Swales and Glenn

SUMMARIES:

SWALES: In his article “The Concept of Discourse Community”, John Swales attempts to describe what he thinks a discourse community is. His article is a chapter from his book that he wrote called Genre Analysis. He refers to the argument over the social constructed nature of language use and to arguments about what a discourse community is and how it is different from a speech community. Swale goes on to define his 6 characteristics of a discourse community.

GLENN: In her article “Constructing Consumables and Consent: A Critical Analysis of Factory Farm and Industry Discourse” Cathy B. Glenn discusses animal rights, the specific discourse surrounding factory farms, and the implications of said discourse to the larger culture. She argues that the factory farm discourse has implemented doublespeak to mislead audiences by being misleading and disingenuous.She also looks into the different rhetorical methods used to construct discursive practices and the conventions that have helped us to create this discourse. 

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

1.QD #5 on WAW page 480

A discourse community that I have been involved in would be a competitive cheerleading team. As a team we had a set of goals, intercommunication, and a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content. To be a successful team you have to have all of these characteristics. It’s lexis would be the entire routine that we have to be able to memorize and perform. It’s genre would be using music in the routines that are popular songs that people can relate to. 

2. For example all of the commercials for acne medication. They show all of the before and after pictures of people, with a lot of acne, then with perfect skin. Most of the time the medicines don’t work and you still end up having acne. I find these ads annoying and frustrating because they are so fake and try to make it seem like it will help you.

OPINIONS:

SWALES: I didn’t find this article very interesting. It just wasn’t that appealing. It wasn’t really something that I enjoyed reading. I don’t think it will be helpful to me. I don’t think that the information is important for me. These ideas compare to my own experiences somewhat though because I’ve been a part of a discourse community, most people can relate to that.

GLENN: I found this article more interesting than Swales. I liked how it showed a specific discourse community. I like animals so it wasn’t that boring to read about. These ideas don’t really compare to my own experiences. I didn’t really like when they talked about killing and eating the animals. I don’t like meat that much.