"Materiality and Genre in the Study of Discourse Communities" is a series of articles written by Amy J. Devitt, Anis Bawarshi, and Mary Jo Reiff--all either a professor or assistant professor of English at a university (so there's a strong possibility these articles were written for specific academies)--that attempts to mold discourse communities into more tangible concepts, simplifying its' purpose into a craft; a set of tools for those who cannot fully grasp the potential within the complex context those communities have. The answer the articles thinks about then relates to genres, specially, how to be "responsive to such questions and link patterns of language use to patterns of social behavior," or simply "provide discipline and focus to the study of discourse communities" (Reading About Writing, 98).
To respond to the suggestion that "genre analysis contributes to the use of ethnomethodology as a research technique that focuses on language and society," the main article use the main point of all three separate articles to further prove on how useful each would alert on genre inside each discourse community works (Reading About Writing, 98). To summarize, Devitt comments that "much of our civic lives involves genres that come out of a community of specialists, whether lawyers, legislators, or government employees," (Reading About Writing, 100) leaving the social matters of voting at a ballot, or serving as a jury member in court, to be at odds with the "users who would ideally reproduce the ideologies and agendas of the legal community" (Reading About Writing, 103). As such, the genres "created within one professional community to be used by nonmembers of that community" (Reading About Writing, 99)--the jury process and the ballots--must now be self-conscious to the problem that "the communal agendas of those who create genres may conflict with the interests of those who use them," leaving those who want to provide good effects to people lives to study their cases at hand and work towards a better understanding of each side (Reading About Writing, 103).
Meanwhile, Bawarshi, instead of paying attention to socially relevant events, looks at a Patient Medical History Form (PMHF)--"a commonly used medical genre"--to "demonstrate how genre analysis gives access to the workings of discourse communities in a way" to "characterize what we are referring to in this essay as discourse communities" (Reading About Writing, 104). To bring this idea into the forefront, she mentions that since the document "helps organize and generate the social and rhetorical environments within which patients and doctors speak to one another," the PMHF becomes "a genre [...] within the medical profession" that forms life as a "part of other social practices (relations between doctors and patients, nurses and doctors, doctors and other doctors, doctors and pharmacists, and so on)" (Reading About Writing, 105). Therefore, using genre analysis, students can now "reduce their abstract, symbolic, status" and make those communities "more visible and accessible to ethnographic inquiry" (Reading About Writing, 106).
Reiff, relating back to the inquiry, sees that "ethnography has become an increasing presence in composition as a research method and a pedagogy," between "the general as well as the particular" (Reading About Writing, 107). So, if one uses her idea that "ethnography is both a genre "a research narrative) and a mode of genre analysis--a research methodology used to grasp cultural beliefs, and ideologies," (Reading About Writing, 107) along with using the label of 'mini-ethnographies', which revolves around studying more specific literacy events, to carry about certain teaching instructions, then ethnographics can be teached inside the classroom while the students are using it within that discourse community with the tools, such as observation or interviews, with them. In other words, if done correctly, students "assume the role of investigators who are learning to speak from their authority as researchers" to further grasp what it is for them to "compose communities while composing in communities" (Reading About Writing, 109)
All these articles sets out exactly what John Swales wanted discourse communities to be in "The Concept of Discourse Community." After laying out his own version of how discourse communities should be conceptualized, he reminds the reader that "those interested in discourse communities have typically sited their discussions within academic contexts, thus possibly creating a false impression that such communities are only to be associated with intellectual paradigms or scholarly cliques" (Writing About Writing, 473). But the approach the cluster of writers all share with one another, compared to Swales, is that simplification of how discourse communities can expand beyond certain contexts into individuals going into their own communicates only stabilizes "an imaginary consensus and a shared purpose that do not reflect real experience within communities" (Reading About Writing, 98). Therefore, the solution does not lie on the individual, but on an ethnomethodology technique that "contribute to the pedagogy of text-dependent subject matter" not for the student's benefit, but for teachers, researchers, AND the student (Reading About Writing, 98).
All in all, I find it interesting that for this article, instead of one writer articulating his point to come across the article, the person editing this article decides to look at the purposes of three individuals writers, find relations to one another, and puts them all into a context that serves to apply what the article is all about: genre within discourse communities. With those various perspirations, I can see what exactly the editor wants to accomplish in that article, and appreciate reading different opinions to further expand my own personal opinion on the concept. Hopefully those purposes will help me out on how I should frame discourse communities to everyday objects beyond certain individuals, and I have a feeling that since I hold no objections to the text within, I think it will work out just fine.
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