5: Discourse Communities

Not gonna lie, it took me a while to think of a discourse community that I’ve been a part of. But when I finally thought of one, the ideas just came flooding in and I immediately thought it was the perfect thing to talk about. 

Music is a big part of who I am and constitutes a big portion of what my interests are. Naturally, this had to have come from something. My love for music just got bigger with the different music groups/ensembles I’ve been a part of. Since my freshman year of high school up until now, I’ve been a part of marching band, wind ensemble, jazz band, orchestra, and even serving on the worship team for a church I used to attend as the keyboard player. 

I believe that the music world is a discourse community in itself but I will be identifying the key characteristics of what makes it one through music groups and ensembles. 

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

A common public goal of a music ensemble as a discourse community is to work and play together to achieve a superior sound in order to perform for the public and music enthusiasts. 

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

In any type of music ensemble, you will find that there are different sections within the actual group that work in closer in order to help the overall goal of playing better together. There are different ways the director communicates among the members of an ensemble. While playing a piece, the director’s job is to conduct. The most basic part of conducting is moving the arms in a continuous pattern simultaneously (for a piece that is in 4/4, it is usually down left, right, up when using the right arm and down, right, left, up when using the left arm). The musicians playing understands that when the director’s arms move down a new measure is starting, and this is helpful because it keeps the ensemble to play in unison and not play their parts as individuals but rather like they belong in a group. Even though this type of communication is not done through words, it is common understanding by both the conductor and those being conducted without the need for further explanation. There are countless more examples I can think of, but this was the most basic example that I think applies to almost all music ensembles. 

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

In a music ensemble setting, participation is a big part of achieving the common goal of being able to perform a piece of music with exceptionally as a whole group. This is achieved mainly through participation and being actively involved in practices with the whole ensemble. Music ensembles go through hours and hours of practice just to perform for an hour or two for their audience. The “information” and “feedback” in a music ensemble setting refers to the director’s different orders when practicing and conducting with the whole group, or different sections in the ensemble (such as woodwinds, brass, percussion, etc.). The information and feedback provided by the music director is considered a participatory mechanism in helping to make the group better as a whole.  

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

Music comes in all forms, whether it be jazz, classical, rock, or even contemporary. This means that there are different groups that cater to different audiences when it comes to music groups and ensembles. The kind of music ensembles I was involved with in the past were jazz band, marching band, wind ensemble, and orchestra. The music community is considered a discourse community because it is not limited to just one genre. The various types of music appeals to distinct audiences and this further pushes more purposes for music to be a big part of different cultures. 

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

Reading music is, obviously, a very big part of being able to play the music. I consider this to be the specific lexis that is relevant to this discourse community. The first thing on every staff line is a clef. This tells the musician which notes they will read and because the notes are different in a treble clef than it is on a bass clef. To make it simple, the treble clef is usually played with the right hand and the bass clef is usually played with the left hand for a pianist. Of course this is different for each instrument, but usually the higher pitched instruments are played with the treble clef (violin, flute, clarinet, etc.) while the bass clef is played on the lower pitched instruments (cello, trombone, tuba, etc.). This is an example of a lexis that can be found in the music discourse community. Another example are the dynamics that indicate to the player how loud to play a specific part of the piece. It varies throughout the piece, so it is essential that every single player follows it and plays it according to the sheet music so that no single person stands out while everyone else plays a pianissimo (indicated by pp in the sheet music) dynamic. 

treble clef 

 

bass clef 

dynamic markings 

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

The older the people in a music ensemble are, the more it usually means that the group is more experienced and can therefore play at a higher level than, say, a middle school or high school band. Music groups and ensembles are their own discourse communities because there are countless numbers of groups out there that fit specific requirements for different players of various ages, experience and level. But in the end, these groups work together in order to perform their best for their specific audience. 

I actually really enjoyed writing this blog post, so I'm sorry if it was too long for anyone to read. If you can't tell, I get really excited when I talk about anything music related and start to babble on and on and on. But anyways, hope this didn't bore you too much! 

- Julianna Duque 

4: Opinions

The power of opinions is really exemplified today, especially with all of the current events. I think that people like to read opinionated things regardless of consenting/differing opinions because they legitimize our opinions. If we read something that agrees with what we think, our opinion is reaffirmed; if we come across something that goes against our opinion, we become so heated that we shut down and just think that we’re automatically correct and whoever wrote it must not have their facts correct.

In the NYT “Why Facts Don’t Unify Us,” there is a quote that reads. “In the case of information about ourselves…people normally alter their beliefs more in response to good news. In certain circumstances, that will also be true for political issues.. But at times, good political news can threaten our deepest commitments, and we will give it less weight.”  This reminded me of one of my favorite cracked articles of all time, titled “6 Harsh Truths That Will Make You a Better Person.” Point number 6 (actually point #1, aka the most important point made) says, “Everything inside you will fight improvement,” that we “intentionally interpret…criticism as an insult” and we “focus on the messenger to avoid hearing the message.” 

I know this is true because I’m guilty of it, especially when reading opposing opinions on things that I’m really passionate about. For example, when reading the TownHall Op-Ed about liberals, I was super shook, in a bad way, because the opinions of John Hawkins went against my beliefs. The extremely negative way he portrayed liberals based on liberal ideals got me thinking, NOPE, I’m out, and had me thinking about all the “wrong” things that people on the opposite end of the spectrum feel (I’m actually moderate leaning left, but it still fired me up).

But I think this is why Op-Ed articles can be great source of information. Op-Ed articles are written in a way that is really opinionated while still having a varied source of facts, sometimes even complete with links to their sources of info. Reading different Op-Eds revolving on the same thing can provide something like the two halves of whole. “Liberals Are the Sort of People Who…” and “Trump’s history of corruption is mind-boggling…” both are very opinionated articles on the same topic that take opposing views. Both Op-Eds are charged with negatively contorted words about the candidate that they don’t support, and don’t exactly say things that are wrong, just things that have been phrased to highlight what they mean to an extent that is so exaggerated that it sounds wrong, specifically to the person whose was already pre-inclined to disagree. I can provide a personal example for this. Like I stated, reading“Liberals Are the Sort of People Who…” had me shook, to the point where I was just -

I guess that the things pointed out weren’t necessarily wrong, the same way that opinions can’t actually be wrong. Still, the way he displayed his thoughts, going against my own personal beliefs, just sounded wrong. On the other hand, “Trump’s history of corruption is mind-boggling…” sit pretty well with me. I agree with what was said passionately, and I just wanna wave the points made in the article in front of people who say “at least Trump isn’t corrupt.” But like “6 Harsh Truths That Will Make You a Better Person” and “Why Facts Don’t Unify Us,” (though in a much nicer way) said/implied, we tend to respond more strongly to information when it affirms a belief and less likely to respond to information when it doesn’t.

On to JSTOR articles though - these are really fact-based. The tone remains relatively neutral and the articles objective, relaying facts without the focus of the opinion of the writer. So while Op-Eds seem (to me, at least), to highlight either their opinions through fact-based argument or fact-based argument throught opinions, JSTOR articles simply highlight the facts without opinion. I couldn’t see JSTOR articles firing anyone up the way an Op-Ed would, but JSTOR articles do relay information just as powerfully as Op-Eds, since the lack of opinions mean that we can focus more on the information and formulate our own responses based on fact. Which might be just as well, considering the lack of opinion may make us more open to accepting the facts as they are. 

2: Genre

 Even though the length of the reading and the reading’s sophisticated diction originally put me off, reading what Devitt had to say about genres had me like :

I've always thought of the word genre as different categories to sort things like movies, music, and literature, and never more than that surface level meaning of the word. I’ve never considered it in the depth that Devitt goes into it, or even thought that genre had an effect or purpose beyond giving the intended audience a way to choose what they are going to process. Devitt’s definition of genre is that they are "social and rhetorical actions: they develop their languages and forms out of rhetorical aims and contexts shared by groups of users" (342); to me, this means that genre is a way to connect groups of people who are involved within that genre. This goes hand in hand "existing power structures and dynamics” (347) of genre.

I consider texting, emailing, and my academic writing as the different genres I encounter in day to day life. Texting, like with many other, is the one I most commonly use. When texting, the amount of emojis, slang/proper wording, ALL CAPS, and keyboard smashing I use depends on who I’m talking to and what we’re talking about. I text my sister very differently from the way I text my friends and parents and the people that I babysit for. When I email someone, I usually am much more formal than in a text, as when emailing I usually contact professors and potential employers, and so I have to be a lot more formal in my writing than if I was just going to text someone. In my academic writing, my writing is probably going to be much more structured - unless its for this blog, which is a more informal genre anyway - than a short email or text. I’m also going to put much more thought and time into writing academically than I would when sending rapid texts and short emails. In a way, this is an example of how writers take up the ideology of their genre. As the genre changes the way I approach the genre also changes, be it texting, emailing, or academic writing.

One form of writing that Devitt criticizes is “explicit genre teaching,” as she states that this limits genre and that there are better forms of teaching genre that do not limit the writer to a set structure. One form/example of this that I can really relate to my life is the five-paragraph essay. From elementary school onward the five paragraph essay was the holy grail of getting that A; to master it meant to have an advantage when teachers graded. I had a 10th grade English teacher grade essays entirely on the structure of the five paragraph essay, complete with a checklist for each paragraph - the actual content of the essay was only the deciding factor between an A- and an A+. I do think that the formulaic structure of that writing form introduced and advocated from an early age affected me as a writer, and it limited my freedom in writing, thus making me dread writing essays, but also diminished my will to really grow as a writer, as I just wanted to get the essay over with. Even beyond essays were the creative writing assignments with word count limits, supposedly “free-written” journals that had to have specific vocabulary words in order to be marked as passing, and even science lab reports that were limited to a certain number of pages. Because of explicit genre teaching, people are limited in their creativity. Devitt fears that this way of teaching will cause everyone to write very similarly to each other, and that critical genre awareness becomes limited as well.

For the most part I agreed with Devitt’s points. And after reading her work, I am going to put more thought and consideration into importance of genre and what it means in my life and society. 

3: Memes

Now that I think about it, I’ve never actually had to define what a meme was to anyone. Besides my parents (who are the only people I know that don’t have a Facebook account), most people already know what I mean when I mention, or talk about a meme. After reading Davison’s short scholarly article about internet memes, I’ll finally have a definition for anyone that asks me what memes are in the future. 

In "The Language of Internet Memes" by Patrick Davison, an internet meme is defined as a “piece of culture, typically a joke, which gains influence through online transmission” (122). Although I’ve never been really able to define what a meme was prior to today, the main thing that pops into my head when I think of the word “meme” are different recognizable pictures that have funny catchphrases edited on, or captioned with the picture. 

One meme that particularly stands out to me is the one of Julie Andrews when she played Maria Von Trapp in the original Sound of Music movie. The meme is the one of her on top of a hill/on an open green field with her arms outstretched as she smiles and looks like she has no worries in the world. 

Like always, it’s taken me almost two hours just to type this much of the blog post, so it’s no surprise that this particular meme is the one I thought of. I realized halfway through typing this that I didn’t really have to try so hard when choosing a meme to talk about. The right one will just pop up when the time was right. And it did. 

I feel like a lot of us in the class have related to this meme countless times in the past. This especially applies to me because of my horrible habit of procrastinating everything until the very last second. I remember having to do winter/spring break assignments in high school the day they were due because I hadn't touched them in the three to four weeks I was off from school. I've gotten better at managing my time since high school, but I still procrastinate from time to time (more like all the time still). I think about Julie Andrews as Maria Von Trapp whenever I don't do the work I'm supposed to be doing.  

I chose this meme because of how versatile it is. As you can see, this is the same exact meme with a different caption. I connect with it on a strong level, and I'm sure a lot of you do as well. It just shows how a picture without context can be turned into something that suddenly a lot of people can relate to. As a struggling college student slowly drowning in her own tears and massive student debt, I feel like it's getting easier for me to accept things when they don't turn out the way I want them to. And Julie Andrews as Maria Von Trapp just embodies how I feel on the inside whenever that bad thing happens. I want to show that everything's okay on the outside and that I'm pretty good at this thing called life, but on the inside everything's actually gone to sh** and nothing is fine. 

I couldn't really find when this meme started getting used or how it came about, so I will briefly compare it to the Advice Dog that Davison mentions in his article (127). Like the Advice Dog meme, this Sound of Music meme has a center image, with a first line and a second line that contains the punch line of the joke. This image macro theme fits in to the practice of adding different text to a common image. 

If a person has never seen the Sound of Music meme, the first line "Look at all..." sets the person up for anticipating something, and the second line (usually something witty and a little sad, really) delivers the punch line when the reader realizes that Maria Von Trapp doesn't really have anything around her. So when the reader sees "Look at all the money I have" and laughs to him/herself, they realize that they probably don't have money too, and that's the reason they chuckled to him/herself when they saw a meme of Julie Andrews from 1965. We may be laughing at first, but we all know that we're secretly crying on the inside.


- Julianna Duque