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.

I would have to say my fraternity, and all of Greek life in general, is its own discourse community.  Swakes gives his criteria for a discourse community, and i believe Greek life fits it.
his first criterion is that it have a set of goals.  Greek life has this in spades.  We all have an agreed upon GPA we have to meet, we have community service requirements, and we all strive to better ourselves.
We also have a means of communication.  We have a messaging service we us to talk to each other.
We also have a method of feedback when we exchange dialog with each other.  Another thing that makes us a discourse community is the fact we have membership fees, as we all use many methods of communication to communicate.  Also we have specialized words not found outside of Greek life.  The last way we are discourse community is the at we keep a limited amount of members.

9

I believe that technology shapes the writing landscape. Dennis Baron states that “the computer is simply the latest step in a long line of writing technologies. In many ways its development parallels that of the pencil” (425). I do agree with him on this but I believe he overlooks the impact that technology has had on writing. Even the pencil changed the way people wrote. I believe that the computer has already changed literature. With the advent of blogs and other instances of personal media I don't see how Baron cant see that writing will change. Twitter is a great instance of this. Twitter is a very useful tool. People can use it many ways. Some people just put short messages about what their doing but others try to put short paragraphs. The key to twitter is that there is a character limit. This causes people to have to think about what there going to say and edit their work, which is unlike anything that has come before it.

I was very fortunate growing up. I went to a fairly wealthy school system so I always had access to technology. I remember how in elementary school, about once a week, they would bring in the laptop cart and we would spend the class working on writing or word processing. This was very beneficial to my ability to write. I learned to use the different tools at my disposal to perfect my writing and spelling. Computers were not new to me however; I had a computer as long as could remember. My dad was in IT so he wanted me to learn how to use a computer from a young age. He would spend a great deal of time after he got off work to play computer games with me and show me how some systems work. His influence has lead me to pursue a career in the same field as him and has shaped my life profoundly.

reflections

Alex Douglas

In the past 10 years there has been no bigger influence on my knowledge than Wikipedia. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia that anyone can edit and it contains articles and information that other encyclopedias may not have. The main strength of Wikipedia, its ease of editing, is also its main controversy. I recently have had the experience of editing and adding to a Wikipedia article.

When I was trying to decide what article I should edit it was recommended that I do an article on something relevant to my major so I could put it on my resume, so I chose Vodafone UK, a telecommunications company. This is where Wikipedia's free editing is a shortcoming. Anyone can change my article. They could reword sections, add new information, or even cut out sections. This could be problematic, as in a few years what my employer sees may or may not be my original writing. This kind of editing brings up Poters' concept of intertextuality. As Writing About Writing puts it, “intertextuality is the idea that all texts contain “traces” of other texts and that there can be no text that does not draw on some ideas form other texts.” (86) This means that just as someone who edits my article is borrowing from my text, what I wrote is based on someone elses' work. I believe that this infers that even if someone were to change parts of my work, it would still remain partially mine, as my work was the starting point.

As I started to write my article I found that finding information that meets Wikipedia's credibility standards. The little information that I did find was hard to put into the article without making it look like it was directly copied. I then found that there was too little information about Vodafone, so I began looking for a new article.

To find a new article I had to go threw the stubs and start class articles to find one that I could edit successfully. I ran into a few problems at this juncture. I found that many of the start class articles were too developed for me to add new information conversely, almost all of the stub class articles were empty. After a few hours of searching I was able to find an article that I could relate to, The Dublin Irish Festival, a annul festival that takes place in my home town.

Finding information about the Irish Festival was not as hard as for the Vodafone article. I was able to find a few news articles about awards the Festival had won and I was also able to find good information on their own website. Using this information I was able to put it into my own words and add a few sections to the article.

The actual editing of Wikipedia was pretty straight forward. There were a few codes you had to know to link articles or cite references but they were easy to learn and implement. The only trouble I had was that I didn't like the font that you have to edit in, but that's a fairly minor complaint.

In the end I found that Wikipedia is a great resource and encyclopedia. I learned a lot from my editing experience and I believe that I will edit an article in the future.

7

When Brandt stated that sponsors always have something to gain from sponsorship, i felt this was kind of obvious.  She brings up how little leagues have sponsors from local businesses.  these business are not just being altruistic.  they have an alternative motive.  They are trying to bring in business by sponsoring the team, and they are hoping that their new customers will offset the costs of their sponsorship.
I have been involved with sponsorship in my own life.  For my fraternities' 5k, I had to go around and ask companies if they would want to sponsor us.  Everyone that sponsored us knew that they would be able to benefit from the exposure.

Rhetorical situation- is when a situation is created by writing or language.  The only time I had ever heard someone use the word rhetorical is when they say they are being rhetorical.
Discourse-Discourse is when writing or language motivation action. An example of this would be a speech or some other type of persuasive writing.
Audience-I think the audience is anyone that reads or is meant to read your prose. Grant-Davie uses the example of a Coca-Cola advertisement but I think that any type of writing has a audience that it is meant for.
Exigence- I think exigence is anything that communication can solve.  I thought of this as something as basic as how people use words to communicate.
Constraints-I believe that constraints are anything that limit the solution to the problem.   An example of a constraint would be not wanting to cause a side effect.