Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Discourse Communites and Commonplaces/ English Assign #4

My assignment is to define Discourse Communites and Commonplaces.

A discourse community is a group of people who use communication to achieve certain goals and purposes. A discourse community can be a group of friends on an internet sight or a group of Airforce wives getting together when their husbands are deployed. People in these groups all share a common interest and choose to be there.

Commonplaces are places that have meaning and familarity to a group. This could be a group of people who are all associated because they are all alumni from the same University. It could also be the place that a group meets every Tuesday (ex: Ladies Ice Cream Tuesdays at Baskin Robins) Baskin Robins is the commonplace that these women meet for ice cream every Tuesday and discuss common interests.

2 comments:

  1. Good definitions, Marissa. You are totally right about a commonplace maybe being a place, but keep in mind it could also be a word or image, too. For example, the Statue of Liberty you visited on your trip to NYC is a commonplace image representing New York and America. It stands in for liberty, freedom and other larger concepts. Also, the word "Broadway" can be heard all over, but it has a unique meaning to New Yorkers and those in the theater discourse community.
    Looks like a fantastic trip, by the way!
    Jen

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  2. So as I understand it now a Commonplace is a word or object that represents something larger than its self?

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