Response for April 20th Articles

The first article we read for today was called ‘Discourse Communities and Communities of Practice: Membership, Conflict, and Diversity’ written by Ann Johns. One passage that stuck out to me in this reading was when she said “As this discussion indicates, individuals often affiliate with several communities at the same time, with varying levels of involvement and interest. People may join a group because they agree politically, because they want to socialize, or because they are interested in a specific sport or pastime”. This quote stuck out to me because it is very true. I feel like high school is a good example of this. In high school, I joined two or three different groups and clubs that were in no way related just because I was interested in what each group was all about.

The second article we read for today’s class was ‘The Idea of Community in the Study of Writing’ by Joseph Harris. One quote that stood out to me in this article was when at the beginning when they were introducing the author. It said “Harris argues that the word ‘community’ is empty and sentimental and that it has no positive opposing term. He ends the article by arguing that the term community should only be used to describe what happens in very specific and local groups”. Although this was not part of the actual article itself, I believe that it proves a very specific point that Harris is trying to make.
Harris obviously challenges discourse communities by stating that he doesn’t even like the word communities to be used in that definition. Johns challenges more so the topic of the academic community than discourse communities. I believe that neither one of these articles have changed the way that I thought about discourse communities really. Only gave more specific examples and a better chance to follow up on what the definition means to each individual person. I think the reason we’ve spent so much time on this topic is because it is thought to be a very important topic to learn. In order to fully know what is going on, you have to know the good side and bad side of the topic so you can understand.