1. WRT 105: practices of academic writing
Dr. Rusty Bartels
Monday, October 8th, 2018
Week 7, Day 1

2. Overview Overview Freewrite Swales: Framing 6 Defining Characteristics
In Summary
Wrap-up

3. Freewrite What is a discourse community?
How do you come to understand it?
What are the conversations surrounding the definition of discourse communities?

4. Swales - Framing
As we’re discussing communities for this assignment, Swales explores definitions of “discourse communities”
In one part, he puts them in opposition to speech communities, and posits that a speech community inherits, while a discourse community recruits.
He further goes on to say that the goals of a discourse community, far above anything else, influence and shape its rhetorical practices

5. Swales – 6 Defining Characteristics
6 Groups
Each group will answer the following questions:
How would you summarize not only the defining characteristic, but the subsequent discussion of it?
What community is each of your group members (considering) writing about?
Does that community fulfill this characteristic? How does it?
What questions or considerations arose during your group’s conversation?
What stands out to you as you apply this characteristic to a group?

6. Swales – In Summary
Part of Swales’ investment in applying each of these characteristics is to illustrate the way that a discourse community operates differently from a speech community.
Speech Community is to Literacy; What discourse Community is to Genre
If we look at speech communities, those might be more akin to the conversations we had on readings like SRTOL.

7. Swales – In Summary
A discourse community also enables us to be able to identify communities that span broader spaces, that may not necessarily share the same dialect (like a speech community would).
Last section: intersection between a group’s values and/or world-view in relation to the discourses and genres practiced.
Ultimately, I want us to be able to use this text today to help give us focus in making our community choice if we are still unsettled on that;
I also want us to be able to use this to help guide your analyses of the genres that your community uses, and how this informs and relates to such things as purposes and goals of that community.

8. Wrap-up Today we: Defined discourse communities
Began to apply DC definitions to our own communities
Exploring its utility as a concept to aid in our genre analysis
Next time:
Reading: none
Workshop!