche. How will your study contribute to the ongoing conversation? Describe your research methods. Who did you interview? What questions did you ask? What texts did you analyze and how did you analyze them? Discuss your findings in detail by reporting your data and interpreting that data within a relevant theoretical framework. Include a Works Cited page and Appendix with your interview questions.

Important Dates
June 11 - Proposal Workshop Junhe 13 Drafting Interview Questions June 18 Review/Drafting Intro & Synthesis June 20 Drafting Intro/Synthesis/Methods June 27 Peer Review Rough Drafts due June 28 noon June 29 noon: Projects due to Instructor via e-mail and on blogs via Scribd.