These three articles that we read, were really interesting to me. I never really thought about social media as a way to write and find different audiences or posting the good could be considered lying. I only viewed social media as a place to catch up with people that live long distance or to talk about an experience you had that day. I have various forms of social media: twitter, Facebook, instagram, etc. I rarely post things on these sites, I normally just look at them to see what other people are up to. Through these articles I saw people develop communities through like experiences and finding similar audiences. I really enjoyed reading the third article about the conversation between Bev Gooden and Audie Cornish. Something so small as a hashtag on Twitter could change people lives and bring a community into the light that is normally in the dark and not talked about. That is one way I saw through these articles is that experience can connect a lot of people.
I believe that Harris would say that, in the first article, the poet that started the online twitter poem was creating a discourse community. These people never met before and are probably never going to, but they all have similar interest in poetry that tie them together. "In the place of physical nearness we are given like-mindedness (Harris)." This quote from Harris' article is very prominent in the first article about the color poets. They all have the like-mindedness of their love of poetry and background history. Another quote from Harris' article is prevalent in the third article we read. "...Swales also stipulates that there must be some common "goal" towards which the group is working (Harris)." When Gooden made that hashtag #WhyIStayed, she was helping other women reach a common goal of voicing their abusive relationships and helping them eventually make changes.
As I stated before, I am apart of multiple social media sites. Through these sites I have many different communities that I am a part of. Some of these are friends from Georgia that I still keep in touch with, youth group from my church back home, the floor that I lived on last year, and even some of my classes. Some discourses that mark these communities are academic, personal, or professional. The discourses help shape the different kinds of communities I'm apart of by what kind of language to use when I'm talking to different people in the various communities. For example, if I would be more proper when talking to my youth leader or old softball coach, than when I catch up with my friends over messaging. Most of these communities I'm apart of came from meeting the people and making a group on Facebook and using that to communicate, while others came because we have something in common. Communities come to us in many different ways and reading these articles really shed some light on how we can use social media to find even more communities to be a part of.
Your post raises some really interesting questions for me. You mentioned hat some of the discourses that mark your communities are academic or professional. I'm wondering how you know what an "academic discourse" looks like? What makes the discourse int hat group "academic." Are there things that you say, words you use, or the way that you would say things that are particular to that group? And--the thing your post made me really think about--how are those things different from registers of language?
ReplyDeleteSo for, example when you talk to your coach in one way and teammate in another, that is using register--formal vs. personal. But you, your coach,and teammate all are part of a shared discourse community--the discourse community of your team. But when you interact with your coach in a formal way, is that then a sub-discourse community of th team, or is the idea of formality some other community intersecting with the community of your team? Or is it something else? Such an interesting thing to consider...