Project 1: Report on a Discourse Community

Length: 3 pp.
Weight: 10%
Peer Review: 3 Sept.
Due: 8 Sept.

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Purpose & Scope

Rhetoric takes place in communities; it can be seen as the "glue" that holds communities together, both helping to preserve the traditions of the past and helping to instigate change and innovation. The word "community" and the word "communication" have much in common.

Stanley Fish's influential Is There a Text in this Class? (1980) argues that the reader "creates" the text by deciding which of its features are relevant or significant. Through the concept of the interpretive community (later to appear as "discourse community" in rhetoric scholarship), he maintains that readers are members of groups whose norms "always already" constrain their members as they come to a text. Porter's article, "Intertextuality and the Discourse Community," provides some helpful tools for thinking about how rhetoric operates within communities; specifically, iterability and presupposition describe two ways that a community's shared interests, knowledge, attitudes, and values affect the features and effectiveness of rhetoric.

This assignment asks you to choose a discourse community (or rhetorical community) to give you practice in identifying the groups that will be at the heart of the rest of your writing projects. This first project asks you to identify a community and describe some of its features. Choose one that's relatively large and complex, one that has several modes of communication (or "forums," in Porter's term). For example, your immediate family is too narrow to make a good choice. Conversely, just "everybody and anybody" is too large and unfocused a choice. To keep your mind on the political focus of the course, try to think of issues and problems that interest and engage you. Who is affected by those problems and who is in a position to do something about them? That will help you identify an appropriate community. We'll talk about examples in class.

Final Product

You must submit your paper via e-mail in Microsoft Word, Pages, or PDF format before class on the due date. You are to bring your project folder to class, which should include:

• All notes used to prepare drafts
• All drafts - including peer review copies
• Any supplementary materials (newspaper clippings, etc)
• A hard copy of your final paper

Organization

Your report should provide information about some of the following aspects of the community:

• Membership: About how large is the community? several dozen, several hundred, several thousand people? How do people become members and how can we tell who is a member? everyone who lives in a certain geographic or governmental area (like a city or county)? everyone who is a dues-paying member of a certain organization? everyone who engages in a particular recreational activity? everyone who works for a given corporation?
• Presuppositions or constraints: What are the shared interests and motives of community members? What are their shared values and attitudes? What knowledge do they share that is not generally shared by those who are not members?
• Issues and Problems: What issues do members of the community face? What problems do they believe need to be solved? What are the important topics of communication among them?
• Forums: How do community members communicate with each other–in Porter's terms, what are the "forums" this community uses? face-to-face meetings? newsletters? e-mail? public hearings? written policies and procedures? etc.
• Distinguishing Features: What characterizes successful or effective rhetoric in this community? Is there a characteristic rhetorical style or specialized language? What kinds of evidence or proof help to change the minds of other community members? personal narratives? scientific experiment? tradition ("we've always done it this way")? citation of expert authorities? etc.

Use this list of questions and the headings to organize your report, with a paragraph or two under each heading. A first paragraph with no heading should introduce your report by mentioning why you are writing it and why you chose the community you did. It's also useful to summarize the most important results from the details that follow.

Evaluation

In addition to answering the questions implied by Porter and by the headings above, your paper will need to meet the general criteria of good academic writing: a clear focus, logical and purposeful organization, strong use of supporting evidence, and thoughtful development of the ideas you are presenting. It will also need to be well written both stylistically and grammatically.