Post XVII

Tony Mirabelli’s main research question is the paragraph about the menu.  His research question is “What is a menu and what does it mean to have a literate understanding of one?”  The menu is different for customers and the staff that works at the restaurant, but is it the bridge that brings the understanding of customer and staff together.  Not only does the staff have to understand everything on the menu, but they must know what substitutes customers can make and know many different techniques to prepare the same food item.  Mirabelli went around being a waiter at the restaurant so he could have quality interaction with the customers and the staff at the restaurant.  Mirabelli collected filed notes like interviews with customers and interaction between customers and employees.  I feel that Mirabelli discovered that a menu isn’t just something to read and know, but it is a person to person literacy that satisfies customer and staff interactions.  Communication is key when surviving in the food industry.  

Proposal

I plan examining the discourse community of the Ohio University Rugby Football Club.  Being a member of the team for about five seasons now, I whole heartedly feel that I am completely immersed as a fully fledged member of this discourse community.  The rugby team here at Ohio University is a tight-knit group of people.  Every member of this discourse community is has their own unique personality that contributes to the overall make up of the team.  I know every member of the team on a person level, from the coach, to the veteran players, to the rookies, down to the people who have tried out but never finished.  I also personally know many of the alumni that have played here at Ohio University.

            As I mentioned before the Ohio University rugby team is a band of colleagues that would fight their hearts out for each other.  Our motto for the team is “Friendship and Togetherness”.  We end every meeting, practice, and game with a chant of our motto.  In my final paper I will examine more closely how people stay committed to the team and motivated to keep battling through a long, grueling season.  We have many members of the team how communicate clearly the team’s goals and what we all should be striving to do.  I specifically want to look at how we keep each other all on the same page and striving for the same goals.  I feel like everyone on the team is their own motivational speaker throughout a unforgiving season of pain, strive, and triumph.  When you have been around the team for a while you buy into what is being presented to you.  For a newcomer, I would like to also examine how we bring that person into our rugby family and keep them with us throughout their years at Ohio University.

            A rugby team can field fifteen players on the field.  This obviously isn’t the total number of people on the team; the whole member count is around thirty to forty-five players on a team.  This being said, many people will not be starters or play on the A-side.  In the final paper I want study how we communicate as a team to those players on the sidelines.  Everyone is important to the Ohio University rugby team and how we communicate our message of commitment and motivation to those bench players is key to keeping everyone solid in this discourse community.

            I feel like the rugby team is an interesting discourse community, it’s almost like a family.  Analyzing this discourse is useful because we can see how people stay motivated and committed through the rollercoaster of emotions in practice, games, and off the field issues.  I would like to see how being on the rugby team helps me to stay or get into other discourse communities, or relate to them.  I feel like I can possibly add to Gee’s 6 characteristics.  I feel like our fans are about of our rugby discourse community, even though they’re not on the field with us.  They help to keep us motivated, they cheer us on, and they donate money and time so that we can achieve our goals.  They might not be battling with us on the field, but we accept them as family with us too.

            I plan on using Ann M. Johns section about the cost of affiliation to a discourse community.  I feel that everyone has given up something to be on the rugby team.  I also feel like Wardle’s three modes of belonging will be accurate for the rugby discourse community.  I think I can relate how messing one of those modes up will spoil someone’s outlook on what their role is on the team. 

Works Cited

Johns, M. Anne.  “Discourse Communities and Communities Practice.”  Writing about Writing. Ed. 

                Elizabeth Wardle and Doug Downs.  Boston:  Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2011. 511-512.  Print

Wardle, Elizabeth.  “Identity, Authority, and Learning to Write in New Workplaces.”  Writing About

                Writing.  Ed.  Elizabeth Wardle and Doug Downs.  Boston:  Bedford/St. Martin’s,  524.  Print  

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Wardle describes how newcomers or rookies try to belong or get in a new community in, “Identity, Authority, and Learning to Write in New Workplaces.”  The three modes are engagement, imagination, and alignment.  Newcomers go through these phases or modes to when trying to belong to a new community.

                Engagement is how a newcomer works with an older more experienced person.  This is can be how they interact or the relationship they have with each other.  Waddle believes that can be both positive and negative for a new comer.  Negatively, a newbie could feel lost or without a sense of purpose in this new community.This works perfect for the rugby team.   Everytime a new kid shows up to play they look absolutely lost when we start up a game of “touch” rugby. But the older guys direct them and get a feeling of what this new guy can do, and then go from  there.  Imagination occurs when the newbie starts coming into themselves and finds  out where they fit in in the community.  This is when a new kid has certain characteristics that fit a certain position on the rugby team.  We’ll do many drills and the more the newbie evolves the more we’ll know, and they’ll know about themselves.  This way we can see where they fit.  Alignment involves being able to find common ground with vets and to explain your opinions.  The newbie feels comfortable and prepared enough to start voicing their opinion and also agreeing with the vets point of view.  Alignment can result in a loss of self as well.    As for the rugby team, we all see how things are run and that’s the smoothest way to do things,  it’s like everyone is on the same page.

Discourse Communities and Communities of Practice

Swales and Gee are conversing about what it means to be in a discourse community.  Swales has 6 points about what a discourse community is, or what it means to belong to be in a discourse community.  These 6 points range from certain lingo a discourse community may use to what it take fro a discourse community to survive.  Swales points also mention what goals a discourse community have or are trying to accomplish.  Gee is a little more cut-throat with his views on a discourse community.  He says that you can belong or not belong to a discourse community.  Gee says that we mushfake or BS are way through certain communities, but not officially belong to that certain discourse community.  Unlike Swales who believes that we can kind of be involved in discourse communities.

I think that Johns major difference is she describes what sacrifices people need to make to be in a certain discourse community.  In WAW she gave 2 examples of how people lost or sacrificed their families or friends in academia to belong to a higher discourse community.  She also mentions things about conventionalism and anticonventionalism, she says that the longer a person stays in a certain discourse community, the more that the person can break the rules.  Johns also says that there are many discourse communities to belong to like, the arts, sports, and humanities.