Discourse Analysis Final
Betanco, Nelida
Professor Cecil
English 106
February 13, 2013
A Discourse Analysis Throughout the world each individual is a member of a certain Discourse community. A Discourse community is a place where people share the same mechanisms of inter-communication among its members, as well as utilizing and hence possesses one or more genres in the communicative furtherance of its aims. Each individual pertains to a certain community whether they acknowledge it or not. However, the first community a person is brought into is in their own family or at times it can eventually evolve to the first social group they encounter; this Discourse is the primary Discourse that every single person has. This is where my primary discourse evolved from.
In Writing About Writing, James Paul Gee wrote an article called “Literacy, Discourse, and Linguistics” in which he stated that a primary Discourse“ are ways of being in the world; they are the forms of life which integrate words, acts, values, beliefs, attitudes, and social identities as well as gestures, glances, body positions, and clothes” (526). I think I have to agree with Gee because my primary discourse shapes who I am as an individual. The way I dress, the way I use gestures or the way I communicate with other people reflect who I am as an individual. I still find some gestures of people I interact with on a daily basis as inappropriate but for them it is a norm. For instance with women, wearing clothes that show too much of their body, such as wearing shorts can be embarrassing and you will “lose face” as we called it in our culture but here it is very common.
As Gee describes our primary or home discourse community is used to make sense of the world and to identify who we are as a part of a community. With my personal experiences, I grew up in a small Spanish community mainly consisting of Nicaraguan families in Santa Fe, where our home discourse community is characterized by many positive behaviors such as being
Professor Cecil
English 106
February 13, 2013
A Discourse Analysis Throughout the world each individual is a member of a certain Discourse community. A Discourse community is a place where people share the same mechanisms of inter-communication among its members, as well as utilizing and hence possesses one or more genres in the communicative furtherance of its aims. Each individual pertains to a certain community whether they acknowledge it or not. However, the first community a person is brought into is in their own family or at times it can eventually evolve to the first social group they encounter; this Discourse is the primary Discourse that every single person has. This is where my primary discourse evolved from.
In Writing About Writing, James Paul Gee wrote an article called “Literacy, Discourse, and Linguistics” in which he stated that a primary Discourse“ are ways of being in the world; they are the forms of life which integrate words, acts, values, beliefs, attitudes, and social identities as well as gestures, glances, body positions, and clothes” (526). I think I have to agree with Gee because my primary discourse shapes who I am as an individual. The way I dress, the way I use gestures or the way I communicate with other people reflect who I am as an individual. I still find some gestures of people I interact with on a daily basis as inappropriate but for them it is a norm. For instance with women, wearing clothes that show too much of their body, such as wearing shorts can be embarrassing and you will “lose face” as we called it in our culture but here it is very common.
As Gee describes our primary or home discourse community is used to make sense of the world and to identify who we are as a part of a community. With my personal experiences, I grew up in a small Spanish community mainly consisting of Nicaraguan families in Santa Fe, where our home discourse community is characterized by many positive behaviors such as being