Sunday, October 28, 2012

RR #16 Devitt


RR #16 Devitt
                       
Summary
           
            With “Materiality and Genre in the Study of Discourse Communities” Amy J. Devitt, Anis Bawarshi and Mary Jo Reiff explain and examine genre analysis and the ways it can help students trying to comprehend discourse communities. Genre analysis allows the examiner to not only better comprehend the specific discourse community he or she is observing, but also the luxury of being very familiar with whatever genre the discourse community is based in, therefore eliminating a lot of starting and stopping. “Such analysis,” Devitt argues, “often reveals the conflicts between communities that use a genre, conflicts often invisible to analysis that looks at discourse in terms of its communities alone.”

Synthesis

            Obviously, this article shares many similarities to the past two readings we’ve written about for class. They all revolve around the concept of the discourse community. This one gives you a little insight on how to observe a discourse community more concisely. Genre analysis allows the examiner to observe and research his discourse community with an underlying sense of understanding.

Personal Response

            This wasn’t awful. It was alright. It’s particularly alright right now because we’re about to begin researching specific genre communities, so this along with the past two readings will be very helpful. However, interesting only goes so far, and I don’t intend for this to be a cop out, but more and more, the paragraph requirement for these personal responses grows increasingly tedious. I like the idea of familiarizing yourself with your subject matter, and tips on how to do that, but I don’t know. I’m not sure.

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