For
my discourse community I believe I will focus on Greek life in
general instead of just fraternities. I believe that Greek life is
its own discourse community because it fills all the requirements of
one.
All
Greek organizations have a set of goals even though the =y vary form
organization to organization. In general most Greek organizations
strive to meet certain GPA requirements and almost all of them have a
code that they try to live by. Also as an organization we are
required to fulfill community service as well.
Another
way Greek life is a Discourse community is that we a means of
communication. We have a messaging service that allows us to talk to
each other. We can use Chapter Spot or even a Facebook group to
communicate quickly.
We
also exchange information and ideas at weekly meetings and provide
each other feedback.
Another
element we have is that we have formal procedures and a hierarchy we
follow and respect.
We
have also developed many specialized words not found outside of Greek
life we use when we wish to communicate.
The
last way we are a discourse community is that we are selective about
who we accept and we keep our numbers limited.
I
am interested in this community because I am apart of it and I am
passionate about it as well. I believe I will interview two of my
friends, one guy, and one girl, to get both sides of the group. I
can also use our message board to add to my paper.
Hi Alex,
ReplyDeleteThis is a good start. You'll want to be able to provide specific examples regarding how the discourse community fulfills Swales' characteristics though. So what are the specialized words, etc?
One way to add tension to this study might be to think about different attitudes individuals outside the discourse community have about Greek organizations. Hazing? Drinking? Community service? What are some stereotypes about Greeks? If you can pinpoint and focus on one of these you could evoke more interest by trying to challenge these stereotypes or "constructs."
Something else you'll want to do is try to find a particular concept or theory from the readings to focus on. Ideally, this would be something that lines up with the above goal, if you go that route. For instance you might try to show that to "enculturate" into the group and gain authority- members have to do a certain amount of community service. I have to admit I don't know a lot about frats so I'm interested in what you'll do here.
Another thing to focus on might be Johns' "levels of community." In your proposal, you talk about how you want to focus on shared characteristics of Greek organizations. You might be able to add to her discussion of how smaller d.c.'s share discourse conventions of a broader category. Just some ideas. I hope these help guide your interviews and data collection.