Coaches Can Read, Too

              In “Coaches Can Read, Too” by Sean Branick he attacks his paper with three step method. This three step method includes the methods of: establishing a territory, establishing a niche and occupying the niche. What is meant by this is Branick begins by setting background for his topic, opening a inner topic that needs further research on the subject, and then filling in that topic with data and results.

                Branick begins this by telling how important coaching is in any situation. Coaches can range from professionals to your average Joe helping out on a peewee team. Branick goes on to say what makes a successful coach, whether at the professional or amateur level. This is establishing the territory. Branick is explaining that coaches are dynamic, intelligent, and a range of people participate in it, but only a few know how to be successful.

                Sean then begins to describe what skills are needed by those coaches to be successful.  Those skills are hinged around having multiple literacies. Coaches are dynamic in the fact that not only do they have to write play books, read scout report, write scout reports, and design team schedules, but also they have to read players, read situation and read the game. What Branick is doing here is known as establishing the niche.  

                Branick then occupies the niche by providing interviews before and after football games from coaches. This way Sean is able to give data and examples of what coaches are thinking, feeling and experiencing. Branick explains the goals, genres, multiple literacies, interpersonal literacies, situational literacies, and relationship between textual, situational, and interpersonal literacies which coaches have to deal with every day.

Learing to Serve

The question which Tony Mirabelli presents in “Learning to Serve” is clearly dealing with menus within privately owned restaurant and how an individual can have a understanding of them. On page 544 of “Writing about Writing” Mirabelli ask, “What is a menu and what does it mean to have a literate understanding of one?”

While Mirabelli was studying the literate understanding of a menu he used several methods of collecting data such as: participation, observation, documents, tape recordings interviews and transcriptions. Due to the fact that Mirabelli was a waiter himself created and edge to his study that was beneficial and invaluable.

            From Mirabelli trying to understand the literate application of a menu I gathered that his biggest finding is that a menu is far more complex than the simple text which it is organized into. Rather, menus are a tool and an invaluable facet that connect cooks, waiters/waitresses, and customers together into a woven team for the benefit of the costumer. The ability of a waiter or waitresses to read between the lines of a menu and present the customer with what they desire and still keep that presentation within the feasibility of the chef ability is mind blowing.  The menu can be looked at as a lock pick to the mind of the customer. With this lock pick the waiters/waitresses opens the mind of the customer and extract the information they need in order to create a tasteful and satisfying meal.

In conclusion I would have to say that Mirabelli’s collection of conversations between the waiter/waitresses and costumers is his strongest form of data. With this one can get a strong sense of the situation, tone, mood of the costumer and much more. From this Mirabelli can draw conclusions about the complexity of the discourse that comes from simplicity of a menu.

Project 4 Proposal

My proposal for the discourse community analysis is going to be about Morgan Do It Best Hardware. Morgan Do It Best Hardware is located in my hometown of McConnelsville, Ohio.  To introduce this community you have to first understand the community of Morgan County. Morgan County has a population of 15,054 as of 2010 according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Within the County the city of McConnelsville has a population of roughly 1,570 as of 2009. Of that 1,570, 1.6% are of a race other than white. So, as you can see the discourse of Morgan County is small and not diverse by any means. This discourse is a reflection of that which occurs at Morgan Do It Best Hardware, where I am currently employed. In this discourse community there are words, phrases, and terminology that are unique and unlike any other that it I know of, which makes studying the hardware fascinating. Proper English is not enforced by anyone and racial slurs run rampant in the majority of conversations; it’s almost as if Morgan County is a small town in the heart of the South that has been flung into a Northern American location.

It may be useful to analyze this group so that I can prove one way or the other if it is in fact a discourse community according to John Swales’ six characteristics of a discourse community. In the flip side, I personally already have my mind made up that Morgan Do It Best Hardware is a discourse community and it will be interesting to see other attributes of a discourse community that Swales, Gee, and Johns might have overlooked or not mentioned in there articles. In a sense I’ll be able to tack on my two cents to the conversation and seal it off in whatever fashion I see fit. In addition to being able to close out the conversation on discourse communities, I will be able to analyze my own experiences within the discourse community. From analyzing my experience I hope to understand how I contributed to that community and if I was ever truly accepted and brought into that community by the authorities present. Also I would like to examine whether or not I myself am an authority at the hardware. Being employed there part time for the past few years I have recognized slight changes in how others in the community react to what I say. Is this because I’m becoming an authority within the community or merely just now starting to be fully accepted?

During this paper I would like to incorporate two to three sources from “Writing About Writing” alone.  The dominant source is definitely going to be John Swales article, “The Concept of Discourse Community”. Not only will I be using Swales six characteristics of a discourse community but also I enjoyed some of the examples which Swales listed. Secondly I would like to use James Paul Gee’s article, “Literacy, Discourse, and Linguistics”, but I won’t be agreeing with Gee. Rather I would like to tell of Gee’s idea of “mushfake” and how although it is true at times, people can have multiple discourse communities at once and be fluent in all of them. Finally I would like to incorporate Elizabeth Wardle’s article, “Identity, Authority, and Learning to Write in New Workplaces”. From this article I plan on pulling out Wardle’s reference to Etienne Wenger’s three interrelated modes of belonging: engagement, imagination, and alignment. These three modes are present and active nearly everyday at the hardware. I would like to expand on these modes of belonging and break them down in terms of Morgan Do it Best Hardware.

Identity, Authority, and Learning to Write in New Workplaces

In “Identity, Authority, and Learning to Write in New Workplaces” Elizabeth Wardle tells of the three modes of belonging described by Sociologist Etienne Wenger. Wenger’s modes are referred to as engagement, imagination, and alignment.

Engagement can be described as perhaps earning your strips, so to speak. Engagement is when a newcomer to a specific work environment attempts to connect to “old-timers” of the network through common goals. The newcomer will identify goal and then do there best as to help with that goal in the hopes of becoming connected to that specific old-timer. Wardle emphasizes that engagement can be positive unless if it back-fires. If the newcomer struggles with connecting with the old-timer then this can create a poor imagine/identity. When applying this to the hardware which I work at one can see that as a new employee is hired they are eager to help with work in anyway possible, especially if it is doing projects with one of the mangers. If that new employee is successful in connecting with the old-timer at the hardware in turn they become successful and appreciated in that community. If they fail there is immediately a lack of connection with all the other employees.

Imagination is in a sense settling into the environment which you are newly accepted into. Now that you have become engaged you as the newcomer need to reach out and find new ways to make an impact. Utilizing your skills for everyone in that community to see and admire is important. This will help concrete yourself into that community if done correctly. After being hired for a few weeks new employees at the hardware typically will search for a dusty corner or unorganized shelf to attack and rearrange. Upon fixing-up that shelf it shows to others there dedication and imagination at thinking up ways to make the store better and more productive.

Alignment is the finally step. Become aligned with those in the community is difficult because it on a more personal level. Now that the newcomer has been accepted and showed there worth the old-timers open up a little more, opening up gives the avenue of creating boundaries in a relationship and finding common grounds of goals. When new employees at the hardware reach this step they begin to give there opinions to the mangers, offer ideas, and perhaps challenge decisions. If that specific employee pushes too much or tries to take on this role of alignment to quickly it can create bad blood and thereafter dislike throughout the staff.

Discourse Communities and Communities of Practice

      Both Swales and Gee during their articles gave their opinions on what discourse and discourse communities are. Swales’ idea of a discourse community and discourse was much lighter and open compared to Gee. Swales emphasized that a person can come and go from community to community without any trouble or major alteration to themselves as a person. Gee presents discourse and its communities as being harsh and critical. Unlike Swales, Gee believes that “floating” between discourses is an impossibility. If you are an outsider to a discourse community according to Gee you will either be rejected or have to “mushfake” to become accepted. Gee refers to these separations of acceptance and rejection as an individual dominant and nondominant home Discourses respectfully.

            Ann Johns adds to Swales and Gee’s discussion by presenting an angle to the topic not yet presented. Johns tells us that individuals are born into specific discourse communities that can not be chosen. These communities are what they are and can’t be avoided such as, families and culture.  Johns on the other hand states that an individual can choose what academic, interest group, belief, political, or profession community they prefer. Johns main purpose is to describe to us that individuals may be affiliated with many discourse communities but involved and interested in those groups at varying levels of importance.  She stresses that the basis and begin to all of these chosen communities is through the avenue of academia. Ann goes on to tell us that certain communities require a cost to be affiliated with them. By cost simply she is saying that each discourse community consumes an allotted amount of time in correlation to your dedication to that community. So if you were to look at Johns’ statements as an addition to Swales and Gee you could say that she agrees with Swales in a manner of speaking about being able to drift from community to community in cases such as: politics, profession, and others as stated before, but on the other hand there are some communities that can not be avoided and will be dominant to that individual such as, family and culture. Therefore, Johns seems to straddle between Gee and Swales, yet at the same time joining there ideas and thoughts.

Literacy, Discourse, and Linguistics

In “Literacy, Discourse, and Linguistics” James Paul Gee tells of “tests” that occur in discourse communities. These tests are used to identify whether or not a specific individual is part of a discourse community or rather a poser of that discourse community. For example, in a military discourse community the people within that community have been schooled on words, phrases, and symbols that are specific to that community. If another person claims to be apart of that discourse community these test will be able to clearly separate those that are truthfully within that community and those that aren’t.

            The most common example that I have notice has to be the separation of those growing up with technology and those without it. For the most part when receiving an email or text from members of my family that are of 50 years or older I can immediately notice a difference in there language compared to someone perhaps my age. Sentence structure and punctuation decreases rapidly when those of my generation write a casual email or text. Those of the older generation continue writing in standard and grammatically correct English no matter what the situation is. This difference can be picked up and identified quickly by the “testing” of outsiders to a discourse community as stated by Gee in his article.

"The Concept of Discourse Community"

1) A discourse community has a broadly agreed set of common public goals.

            John Swales is stating in this characteristic that any discourse community it has sets known goals within the community. For example, a football team knows that the overall goal of the team is to win games. People may join for perhaps what they believe to be a social advancement.

2) A discourse community has mechanisms of intercommunication among its members.

            During this portion Swales is telling that all discourse communities have a type of mechanism that they communicate through. Swales is stressing the communication in a discourse community isn’t limited. Rather discourse communities can rely on several different forms of communication besides direct speech with one another. Carrying on the football team example, one can see that a football team doesn’t always communicate through direct speech. There can be phone calls between coach, emails sent to inform on game cancelation, or weekly scouting reports drafted by the coaches and staff.

3) A discourse community uses its participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information and feedback.

            This is saying that in order to be considered as part of a discourse community you must participate in the exchanging of information. You may stand on the side lines of a football team every game and be a part of the team, but if you don’t go to practice and interact with people in that discourse community you really aren’t apart of it.

4) A discourse community utilizes and hence possesses one or more genres in the communicative furtherance of its aims.

            Swales is saying here that discourse communities are dynamic. If goals aren’t being met by a specific fashion within the group then that community adapts and transforms to fix the problem. For example, if the kicker for a football team isn’t consistently making field goals the coach may perhaps recruit soccer plays to kick for football team.

5) In addition to owning genres, a discourse community has acquired some specific lexis.

            This specific point is telling that discourse communities create a language that is native to that specific group. Continuing our football team discussion one can see that in this specific community there are symbols and letters that have specific mean. For example, TE (tight-end), QB (Quarterback), 3-4 defense, 5-2 defense and so on.

6) A discourse community has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discoursal expertise.

            In this last characteristic Swales tells us that discourse communities have a sense of hierarchy and linearity. You step onto a football team as a freshman. As a freshman you are taught and mentored by the seniors. Years go by and you become a senior. Now it is your turn to teach and instruct those that are new to the discourse community.