Discourse Community

Piyash, Mujahidul
Professor Watson
Science of Language
11/04/2014
Critical Analysis Essay Draft 1. Discourse means “the way of being” in a community. Discourse community is where a group of people involved and share their opinion, knowledge about a particular topic. Conflicts can be create when rebellion happens in a discourse community. Rebellion in a discourse community try to change the rules which creates conflict with leaders of the particular discourse community. It changes the particular discourse community or creates a new discourse community with new rules. James Paul Gee a writer and a professor of Reading at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, in his article “Literacy, Discourse, and Linguistics: Introduction” published in
In the front some people wearing Jewish religious cloths. They have placards and Palestine flags. There are lots of Muslim people in their behind. They were protesting against the State of Israel. In this photo, two discourse community have same opinion and they created a new discourse community. It explains Gee’s definition of discourse. A writer ANN M. Johns in her article “Discourse Communities and Communities of Practice: Membership, Conflict, and Diversity”, claims that, “the many practices and values that hold communities together or separate them from one another.” There are so many practices where many discourse communities can involve together. In the photo we can see male, female, Jews and muslims together. People from different discourse communities in the protest. They stood together to save Palestine. They applied their literacy to social practice. Gee also claims that, “the focus of literacy studies should be social practices, not language or
Although religion plays a role in defining the identities of the parties to the conflict, and for some Jews, in justifying their claims to the land, the conflict is not, fundamentally, a religious conflict. Regardless, on both sides of the conflict, Arabs and Israelis are taught to hate each other. However, Islam and Judaism both religion does not support racism. American Jews refused to accept Israelis as Jews. In their opinion, Israel does not represent world Jewry. They have same religion but different discourse community. They protested against Israel with Muslim people and proved that Judaism and Islam does not support racism. After World War II and the Holocaust in which six million Jewish people were killed, more Jewish people wanted their own country.They were given a large part of Palestine, which they considered their traditional home but the Arabs who already lived there and in neighbouring countries felt that was unfair and did not accept the new country (BBC.co.uk). Palestine becoming smaller and smaller after Israel born. During this conflict lots of innocent people and children were killed in Palestine. Israel has advanced weapon and American aid. American Jewish communities do not support Israel. They stand for Palestine. According to Johns, “ Members of communities rebel, opposing community leaders or attempting to change the rules of the game and by extension, the content and