CL 9/24

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  • Prompt one: In your opinion, how do the activities of the individuals discussed in last night’s reading match Swales’s benchmarks for a discourse community?
    • I recommend you look over the six criteria Swales lists in his essay (pages 471-473).
    • You can focus on one, two, or all six of the benchmarks for your answer.
    • The discourse community uses its participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information and feedback. In PVF, a lot of information about the laws and their nature is talked about. The information given is there to provide the reader with a set of laws and what was going on at the time of the case, along with some background info that helps get a conclusion of the case. This gives the reader something to go off and form more opinions around. The information can be used to bring people together and form more like minded ideas to go off of.
  • Prompt two: Based on your understanding of the reading you choose to write about in the question above, how did this discourse community spread the “knowledge” they were responsible for creating? The discourse community was able to spread the knowledge by news. The magnitude of this case pulled in people who sided with that particular side and give them more information so they feel like they are diving deeper into the issue. All the background and information about laws, what was going on at the time gave people a reason to invest in the case and continue to build their opinion.
  • Prompt three: How do you think the thinking/writing/talking (the discourse) of the special interest group you choose to write about set the foundation for American Jim Crow laws? I think the foundation of Jim Crow laws were given the chance to take place in history because so many people agreed with what was being said about African Americans and their rights, even if it was outwardly wrong and unfair. What we read in PVF gave so much logical info and used its information to twist the story into what some people wanted to hear and make it sound right. With bringing up law and what’s seen as right from wrong, it allowed those who had a certain assumption and to justify their opinion and have a basis to go off of.

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