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.
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.
ReplyDeleteLooks like a fantastic trip, by the way!
Jen
So as I understand it now a Commonplace is a word or object that represents something larger than its self?
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