Analysis Of The Text Not Going It Alone: Moving Beyond Academic Discourse

In the article, “Why Literature Matters,” Dana Gioia predominantly focuses on the use of logos, logical fact-based evidence and stimulating, emotional-based language to entice the audience. Gioia elaborates on the theme of correlation between young adult Americans and the decline of literature in this age group. He continues his argument with the consequences with the decline of literature in the lives of these Americans.

A discourse community is a group of people involved in and communicating about a particular topic, issue, or in a particular field. According to the criteria conveyed in “The Concept of Discourse Community” by John Swales, Christianity can be considered as a discourse community because of its common goals, medium of communication, participatory mechanisms, specific genres, and its threshold level of members.

Individual rhetorical analysis of the selected readings by Olaudah Equiano, Harriet Jacobs, Frederick Douglass, and Harriet Beecher Stowe are necessary to arrive at a collective analysis of the most effective strategies.

In reference to the 100A assignment sheet for the rhetorical analysis, a rhetorical analysis is a written work that focuses on analyzing and understanding a published article. In this assignment, students will get opportunities to develop their writing and improve deep analytic skills to identifying rhetorical strategies that writers will use to achieve the purpose of a well-written document. The audience for this analytical paper will be my classmates, professor, and the committee members of the 100A.

A question that comes to mind when analyzing these writings is, “what kind of discourse does each writing piece fall into?” Discourse can be separated into three categories. Which are judicial, deliberative, and epideictic. Bartholomae uses epideictic discourse as well as deliberative discourse throughout his writing. He says, “He has to invent the university by assembling and mimicking its language” (45). Davis shares a similar concept as Bartholomae, by stating, “They wanted me to make their sense of the literature, to understand the texts as they understood them…I also had to learn a particular way of reading and writing” (80). Both men have the same idea with current academia, but they are on opposite sides. Bartholomae believes that while writing in unfamiliar ways, students learn to become expert writers with practice. Davis explains the same scenario but believes that change isn’t necessarily needed, and certain changes made by students could be devastating in their lives. When analyzing the discourse made by these two authors, it is apparent that both Bartholomae and Davis are speaking from an epideictic and deliberative standpoint. They speak on a current issue that students are having and discuss ways to attack this problem in the future with examples.

According to John Swales (1990), there are six characteristics that are adequate and important for recognizing a discourse community. Firstly, a discourse community has standard public objectives that they strive to achieve. Members of a discourse community all share the same common goals they are anticipating to attain, and they do not have individuals with separate goals. For instance, the Salvation Army public goals are “to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ and to meet human needs in His name without discrimination.” They offer spiritual, physical, and emotional service to the public, as well as the opportunity to donate. Secondly, a discourse community has various techniques of communication for members to correspond with each other. For

All great minds think alike, a common cliche we have all heard at some point or another, but is this true? Well yes, some minds do think alike and, when they organize, we may call them a discourse community. A discourse community is a specific collective that compares and converses. It is a thought-provoking group that promotes common ideas and benefits its members. Any true discourse community can be identified by six necessary characteristics, as described by Swales. First, “a discourse community has a broadly agreed set of common public goals.” Second, “a discourse community has mechanisms of intercommunication among its members.” Third, “a discourse community uses its participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information and feedback.” Fourth, “a discourse community utilizes and hence possesses one or more genres in the communicative furtherance of its aims.” Fifth, “a discourse community has acquired some specific lexis.” And finally, “a discourse community has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discoursal expertise.”

​A discourse community is a group of individuals who share objectives, customs, and experiences. Arguably, an individual may have several discourse communities. For example, the said person could belong to a running community, food’s enthusiast community, a family, and a student community, which is also a discourse community. In some cases, these discourse communities may overlap as they share commonalities. More specifically, is the English class as the discourse community where students share perceptions of the course workload and how these perceptions influence their grades.

John Fire Lame Deer was a Sioux Indian tribal leader, medicine man, rodeo clown, and storyteller amongst other things. A selection from his autobiography Seeker Of Visions: The Life Of A Sioux Medicine Man titled “Talking to the Owls and Butterflies” is a short piece regarding nature and man’s relationship with it. The piece was intended to make an impression on white people in order to help salvage what is remaining in the environment. Lame Deer reprimands the “white world” for its negative outlook towards nature and the treatment of animals, he converses how man has changed and reshaped nature in order to make it more profitable. Stating that Caucasians have gone and altered animals in order to create

In the first article, “The Obligation to Assist”, Singer believes if we as a society or as individuals can prevent something bad from happening, without sacrificing something of comparable moral significance, we should always do it. He uses a metaphor to put his position into words, he explains that if he were to see a child drowning he has a moral conscious to help the child, but would he have the obligation? Relating to his metaphor, he applies this concept to people living in poverty. People continue to live in absolute poverty, although, if society lived by the aforementioned principle people would assist the poor, as poverty is bad. Therefore, we should prevent at least some poverty. Through this theory, implications can be drawn out from

Instagram is a free application that is located on cellphones in the apple store and google play. Instagram is a fun and exciting way to post your life with a lot of pictures. Strolling down my timeline I see people posting thousands of pictures about absolutely nothing or some people that have not posted in ages.

Chinua Achebe was a Nigerian novelist, poet, professor and critic. He is mainly known for his trilogy that investigates, using fiction, the history of Nigeria. The trilogy begins with Things Fall Apart, followed by No Longer at Ease and ended with Arrow of God. Furthermore, in this critically analytical essay, through a feminist perspective, a chapter of his second novel, No Longer at Ease, published in 1960, will be discussed. The setting of the novel is Lagos, Nigeria and Umuofia, Nigeria during the 1950s, before Nigeria attained independence from Great Britain. The novel, No Longer at Ease begins with Obi Okonkwo on trial, charged for accepting a bribe. However, using flashback, the author takes us back to the point before Obi’s departure

In Up Front by Bill Mauldin one of the major themes is how important communication is during the war. Communication is a major factor when it comes to success in the war. Individual divisions need to be in contact with each other as well as family and friends at home. Bill Mauldin exemplifies this when he discusses the Stars and Stripes newspaper and 45th Division News in Up Front. Furthermore, a quote from the American General Dwight D. Eisenhauer and a propaganda picture produced by Winchester help support this theme. These three accounts together help show different aspects of communication in the war and how each is important. Although they all show different parts of communication for the war they all come together to show how it has changed the nature of American ideals.