1. Speech communities are centripetal: it creates a sense of community. Discourse communities: creates a sense of difference, not a community.
2. 6 characteristics:

1. common goals
2. intercommunication between members
3. involvement to get feedback
4. more than one genre
5. lexis
6. members have knowledge of content

3. Discourse communities can shut people out and be selective in its members.

1. John Swales: Professor Emeritus of Linguistics; academic.
2. Audience: People in academia
3. It discusses the differences between discourse communities and speech communities.
4. He created six characteristics of the communities to identify them and differentiate them.

1. What was happening in the world when this was written
2. Why did the author write this in the way he did- reason 1- audience
3. Reason 2-purpose
4. Reason 3- topic/occasion
5. Reason 4- emotional appeals used & why he used them
6. Writer’s aim of argument & did he reach that goal of the aim they wrote with

(Outline)

1. One year before the essay “Strivings of the Negro People” was published in 1897, Plessy vs. Ferguson upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation where the services were supposedly equal in quality. This is where “separate but equal” originated from. The author of this essay, W.E.B. DuBois, was a prominent African-American political figure during this time and he co-founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909. This organization’s main goal was to overturn the decision of Plessy vs. Ferguson. This essay is thought of as a response to that court decision. 

2. The intended audience for this essay was white people who were open to hearing these stories, or who were “on the fence” on black issues. DuBois used emotional appeals such as pathos to attempt to sway his audience to share his way of thinking, or at least open their minds to different perspectives. At this time in society, blacks and whites were still very much unequal and tensions were high. By using personal testimony and emotional discussion, DuBois tries to invoke empathy with people who may not share any hardships or any of the same perspectives. This can be a very hard thing to do, because people who don’t experience the same things as other people can be either stubborn or ignorant. 

3. DuBois admired fellow intellectual Booker T. Washington, but eventually distanced himself from his “accommodationist” way of thinking. He took a more assertive stand for blacks around the time he published this essay. DuBois stressed the need for the right to vote and the necessity for higher education for black people. Even though it’s never explicitly mentioned in his writing, his words challenge the court case Plessy vs. Ferguson. 

ISSUE: Black Americans are being denied the vote and public ed.

Gap: explaining why this is a disadvantage & why access to both is important

Readers: White Americans (on the fence); wants to evoke change

• Claim–what is the writer’s thesis statement? By granting black people the right to vote, they’re being elevated.
• Reasons– a reason the writer provides that his thesis statement is true or at least valid. The white family circle is being threatened.
• Evidence– the testimony of experts; summary/paraphrasing/direct quotation of reputable source that studies the issue at hand; the presentation of data from an empirical study; anecdotal (not systematic or rigorously recorded) observations that backs a reason you (as the analyst) have called out.
• Warrant– the unstated belief/values that tie the reason and evidence combo to the claim. Black people are inferior to the white race.
• Counterargument–the presentation of the writer’s opponent’s argument. Not included
• Rebuttal– the writer explaining the flaws in her/his opponent’s argument. Not included

DuBois appeals: ethos and pathos

-your evidence will depend on your specific audience

writer: John Tyler Morgan. issue: The Race Question in the US; citizenship, voting rights. Gap: The races are too different to have the same rights, despite new laws making efforts to change that. Readers: people who share similar beliefs, thoughts.

1. shared behavioral norms between human groups are from inherited distinctions

2. craniometry and psychological testing

3. objective knowledge

4. 1

5. 4

6. 1

7. abstraction of intelligence as a single entity, ranking people based on race,gender,etc

8. …influential and that scientists believed they were pursuing unsullied truth.

Stein is writing to people who share his views and beliefs. I think this because his style of writing is very “matter of fact”, and his use of ironic language would go over the heads of a reader who is unfamiliar with him or one who disagrees with him. The conversation needs to be started.

I don’t think he’s writing as an “audience friendly” writer. The use of irony and sarcasm as a front for a deeper dialogue throws people off. In order to be appealing to all audiences, you should be clear with your intentions and objectives. I think he’s doing this to prove his writing skills and to only have a select part of the audience truly understand his work. He wants to make a point, and he’s doing it in a clever way that not everyone will like or grasp.

The “gap”= the use of American military & the profits being made during wartime

How do communities shape writing?

-discourses: group members’ shared way of being in the world

-people will interpret texts in different ways, because of their environment, how they read (critically or not)

-enculturated: adapting to a new culture

-multiliteracies: how people read texts, people, and activities

Concept of Community Discourse

-genres develop over time in response of rhetorical needs

-productive community discourse is utopian

• Who are the intended readers, and how does the writer address them?

audience: average people who read Time magazine/ people who understand irony, he addresses them with a lot of sarcasm and irony, he calls them “Yankee haters”

• What values do the readers and writer seem to have in common? How does the writer appeal to them?

they both are “patriotic” in a sense and he’s using that appeal to drag them into supporting his claim. americans are very passionate about sports, so he uses a sports analogy.