John Swales: Genre Analysis
Letter to Reader
M y learning goal of this paper was to conduct research by finding and evaluating print electronic and other sources. Also needed to generate information and ideas from research, and lastly integrating material sources. When I used what we used to communicate with my group I had to figure out how it fit with Swales characteristics of a discourse community. Its function was to inform each member about what’s going on and what’s happening with the team with our plans. I feel that I have a very little understanding of the research goal. For one appropriately integrate what I have from my sources I don’t feel I can say that I did. There wasn’t much learning rather than just doing what is asked seeing what the six ways Swales define a discourse community trying to hit every point with some edvidence.
Terrance S. Woods II
Mr. Trimble
ENG 1020
29 January 2014
Robotics Team: A Discourse community?
John Swales, a professor of linguistics with a Ph.D. from Cambridge University, argues about the definition of a discourse community. Swales, who is also the co-director of the Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English at the University of Michigan, has his response to, “Genre …show more content…
Analysis.” In this book, Swales lists his argument with six characteristics he defines as a discourse community. I will go over the six and how my robotics team is a discourse community by Swales definition. The Centerline Robotics team started a year ago and started really small at the beginning but had 4 members and one mentor. I was the first member to come every day and became team: leader, driver, builder, the assistant that makes reports on how the team is doing, promoter to get more team mates, programmer, and electronics leader. We also had another mentor that was behind the scene giving the First community our information about the team along with forums we signed to be a part of the team. The first competition was at our school in our new gym. We didn’t win but got highest rookie team to seed by themselves.
The first criteria of Swales 's definition for discourse communities is that they have a "broadly agreed set of common goals" (471). By this, Swales means that such groups can have goals that are spoken or unspoken. With unspoken goals, there is a consensus or everyone knows the goals and doesn’t need to be talked about. My group fulfills this definition by our goal being tacit or unspoken. When you first begin the object is to build a robot and compete for worlds. The First Robotics Competition sends out letters via email, which consist of forms to be signed and information about what upcoming events will happen before the season starts. For whatever school that provides this program, there is a sponsor, for example ours was J.C.Penny, and a few mentors to help with supervision of the team. Swales states that, “The goals are public.” This means for our group that we want our city or school neighborhood to know about the robotics team and to come support us. When talking to my principle in high school, Mr. John Summerhill, he explained how CL, centerline, use to have a robotics team, came on the pa with this information and about the meeting were we would sign these forums and met our mentors.
The second characteristic is that a discourse community has “mechanisms of intercommunication among its members.” (Swales 471) In robotics we have the internet to give information as well as everyone in the group has a cell phone to convey a message. Alyssa Lovell made our Facebook page, with this reason “It was very helpful for most students who had phones that died every meeting, most had Wi-Fi and a Facebook so we can let them know if anything comes up while they are not able to be called or get a text message.”The internet also helps with the FRC facts and questions page to help other teams with problems that arise. Emails, at the beginning of the year, are sent to the mentors to sign. It also contains information on upcoming events to get a head start. When the mentor has everything set for the team, an announcement is sent to Center Line high school via intercom, and in the morning announcements. This year we were all called down to the principal’s office.
The third characteristic is that a discourse community uses these participatory mechanisms” primarily to provide information and feedback.” (Swales 472) When everyone is gathered and wants to be a part of the team the mentor has contracts for them to sign. Our group used Gmail to insert out phone numbers, address and other contact information for the mentor and the whole team and First to contact if anything should come up.
Swales has another characteristic that a discourse community “utilizes and hence possesses one or more genres in the communicative furtherance of its aims” (Swales 472) this means that the team is sending information as it has through emails text social networking and using the school announcements. We use Facebook with new posts on how the robot is doing and some videos of the robot working. With Google we used Google drive to input people information, like a cell number, home number, address, etc.. This helped our group a lot mostly because we didn’t want to keep going over old news that was last week taking up time to work on the robot. We wanted progress, and that’s all.
The second to last characteristic of a discourse community is that the community has “acquired some specific lexis” (Swales 473). For one a lexis is just another way to say vocabulary, but within our group that most people wouldn’t know about. One phrase our mentor Jim says, “Don’t be a Brandon.” Means don’t destroy the robot by running it into a wall and knock everything over and bolts on the robot to come lose. A lot of the lexis, a small portion of people would know the names of the tools and the actions they perform. Some of the tools names are based on how nice and easy it makes the task. For one example wire stripers that we had last season and still have make taking the insulation of a cooper wire very easy so the name “sexy stripers” was born and used throughout the season.
The last and final characteristic of a discourse community, that Swale uses, is that the group must have a “threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discoursal expertise.” (Swales 473) Swales mean that there should be positions you can reach and a time where some members cannot be on the team but still a part of the team, for the robotics team. As stated before I was practically everything in the team. As the team grew I gave some positions away. Building was given to a female in out group, electronics where Brandon’s department and Hussin had to be the operator. What most teams had were: builders that went to electronics with few levels, programmers, and the drive team were whoever was the leader or the best in the field to perform actions need quickly. The last of the level would be a mentor an adult to oversee the team.
With Swales six characteristics I have shown that the Center Line robotics team is a discourse community.
All the hard work the each member did to learn all the new information to build a robot to come and say that we are not a discourse community is an insult that won’t be taken lightly. We were fortunate to have this opportunity with this program and has increased our knowledge and has open doors to new areas of a career for the students. I have shown that we have a goal, we have ways of members communicating, and ways that we communicate with the public. Swale argues that a discourse community has more genres to further progress, along with terms or lexis that the group knows and a few may not, and that we have levels in the
group.
Works Cited
Swales, John. “The Concept of Discourse Community.” Writing about Writing. Ed. Wardle, Elizabeth, and Doug Downs. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2011. 466-480: Print.
Joyce, Jim. Robotics Lead Mentor. Personal Interview. September 2013.
Lovell, Alyssa. Student. Personal Interview. September 2013.
Summerhill, John. Principle of Centerline Highschool. Personal Interview. September 2013.
M y learning goal of this paper was to conduct research by finding and evaluating print electronic and other sources. Also needed to generate information and ideas from research, and lastly integrating material sources. When I used what we used to communicate with my group I had to figure out how it fit with Swales characteristics of a discourse community. Its function was to inform each member about what’s going on and what’s happening with the team with our plans. I feel that I have a very little understanding of the research goal. For one appropriately integrate what I have from my sources I don’t feel I can say that I did. There wasn’t much learning rather than just doing what is asked seeing what the six ways Swales define a discourse community trying to hit every point with some edvidence.
Terrance S. Woods II
Mr. Trimble
ENG 1020
29 January 2014
Robotics Team: A Discourse community?
John Swales, a professor of linguistics with a Ph.D. from Cambridge University, argues about the definition of a discourse community. Swales, who is also the co-director of the Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English at the University of Michigan, has his response to, “Genre …show more content…
Analysis.” In this book, Swales lists his argument with six characteristics he defines as a discourse community. I will go over the six and how my robotics team is a discourse community by Swales definition. The Centerline Robotics team started a year ago and started really small at the beginning but had 4 members and one mentor. I was the first member to come every day and became team: leader, driver, builder, the assistant that makes reports on how the team is doing, promoter to get more team mates, programmer, and electronics leader. We also had another mentor that was behind the scene giving the First community our information about the team along with forums we signed to be a part of the team. The first competition was at our school in our new gym. We didn’t win but got highest rookie team to seed by themselves.
The first criteria of Swales 's definition for discourse communities is that they have a "broadly agreed set of common goals" (471). By this, Swales means that such groups can have goals that are spoken or unspoken. With unspoken goals, there is a consensus or everyone knows the goals and doesn’t need to be talked about. My group fulfills this definition by our goal being tacit or unspoken. When you first begin the object is to build a robot and compete for worlds. The First Robotics Competition sends out letters via email, which consist of forms to be signed and information about what upcoming events will happen before the season starts. For whatever school that provides this program, there is a sponsor, for example ours was J.C.Penny, and a few mentors to help with supervision of the team. Swales states that, “The goals are public.” This means for our group that we want our city or school neighborhood to know about the robotics team and to come support us. When talking to my principle in high school, Mr. John Summerhill, he explained how CL, centerline, use to have a robotics team, came on the pa with this information and about the meeting were we would sign these forums and met our mentors.
The second characteristic is that a discourse community has “mechanisms of intercommunication among its members.” (Swales 471) In robotics we have the internet to give information as well as everyone in the group has a cell phone to convey a message. Alyssa Lovell made our Facebook page, with this reason “It was very helpful for most students who had phones that died every meeting, most had Wi-Fi and a Facebook so we can let them know if anything comes up while they are not able to be called or get a text message.”The internet also helps with the FRC facts and questions page to help other teams with problems that arise. Emails, at the beginning of the year, are sent to the mentors to sign. It also contains information on upcoming events to get a head start. When the mentor has everything set for the team, an announcement is sent to Center Line high school via intercom, and in the morning announcements. This year we were all called down to the principal’s office.
The third characteristic is that a discourse community uses these participatory mechanisms” primarily to provide information and feedback.” (Swales 472) When everyone is gathered and wants to be a part of the team the mentor has contracts for them to sign. Our group used Gmail to insert out phone numbers, address and other contact information for the mentor and the whole team and First to contact if anything should come up.
Swales has another characteristic that a discourse community “utilizes and hence possesses one or more genres in the communicative furtherance of its aims” (Swales 472) this means that the team is sending information as it has through emails text social networking and using the school announcements. We use Facebook with new posts on how the robot is doing and some videos of the robot working. With Google we used Google drive to input people information, like a cell number, home number, address, etc.. This helped our group a lot mostly because we didn’t want to keep going over old news that was last week taking up time to work on the robot. We wanted progress, and that’s all.
The second to last characteristic of a discourse community is that the community has “acquired some specific lexis” (Swales 473). For one a lexis is just another way to say vocabulary, but within our group that most people wouldn’t know about. One phrase our mentor Jim says, “Don’t be a Brandon.” Means don’t destroy the robot by running it into a wall and knock everything over and bolts on the robot to come lose. A lot of the lexis, a small portion of people would know the names of the tools and the actions they perform. Some of the tools names are based on how nice and easy it makes the task. For one example wire stripers that we had last season and still have make taking the insulation of a cooper wire very easy so the name “sexy stripers” was born and used throughout the season.
The last and final characteristic of a discourse community, that Swale uses, is that the group must have a “threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discoursal expertise.” (Swales 473) Swales mean that there should be positions you can reach and a time where some members cannot be on the team but still a part of the team, for the robotics team. As stated before I was practically everything in the team. As the team grew I gave some positions away. Building was given to a female in out group, electronics where Brandon’s department and Hussin had to be the operator. What most teams had were: builders that went to electronics with few levels, programmers, and the drive team were whoever was the leader or the best in the field to perform actions need quickly. The last of the level would be a mentor an adult to oversee the team.
With Swales six characteristics I have shown that the Center Line robotics team is a discourse community.
All the hard work the each member did to learn all the new information to build a robot to come and say that we are not a discourse community is an insult that won’t be taken lightly. We were fortunate to have this opportunity with this program and has increased our knowledge and has open doors to new areas of a career for the students. I have shown that we have a goal, we have ways of members communicating, and ways that we communicate with the public. Swale argues that a discourse community has more genres to further progress, along with terms or lexis that the group knows and a few may not, and that we have levels in the
group.
Works Cited
Swales, John. “The Concept of Discourse Community.” Writing about Writing. Ed. Wardle, Elizabeth, and Doug Downs. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2011. 466-480: Print.
Joyce, Jim. Robotics Lead Mentor. Personal Interview. September 2013.
Lovell, Alyssa. Student. Personal Interview. September 2013.
Summerhill, John. Principle of Centerline Highschool. Personal Interview. September 2013.