#5 My Discourse Community

        Helllllooooooo everyone! It feels like it has been a while since we have written a blog. I have to get my groove back again. Anyway, I did not attempt to read John Swales expert nor did I look at it in fear of it being like Ms. Devitt's lovely article...ha. So what we talked about in class is how I will be writing  this. I still do not fully understand what a discourse community is. Maybe there is a discourse community in understanding discourse communities! Well sorry is my analysis is way off. 

My Discourse Community
(not all who I work with, just some)

For an example of what I think is a discourse community, I am using one that applies to my life. For those of you who have read some of my previous blogs you all know, I work at A Delight Of France Bakery. We not only sale baked goodies but also breakfast and lunch 7 days a week. As well as Friday night dinners only from April to end of September.

From what we discussed in class, a discourse community has 6 major characteristics. I will explain why working at the bakery, we are apart of a discourse community.These 6 definitions are taken directly from Professor Flewelling's powerpoint. 

#1: A discourse community has a broadly agreed set of common public goals.
At the bakery, we are constantly talking about common goals and expectations that should be met as a staff. The owner of the bakery, is constantly telling us that customer service is our number one goal over everything else. She is always telling us to interact with customers and ask them about their day. Her famous line that we have all heard time and time again is, "Our food can taste mediocre but if our customer service is amazing, I guarantee people will come back". The bakery really does have great food, but I have to admit, as a team all of us are super great at customer service and take that goal very seriously.

#2: A discourse community has mechanisms of intercommunication among its members.
The bakery is an old building with older technology. So while working, the main form of communication we use among each other are what is called a "guest check". Workers who are writing the ticket must write legibly or else the cooks will get confused leaving the possibility of an order being messed up.

#3: A discourse community uses its participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information and feedback.
I am not entirely sure what this means...but as a team, when going up to customers and interacting with them, we are constantly asking how did everything taste? what was your favorite part of the meal? are you coming back again? So as employees are are constantly looking for feedback on how we can do better or praising the people who were complimented. Also, on the bakery website there a place to contact the owners! So if one does want to write a review our owner can be contacted.

#4: A discourse community utilizes and hence posses one or more genres in the communicative furtherance of its aims.
A genre that was just discussed previously is writing those guest tickets. Other genres that we use to further communicate our goals of great customer service is social media! The bakery has its own Instagram account. Follow @adelightoffrance. Our Instagram account is there for the customers! It tells customers if we are having any special promotions or a new pastry on the menu. The account shows that the bakery has more to offer then just breakfast, lunch, and pastry's! The bakery also does wholesale and catering. There is also a bakery website customers can access as well.

#5: In addition to owning genres, a discourse community has acquired some specific lexis.
As discussed in another blog I talked about the kind of language we use to write our guest checks. In order to be fast and efficient, we use abbreviations. Only the workers and the cooks know what we mean. The previous examples I used were Mex. M XX(nay nay) or CR b.fast (bac). Those stand for Mexican Mocha no whip cream and Croissant Breakfast Sandwich with bacon.

#6: A discourse community has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discourse expertise.
The workers I have in my discourse community all must of had at the very least customer service experience with the ability  to adapt and learn quickly to the fast pace food business.

Well that is all I got folks! So I hope my analysis was okay on my discourse community. I hope everyone has a good day. See you all tomorrow.

Xoxo,
Allison Starr

#4: 3 and 3

Quick tangant from our assignment: 

Me this morning.
via GIPHY

My parents left for a vacation to Europe this morning without me. Sad morning as I said goodbye to them at 3:30am!!!! Which by the way I could not go back to sleep which was highly frustrating. So I got 3 hours of sleep. While laying awake after they left I was thinking to myself well shoot, here I am trying to better my future by getting an education (which is a good thing) but I missed an amazing opportunity to travel and see the world. Soooo on that note, take into consideration I am very sleepy so I apologize in advance if this blog totally blows. 

Any who...when I first opened the link to our optional readings I noticed right away a lot of the readings had to do with politics. I am not the biggest fan of reading about this years election. There is so much garbage out there I would rather my mind stays clear. What I did like though was every article that I read was short, sweet, and to the point. They were all super easy reads compared to Ms. Devitt.

 In my opinion, I enjoyed reading the JSTOR articles a lot better than the opinioned ones. What appealed to me is that they were more fact based arguments with subtle opinions from the author. The three JSTOR articles I read were "Where American Public Schools Came From" by Livia Gershon, "How Does the Language of Headlines Work? The Answer May Surpise You" by Chi Luu, and "Stranger Things" and The Psychic Nosebleed" by Liz Tracey. All three of these articles valued a strong ethos. All three authors seemed knowledgeable about the subject they were discussing. They used the research of others to back up their argument to make them more credible. In just a short amount of words, these authors got their point across and created a trust with who was reading. I never watched "Stranger Things" before, but after reading Tracey's article, I found her credible by her using sources. Even though I did not know everything she was talking about since I did not know the full background story of the show, it was still an interesting read. It makes me want to watch it. I also really enjoyed reading the article about headlines. Luu mentioned in the article something called Clickbate. They are essentially attention grabbing headlines that do not lead you to a real article to read. Luu took a topic people can relate to which made it interesting while at the same time getting her point across how these headlines catch you in. 

OH my goodness. No joke I am falling asleep. I cannot stay up. Just a little bit more. Cannot do it. 

Ironically here I am voicing my opinion on which type of article I like better, and I did not like the Op Ed ones. It is much easier to right about your opinion than to do research. So I get why authors would rather just say what they think. The only work it takes is to make what you have in your head sound good on paper. Op Ed reminds me of blogging in a way. What you want to say you can say it. It is after all your opinion. Granted, authors are doing a lot more than voicing their opinion they are also trying to convince the reader to think how they think. Now that can be more challenging. Op Ed authors appeal to pathos to evoke emotions out of people, good or bad. These articles are written to get people thinking and so that what they wrote can be a topic of discussion. 

Alright my friends. It is time for me to take a long nap! I am so sorry for this hot mess of a blog. 

Hoping to get my beauty sleep, 

Allison Starr 

#3 Memes

We have all seen the famous poster that is here on the right with our countries dear old Uncle Sam. Just like what was discussed in class about Rosie the Riveter, this poster came out during World War I to persuade men to enlist in the army. Although Rosie the Riveter did not come out until World War II, they both are very similar in the sense that these posters were used as propaganda in order for men and women to help with the war efforts.


After reading "Memes and affinities: Cultural replication and literacy education" by Michele Knobel and Colin Lankshear, as a social science major with a passion for history, Uncle Sam was the first meme to pop into my head. Knobel and Lankshear define memes as "contagious patterns of cultural information that are passed from mind to mind and that directly shape and generate key actions and mindsets of a social group"(1). I would say from this definition of a meme, the "I want you" poster that started in 1916 was passed on from generations to generations in order for us to know of it today. This meme has survived for 100 years. I find that so crazy.

According to Knobel and Lankshear, there are three things that create a successful meme. Those are fidelity, fecundity and longevity. Fidelity can be defined as the ability of a meme to be remembered. A successful meme is one that can easily be passed on. Fecundity is the "rate as which an idea or pattern is copied and spread...the more quickly a meme spreads, the more likely it will capture robust and sustained attention, and be replicated and distributed"(2). There are tons of examples of memes that exhibit fecundity. Other than Uncle Sam and Rosie the Riveter, think of Ryan Gosling and his "Hey Girl" memes. Those have gained so much popularity that a book has been published with all of the memes that have been created of just him alone. Lastly, longevity is a very simple concept. The longer a meme can exist, the greater of chance it has to copied.

The Uncle Sam "I want you" meme, shows it has fidelity, fecundity and longevity. It has fidelity because every student in the U.S. has as the least seen and talked about this poster. If you have never seen the original, maybe you have seen one of the copies I have posted to the right. It exhibits fecundity because this idea has clearly spread. This meme has been copied with famous movies and people that are relevant to today's society and culture. It most certainly has longevity because as I mentioned earlier, this meme has been around for 100 years.  

To be honest, I do not think this meme will go away. It played a huge part in the history of America. As long as Americans and other countries for that matter keep on learning about Uncle Sam, he will continue to be around for many years to come. 

I hope you enjoyed the blog post and the memes! It has been fun writing about this. I think my favorite remakes are between Captian American or the Star Wars one. 

Xoxo, 
Allison Starr

#2 Genre

How my mind was while reading Devitt. 

"Teaching Critical Genre Awareness" by Amy Devitt was my first academic read in a long time. The last time I had to read and analyze from what seemed to be a chapter of an academic book for teachers, was about three years ago. 

While reading this, I lacked confidence in analyzing what Devitt was really saying. My brain felt like the picture to the left. Tripped out. I spend my time reading romantic novels. So bare with me as I try to decipher what Devitt means by genre and how important it is to be aware of it. I will also explore the different types of genres that occur in my everyday life. 

Amy Devitt 

Before diving into what Devitt had to say, I first researched a little bit about her. Amy Devitt is a professor at the University of Kansas and received her Ph.D. in English Language and Literature from the University of Michigan. According to her website, she defines herself as a "writer, teacher, speaker and a scholar". She has published three books and it should not be to anyones surprise that her favorite topics include rhetorical genres and english grammar.  

Devitt defines genres as "social and rhetorical actions; they develop their languages and forms out of rhetorical aims and contexts shared by groups of users" (342). In other words, my take on this was that genres are a way for writers to persuade readers through a common framework that readers can relate to. There are all different types of genres in writing that are not limited to the classic five paragraph essay we all learned to love and hate. Devitt wants teachers to explore the variety of genres out there and to not limit their students. Later on in this blog, I will discuss the different genres that occur in my everyday life.

Devitt also explores what she calls genre awareness. She argues that "a conscious attention to genres and their potential influences on people and the ability to consider acting differently within genres" is important (347). In this, she is trying to say that the ability to identify genres in various different contexts is an important skill to acquire. In doing so, it allows a person to notice the impact a genre has and how it could persuade what is being written. Devitt also explains that "without developing their genre awareness, people are more at the mercy of existing genres and existing power structures and dynamic"(347). The five paragraph essay is a perfect example of a genre we have all been at one point or another at the "mercy" of. I am sure most of you, just like me, before this class thought that the five paragraph essay was the end all be all. To our relief, there is so much more than that. Without realizing it, our everyday lives have writing genres too. 

In my life, I would consider texting, emailing, writing food orders at my job, and even this blog as a genre. Texting is a genre mostly everyone in the 21st century has experienced. Texting can consist of a combination of full sentences, abbreviations, pictures, and one cannot forget emojis. Texting is an informal genre that I experience everyday. Writing food orders, is another informal genre I experience. As I mentioned before in my pervious blog post, I work at a Delight Of France bakery. There I write down food orders. As a worker, we all have certain abbreviations and terms we use to write down an order faster. Everyone who works there has a common understanding on what these abbreviations mean. For example, some of the abbreviations  we use are, "CR b.fast (bac)  and Mex Mocha XX (nae nae)". I am sure given thought you could figure them out but without being a worker there or even knowing the context of the menu it would be hard to understand. Oh and by the way, they mean croissant breakfast sandwich with bacon and a double shot Mexican mocha no whip cream. Whip or Nae Nae...get it? 

 For me, emailing is a more of a formal genre. I use email to mostly communicate with my professors. My emails look like a formal letter with complete sentences and sometimes attachments. I am sure not to use abbreviations when writing my emails. I want to have a professional presence when communicating with my professors. 

Over all, despite my struggles with reading Devitt's insight on genres, I thought it was an interesting read. I am excited to explore the different kinds of genres we will be learning about in this class. I hope everyone had an amazing Labor Day weekend and will see you all in class Wednesday! 

Xoxo,
Allison Starr