Blog #7 - Examining Discourse Communities

At an earlier stage of my life, I had the desire to work for the Police Department. However, my family disapproved of it due to the lack of safety associated with the occupation. I believe in light of being assigned this project, this would be a great opportunity for me to explore the discourse community of the Police Department.

Determining whether or not an organization qualifies as a discourse community is accordance to Swales' six characteristics of a discourse community has led me to trash several ideas for this assignment. The Police Department, however, matches Swales' six characteristics of a discourse community:

1. The Police Department's broadly agreed set of common goals is to protect and serve the public, as well as to enforce the law. It is their ethical and occupational duty to go out of their own way to ensure the safety of the public.

2. Their mechanisms of intercommunication among its members is are done primarily through meetings and radio. Through the radio, dispatch can alert the department's policemen on duty of the location and situation of the incident, and the officer closest to the scene will likely respond and investigate.

3. The Police Department also has its participatory mechanisms to provide information and feedback. Some departments allow "ride-alongs" to allow the individual who is interested in having the career of a police officer to have a sample of what is associated with the occupation. They also have of course, rigorous training, which consists of durability and physical tests, firearms proficiency tests, and high-pressure driving tests.

4. There are countless numbers of different genres entailed when working for the Police Department. Different situations that require police attention require different approaches to solving the dispute. For example, there could be domestic violence. There are certain ways in which an officer is required to handle the situation. If something even as simple as a girl's cat being stuck in a tree were to occur, the officer will likely have to adjust their behavior and act in a friendly, caring, and confident person.

5. A lexis, or unique set of vocabulary, is also associated with the discourse community of a police department. Police departments are known to have certain acronyms to communicate with one another much faster. For example, if dispatch was to notify nearby officers that there was a man DUI (Driving Under the Influence), the officers will immediately understand what situation is taking place and can plan ahead to solve the issue as quickly as possible upon arrival of the scene.

6. Finally, a police department has its officer ranks to fulfill Swales' final characteristic of a discourse community: A discourse community has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discoursal expertise. The ranks, similar to that of the military, include private, corporal, sergeant, etc.

I will most likely begin my research by finding a local police department and schedule possible interviews with its members. I think further research on the second characteristic of a discourse community will be most interesting, as it appears to be the most dynamic.

Blog #6 - My Identity Kit

In James Paul Gee's "Literacy and Linguistics," Gee quotes Mack, defining mushfake as "a term from prison culture, as making 'do with something less when the real thing is not available. So, when prison inmates make hats from underwear to protect their hair from lice, the hats are mushfake. Elaborate craft items made from used wooden match sticks are another example of mushfake.'" Gee then labels Mushfake Discourse as "partial acquisition coupled with meta-knowledge and strategies to 'make do.'" To simplify mushfaking even further, I believe mushfaking is another word for improvising, and mushfaking is a type of skill that everyone at some point in their lives is required to do in order to fit with the current social norms.

One of the most valuable life lessons that was taught in a drama class back in high school was that the audience does not know what kind of performance they are expecting. Actors and actresses use this to their advantage and will improvise, whether it be with themselves or with each other on the stage. However, improvising is an extremely hard skill to perfect, as it requires an individual to think very quickly and maintain a confident physical appearance.

One particular new discourse that I experienced difficulty adapting to was culture, specifically Japanese.

When I traveled to Japan for the first time for vacation In 2011, it felt awkward because the Japanese culture differed greatly in contrast to American culture. One of the most socially uncomfortable activities I partook in was the mineral bath. The mineral baths had water supplied by the local geysers, so it was very hot, soothing, and refreshing. However, the process prior to the actual bath is what would probably drive most tourists away. In public baths, it is normal and socially required for everyone to be 100% naked, because you are not allowed to bathe in the geyser water if you are "dirty" or have clothes on (swimsuits are considered dirty). Prior to bathing in the geyser water, people must shower and scrub their bodies with soap and water in public shower stations, where privacy is not a luxury. I didn't want to appear to be a foreigner and create an awkward scene. Taking what I learned about improvisation, I chose to adapt to the Japanese culture and its norms and proceeded to cleanse myself in the public showers naked. Don't get me wrong, I felt very awkward the entire time, largely in part because this sort of activity is never socially acceptable in America. Mushfaking in this particular scenario required me to figuratively paste a mask of a Japanese local in attempt to "blend in," as well as fit in with the majority group.

Blog #5 - The Cost of Affiliation

In Ann M. Johns' "Discourse Communities and Communities of Practice: Membership, Conflict, and Diversity," Johns states that to "succeed in school, they (students) may have to make considerable sacrifices. To become active academic participants, they sometimes must make major trade-offs that: can create personal and social distance between them and their families and communities. Students are asked to modify their language to fit that of the academic classroom or discipline. They often must drop, or at least diminish in importance, their affiliations to their home cultures in order to take on the values, language, and genres of their disciplinary culture." To me, this excerpt immediately sounded like a basic concept of marketing.

The first thing I learned in marketing was that marketing is everywhere, because everything carries a price. Price does not have to be monetary; the amount of time spent on performing particular tasks is also considered a price. Payment for tuition and living expenses aside, the enrollment in SDSU carries other prices, as well.

The determination of the price of attending SDSU started from the early stages in my decision-making process when choosing a university to attend. On one hand, there was San Jose State. Being a Bay Area local, the apparent advantage of attending SJSU was being much closer in proximity to my home. However, the prices included a reduced experience of being independent and the attendance of less-reputable school (in comparison to SDSU). On the other hand, accepting SDSU would mean that I would be able to add a much more reputable school on my resume, experiencing much better weather, and a change in scenery (a potentially more exciting experience). One price of attending SDSU is that I would be entering an unknown community; none of my friends from high school nor any family friends went to SDSU. The second price of going to SDSU is much steeper. I would be required to create massive distance between from my family, closest friends, and family friends.

Partaking in the commitment to an academic discourse community as a whole has both its advantages and its burdens. The advantages include meeting an extremely large variety of people, becoming academically enlightened, and finding one's true identity. The burdens on the other hand, consist of separating oneself from their families and friends. As Johns mentions, becoming academic participants means to "create personal and social distance between them and their families and communities." Both my parents knew this would be a high cost of going to college, so they request for me to contact them via. FaceTime once a week to maintain a strong family bond and to update each other on the local and personal news. However, the high intensity and high volume of workload from several classes cause substantial amounts of stress and require heavy investments of time. This has caused me to forget to contact both family and friends (forgot my best friend's birthday last week for the first time).

My double-PhD economics professor back in community college raised the question of whether or not the investment of a college education was worth it. If not attending college, one can immediately begin to work and earn money. In contrast, one can choose to attend college and pay a heavy price of tuition and living expenses (and financial aid for some) for four or more years. For some, it would take several years to be able to break even with the college expenses and eventually gaining actual return on investments from the attendance of college. The cost of affiliation in an academic discourse community shines light on a new costs of attending college: the emotional, personal, and social burdens. So, is college truly worth investing money and time in? In the long run, I believe a college degree is worth the investment; it gives an individual much more job security, ultimately giving one a more reliable and flexible key to survive the dangers of reality.

Blog #4 - Discourse Communities

John Swales provides six aspects that are essential to determining whether or not a group of people is a discourse community. They are:

1. A discourse community has a broadly agreed set of common public goals.
2. A discourse community has mechanisms of intercommunication among its members. An example of this would be the utilization of social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat. 
3. A discourse community has its participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information and feedback.This is where members of a discourse community fully participate in voluntary actions to gain further knowledge. Swales emphasizes that neglecting the voluntary actions would mean that the member is not part of the discourse community. 
4. A discourse community utilizes and hence possesses one or more genres in the communicative furtherance of its aims. This pertains to the implemented standards of the discourse community for its members. 
5. In addition to owning genres, a discourse community has acquired some specific lexis (dictionary definition: the vocabulary of a language, as distinct from its grammar; the total stock of words and idiomatic combinations of them in a language). An example of this would be slang. 
6. A discourse community has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discoursal expertise. This depicts that every discourse community needs an acceptable number of experienced and inexperienced members. Swales states that "survival of the community depends on a reasonable ratio between novices and experts."

Based off of these six characteristics of a discourse community, I believe that a discourse community is an organization, institution, or club that is unique and is separate from all other groups, while possessing all six traits of a discourse community. 

A very simple discourse community is right in front us: San Diego State University. 

San Diego State's common public goal is to further educate, enlighten, and prepare its students for the real world upon graduation. Its means of communication among its members is through a variety of methods, which include social media, newsletters through email, newspapers, bulletin boards, and of course, face-to-face interaction. San Diego State has its participatory mechanisms primarily to provide knowledge and feedback. This is simply denoted by attendance. San Diego State also has certain and strict standards for its members. For professors, they are expected to adequately teach the material to their students while maintaining protocol. Students, on the other hand, must maintain a certain GPA to be able to stay declared in their respective majors and must also abide to the campus laws and rules. The school does indeed have its own lexis. Such examples include: Leadership starts here, Aztec for life, and the Aztec fight song. Finally, San Diego State contains a reasonable level of relevant and discoursal expertise. You have the school's alumni, the faculty, and the students. 

Blog #3 - Memes

The word "meme" in the modern day is often correlated with concise and short messages pasted on pictures to create humor for its audiences. These memes currently play a significant role in our culture, because the "American" way of living is typically very simplistic and therefore we prefer to do things quickly. Memes fit in perfectly because the reading difficulty is minimal and is accompanied with a picture to create the message much more easily.

Back in high school (and still today), my friends and I loved memes and would share memes with each other on a daily basis for express humor. Taking a study break for a final in my second year of college, I decided to create a meme, using a screenshot from a popular childhood TV show "Tom and Jerry."

One will notice how easy it is to connect with this meme, as it is an experience that every student and former student has encountered at one point in their lives. The popularity of "Tom and Jerry" also makes the meme much easier to become emotionally connected to.


Prior to being introduced to this assignment, I've always believed that memes were solely used for comedy that allows peers connect with one another based on the similar interests that memes project. However, I have learned that memes do not always come in the form of humor. At times, memes are also used for propaganda or subliminal messages to aid recruitment. Michele Knobel and Colin Lankshear in "Memes and Affinities" describe memes as "contagious patterns of cultural information that are passed from mind to mind and that directly shape and generate key actions and mindsets of a social group." In other words, memes can be used to market (advertising). This has been a concept that the government and media have been using since the early-mid 1900's, and most likely even earlier. To exemplify, let's analyze this United States Marine Corps recruitment poster for World War II on the right.

It was at the time of war, and the United States needed soldiers. To solve this issue, the officials needed a way to attract its citizens to enlist in the armed forces. Right away, you can assert that the marine has a cheerful expression, implying that the Marine Corps is a happy organization to be a part of. The way that the marine holds out his hand is also making the recruitment poster very inviting. A much more subtle and subconscious characteristic of this poster is how the colors reinforce a patriotic mindset. Notice how the words are red and blue, and are accompanied by white clouds in the background. The blend of these colors thus create a psychological effect on its audiences to further persuade them into joining the armed forces.

In my opinion, memes have the potential to be much more effective advertisement tools than the standard 30-second commercial seen on TV. As explained before, this is because of how much quicker a message can be delivered through a meme than a video clip. A very small amount of words can also have much more meaning, because words are very subtle, yet powerful tools.

Blog #2 - Genre Awareness

I believe that Devitt's version of genre pertains to the goals of pieces of writing, and in order to reach those goals, the writer must write in a particular style or voice. For instance, a salesman or saleswoman's goal is to find a way to persuade a consumer into buying a product. Although literal writing wouldn't necessarily take place, the salesman or saleswoman is required to behave and act in a certain manner that will attract and retain the consumer's interest, so that the consumer's probability of purchasing the product is maximized. One type of writing genre that is most commonly used in academics is rhetoric writing, or persuasion. To write persuasively, one should aim to utilize the concepts of ethos, pathos, and logos (credibility, emotion, and logic). Something as simple as writing a Christmas card to a family member or friend is also a writing genre. The goal is to wish the recipient a merry Christmas, as well as to check up on their well-being. The writing genre for Christmas cards requires cheerful diction and preferably presentable handwriting. As I have explained before, it is evident that every piece of writing or action has a goal. To achieve the goal, a certain way of writing must also take place accordingly.

Devitt states that the "genre awareness I argue for is a type of rhetorical awareness" (337). This statement makes me believe that she is pertaining to the awareness of when a person is attempting to persuade the reader. By retaining this skill, one can avoid being manipulated by another individual's diction.

Devitt's claim that "when writers take up a genre, they take up that genre's ideology" means that writing in a particular genre would require the writer to adapt and embrace the genre's advantages and burdens. An example that Devitt gives is that "using five-paragraph themes or analysis papers reinforces apparent objectivity and distance from the subject and Western logic, and it minimizes personal engagement with the subject, emotional appeals, and an understanding of subjects having complexity that's irreducible to parts" (339).

When Devitt stated how genres are associated with existing power structures and dynamics, she means that different styles of writing have their own ways of power and/or force. In other words, every genre of writing is unique in their own way in terms of strength, whether it be persuasion, inducing emotional feelings, etc. I think that Devitt believes that genres have so much power because words are powerful. If words are manipulated properly, words will be able to manipulate people's minds, as well.

There is a goal and method of reaching the goal in every piece of writing. For instance, the goal of writing a research paper is to surface new concepts and ideas to support or contradict another idea. This goal is reached by extensive study and a substantial amount of evidence to further support the new concepts. The goal of a lab report is to report what series of events have occurred as results from various actions. The goal of a lab report is achieved through a number of experiments and observation.

Blog #1

Hello, everyone! My name is Eric Ma, and this is my second semester at San Diego State. I am in my junior year in college, majoring in Marketing. I chose to major in Marketing because I think it can be an exciting career path, and it is a great match for my personality (love to work in teams, extremely detail-oriented).

I transferred to SDSU from Las Positas College in Livermore (Bay Area). I applied to nine colleges to transfer: Cal Poly Pomona and SLO, SDSU, Fullerton State, Monterey Bay State, Long Beach State, San Jose State, and Sonoma State. Cal Poly SLO was my number one choice by a landslide, however I got rejected. Having being accepted to every other college I have applied to, I eventually had a very difficult decision between SDSU, San Jose State, and Long Beach State. I chose to accept SDSU for its superior reputation, opportunity, amazing weather, and the change in scenery.

Once in a while, I enjoy a nice vacation to some foreign countries with my family. This past summer, my family and several family friends went on a Mediterranean cruise (Turkey, Greece, and Italy. Sadly I cannot post every single picture I've taken on the vacation, so I carefully selected three of my favorite pictures from my favorite destination: Italy. If I was to be asked what were my favorite things about Italy, It'd be the history, culture, weather, and most of all (and by far), the food. In my opinion, one does not experience true Italian food until he or she visits Italy. I've also traveled  to Hawaii, Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, France, China, and Japan. If I had to choose, I would definitely say that Japan was my favorite vacation getaway. In Japan, I got to experience the mineral bath, with steaming hot water provided by geysers. The people in Japan were also amazingly kind, as they would bow to visitors and customers and do everything in their power to make sure that the visitor is comfortable and satisfied. I am also obsessed with sushi and Japanese cuisine; this makes it even easier to make Japan my favorite vacation spot.

I love football (go Baltimore Ravens). I don't think my life would be complete without it. I own two Ravens jerseys: Terrell Suggs and Ray Lewis. If anyone is wondering, I am rooting for the Broncos this Super Bowl because I want Peyton Manning to retire with one more ring on his finger.

Back home, I have seven pets: one dog (German Shepherd), two cats (both tabbies), and four chickens. Yes, four chickens. Although dirty, chickens make amazing pets because they provide endless fun when you raise them as baby chicks, and start giving free eggs approximately six months later. If you do end up owning chickens, give them corn and they will go ballistic. My dog's name is Trip. I decided to name him Trip because one of the main characters from the movie "Glory" was fearless and loved to fight. Conveniently enough, my dog does not mingle well with other dogs and will never submit once challenged. Despite this, he is one of the most loyal companions a man could ask for.

I only have one sibling, who graduated from UC Irvine with a Bachelor's in astrophysics last year. He is now working as a software engineer for a startup financial firm in Irvine. As for myself, I am hoping to become employed in the marketing field with a good livable wage upon graduation (at the very least). I would love to become employed in the Bay Area, so I could be as close to my family as possible for both convenience and emergency purposes.

Thank you very much for reading. I am looking forward to a great semester with all of you!