Devitt

Before You Read:

1. Talking on the phone
2. Speaking to someone
3. Texting
4. News articles
5. Facebook/Twitter
6. Email
7. Skype, Facetime, etc.

Summary:

In this article or articles, "Materiality and Genre in the Study of Discourse Communities" by Devitt, Bawarshi and Reiff they talk about the importance of genre and how it influences the way people communicate. The article also suggests how genre analysis contributes to ethnomethodology, which contributes to the pedagogy of text-dependent subject matter. The first article talks about how genre is used by politicians and lawyers in order to communicate with nonmembers of that discourse community. The second article talks of the PMHF or patient medical history form, and how "focusing on a specific textual genre helps us to identify a discourse community by relating it to a specific site of interpersonal activity that most of us have experienced" (Bawarshi 104). The third article shows how creating and researching the genre of ethnography can teach students about their own discourse community, while learning about others'.

Synthesis:

When reading I thought of Swales, Pollan and Gee. All three talk of discourse community and how it is used to communicate with people who are not involved in the community. Genre is also a common topic discussed in the author's articles.

Response	Quotation
I like this quote because Devitt uses it to explain how genre is used to elaborate on points of a discourse community. She also uses it as a way for people to learn how to study a community’s language more effectively.	“Whether we are studying academic, professional, or public communities, genres considered as material entities, enable us to enrich the idea of a discourse community by giving discipline and focus to the study of the unities of language and society” (Devitt 99).
This quote is interesting because it shows how often times, communities with a genre can conflict with other communities that have an opposing genre. A perfect example of this is Democrats and Republicans.	“Such analysis” (on genres) “often reveals the conflicts between communities that use a genre, conflicts often invisible to analysis that looks at discourse in terms of its communion alone” (Devitt 99).
I found this quote significant because it shows how nonmembers determine a lot of what happens in a discourse community. Devitt uses the example of how voters (nonmembers) make decisions about how the government operates and its laws.	“Yet the difficulty remains of community- embedded genres producing action by nonmembers of that community” (Devitt 100).
This is basically a simple summarization of what a discourse community is all about. A discourse community is mainly built off a group of people and their language.	“..the idea of discourse community is built on the premise that what we know and do is connected to the language we use” (Bawarshi 104).
Reiff explains how genre is very important when conducting research about a community. By using genres when doing research, it can help a student understand how a discourse community, that they are unfamiliar with, works.	“As typical responses to repeated social situations, genres are rhetorical maps that chart familiar or frequently traveled communicative paths and provide guideposts as writers adapt to unfamiliar academic terrain and study parts of society beyond the classroom” (Reiff 106).

Meta Moment:

I believe that the best route for understanding a discourse community is through ethnographic research because it allows the person conducting the research to have a first hand account of the community that they are studying. Although it is probably not the most accurate (unless you are sampling a large amount of people), I believe that it allows for the researcher to learn more about the discourse community.

Thoughts:

I thought these article were very interesting. The examples that they gave allowed the reader to relate to what the author was trying to say. These articles were a lot easier to understand than the other ones. I feel that this will be helpful when working on project #3.