Orlando Galan Blog #5

Hello and good evening everyone! What’s going on. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to attend class on Monday, so I am sure I missed out on important material discussed about the new topic concept mentioned in the email. Anyway, I thought the best way to make up for it is to read Swales article and see what I understand from it. The reason I say it like that is because this topic doesn’t really seem like the material I typically am interested in and read lol, so please bear with me. The conceptualization of discourse community gave me the realization that a lot of research and observation was involved. To come up with such material must of took a lot of hard work, so I must give Swales props for that. I would like to talk about one of the six characteristics of a discourse community, the first one. I always try to come up with my own examples because it helps me better understand the material. The first characteristic is saying that a discourse community has a broadly agreed set of common public goals. I feel like us, college students are agreed to a set of common public goals. We arn’t necessarily a club or association like the reading says, but we are a school which consists of many individuals with a purpose or goal. Our goals are public. We are all attending SDSU because we want to increase the level of knowledge and receive an education so that we can better succeed in life. Anyone can come in to our school and realize that our purpose or goal is to receive an education. However, our individual goals remain private. I would also like to talk about the second characteristic of discourse community. The article uses the example of a café owner will most likely belong best in a social group who involves people who are likely to become café owners in their neighborhood. I again would like to relate this characteristic to school. For example, one’s major is a discourse community that has mechanisms of intercommunication among its members. As a communication major, I would best share social class with other comm majors, or even professors or comm organizations that are taken in the comm building. I probably wouldn’t have much of a mechanism of intercommunication with let’s say, a science major. The topics are related enough to build a social class. The third characteristic uses its participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information and feedback. The best way for me to remember this characteristic is to relate it to teacher or peer reviews. If a student has completed a project or research paper, the student will typically take in to someone in the same community with knowledge in order to receive professional information and feedback, to further improve the assignment. In such a case, it is important for someone with a lot of knowledge in the same community as yours to be the one to give you info or feedback, usually because its from a credible source. The fourth characteristic says that a discourse community utilizes and hence possesses one or more genres in the communicative furtherance of its aims. The title for this one confused me at first, but after analyzing the content, I understood it! For simplification, I just thought of this characteristic as it stating that every community has a certain way of being and its certain goals. Again, as comm majors lol, we all like to communicate and socialize and most of our aims after graduation involve getting a job where we can apply our communication skills and make a living out of something we are passionate about. The fifth characteristic, a discourse community has acquired some specific lexis, I would say just goes into further detail of the specifics a community has. In my example, communication studies has its own terminology that differentiates its material to other majors. Of course, the terminology is specific and most of the time, only comm majors would understand. This is what makes a community unique. Its something that isn’t known or taught just anywhere. Finally the last characteristic! Haha. A discourse community has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discoursal expertise. Sound complicated right? Well this characteristic had the smallest explanation actually, however it seemed a bit sad. It simply states that discourse communities have changing memberships weather its death or in other less involuntary ways. But in order for the community to survive, it needs to depend on a reasonable ratio between novices and experts. Im not gonna use death for my personal example, but instead use the positive example or graduation. Students graduate and leave. However it obviously doesn’t mean the communication major is done. Its survival is guaranteed due to new students studying the field of communication!

Orlando Galan Blog #4 JSTOR

Hello everyone! Took me a while to decide what 3 topics I wanted to blog about, but I finally made up my mind. The first article that I decided to blog about is Viral Black Death. The reason I decided to blog about this is because like many of you know, black deaths by police have been all over the media recently. Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube you name it, black deaths by police have been occurring a lot lately and have been shared across the media. Yes police brutality has always been a big deal and very common however, the problem is not just that, it is the fact that recently the brutality is between white police officers against black population, therefore creating huge problems with African American citizens as they are being targeted and discriminated against. Thanks to the easily attained technology we have now a days, the inappropriate and highly illegal acts of these racist police officers have been caught on video for the public to see what some authorities are actually doing. The reasons I am encouraged to say “racist” is due to the fact that I have seen plenty of videos myself over the media and because in the article “Viral Black Deaths”, Da Bois mentions the presumption of black criminality “the idea that all black are assumed to be criminals” for being a reason African American citizens are being targeted. Now don’t get me wrong, as negative as I might sound on this blog towards police officers, I have absolutely no hate towards them in a general point of view. In fact, I even have being a police officer as one of my career options in the future! However, the corrupt cops...smh they have to go. We rely on the authorities to show us what is right, protect us and keep a functioning and safe community. I understand that police officers have their way of thinking and practices to protect themselves, but excessive force and using racial profiling will always be wrong and illegal and should never be the case. However, if people decide to do illegal things, I believe police officers have the right to do their job so that at the end, everyone is safe and criminals are off the streets.

And then I read “Liberals Are The Sort Of People Who…” and I gotta say, Liberals will be offended after reading that article. To conclude the article, it is pretty much saying that if the United States becomes ruined and unsuccessful, Liberals are to blame for. Personally, I don’t know much about politics so if this is an accurate description of what a Liberal believes in, it seems very contradictory and doesn’t make much sense. Any comments or point of views on this? I would like to express myself on some of the things stated in this article. Again, I don’t know much about politics, and again I don’t know if things stated in this article are accurate, so please take no offence and please educate me or elaborate it/me if wrong. But the Liberal side of politics isn’t making much sense to me. How do they believe that cops are generally racist and abuse their authority, but yet they should be the only ones who have guns? How do you call other people out for being racist yet imply African Americans are “too stupid, poor or lazy” to go vote? How do they oppose not drilling any new oil wells yet, don’t want gas prices to go up? At this point, I believe I have been somewhat educated on a Liberals views, but this article is just to bash on them and I’m assuming Liberals would have an explanation for all this. After reading the article and elaborating on it, I can see how politics can be interesting and why things can get heated sometimes.

have always known that the headline of anything needs to be creative enough to catch the reader’s attention, but after reading Chi Luu’s article on how the language of headlines work, I learned a couple things. Personally, when I see a headline that is important enough or of an interest of mine, I pick it up (assuming it’s a book, magazine etc.) or click in it if it’s a website or link. And of course I already know there is a good chance that it might not be what it is or what I want to see. So right away, I skim through it and if I don’t immediately see or read anything interesting, I disregard it. The article speaks about clickbait, which of course, everyone hates! Such a waste of time especially when it’s strictly spam or fake content that has no relevancy. I didn’t know that it has been such a problem that Facebook is planning on a way to detect clickbait, and banning it forever. That’s good to hear since I am a user myself, and rely on Facebook for some of the most important news and information, along with other social media stuff that requires links that have potential to be used as nothing but clickbait.

Orlando Galan Blog #2 Devitt

After reading Amy Divett’s article, “Teaching Critical Genre awareness”, I feel overwhelmed… in a good way! I was not aware that a genre can have such a significant meaning. I always thought that a genre was just a simply way to describe a category of music, movie, film, book etc. As time has passed, I have noticed that the amount and types of genres have expanded, even though what is projected is similar to already existing genres. For example rap to trap music or alternative to rock music. Back in the day, I didn’t think there was much significance to the difference between two similar genres. But now… after making observations over the media and seeing how Divett specifies what an individual genre is, I completely understand the importance of a “genre”. As Divett states, genres are so strong and meaningful, that the spread of genres even creates “shared aims and social structures”. It is crazy to see how a genre can actually make a person who they are is, and how their life is identifiable towards a genre. And fortunately, now a days, almost any genre is acceptable which means one can truly be who they are and can identify themselves to a genre they most feel right with. The reason why I am writing about how a genre can relate to an individual or group, is to demonstrate how strong a genre can really be. This can also be a sign of how hard Divett’s article got me thinking! Now when Divett talked about the genre of essay writing, the 5 paragraph essay paper, it intrigued me because the use of the method is true! Not saying it is bad, I use it too, but might not be useful in certain situations. Divett states how using the 5 paragraph method can reinforce distance from the subject. I agree with this to a certain extent. I truly believe this method can be useful when needed to write a quick and affective essay or paper. However, I don’t believe the 5 paragraph method should be used when writing an important paper or thesis that withholds a lot of research or studies. Overall, over time and after reading Amy Divett’s article, I have learned that the variety of genres are highly important, as it truly differentiates cultures and social structures. The expenditure of genres has really made it so that everyone can feel accommodated to their wants and needs. It is great to have options when in desire.