Discourse Community Reflection

ENGL 1301 is a broad and informative class, even only being in it for a few week I am already learning a lot. For example, these first few weeks of class I have been learning about the importance of the logos, pathos, and ethos appeals that are so important to the masterdom of the rhetorical situation. With these appeals a writer such as I, will be able to convince this class of my success in joining the discourse community of animal shelter volunteers. A discourse Community is a community of people who share not only knowledge about specific shared topics but also similar backgrounds, values, and share a common language. I will prove in this paper that I successfully entered one of these discourse communities and was accepted by showing my
At the animal shelter of which I volunteer they have a process by which they try to match up animals and people for the best fit. To do this the people looking to adopt must fill out a form that basically asks what they like to do and what kind of dog or cat they want. Making up these pairs is not aways easy and sometimes when you have multiple people trying to match the same person things get a little messy. In one case we had a man come in who didn't have much in the way of an active lifestyle. He was looking for a dog that matched that as he didn’t want to be letting down a dog that was expecting play time all the time. I picked out a bulldog-pug mix, Gizmo, who was notorious around the shelter for being lazy, it was a fight to get her to go out on walks. I knew that they would be a great match, but as I was getting Gizmo out of his crate, I noticed one of my co-workers getting out another dog. When asked what she was doing she said that she believed Polly, a very energetic dog would be a great match for him. I told her that he was looking for a lazy dog and that matching him with Polly would not be good for Polly or the man. She believed that sense Polly had been looking to be adopted longer than Gizmo that she should be adopted out. I asked her if pairing an energetic dog with a lazy man would be a good idea in her book and she hesitated. Sensing that this was the way to go I then told her that sense Polly is very energetic and the man isn’t very active that it wouldn’t be a good match. If we went through with this match both Polly and the man would be unhappy and Polly would most likely end up getting adopted out again by the man. Using this reasoning I was able to convince her that while Polly had been here longer Gizmo would be the better choice. To this day I often receive