Wardle Reading Response

Before you Read

I can't think of any phrases off the top of my head, but I know I'm in different discourse communities, and I know I'm around new people. I do act a little different and even dress a little different than I did in high school.

Summary

In her article, "Identity, Authority, and Learning to Write in New Workplaces," Wardle talks about why we have to change certain things to be accepted and to function in discourses. She explains that to be involved in some discourses you have to act, dress, or behave like the others to feel like your part of the group. She uses examples to help explain this. She is writing to people going into new discourses.

Synthesis

Wardle's article relates to Porter, Swales, and Gee. Porter talks about discourse communities and why they are important. Wardle explains how discourse and its members function. This relates to Swales because he defines discourse in his 6 rules/guidelines. Gee talks about the individual in a discourse, along with what a discourse is. 

Dialectical Notebook

Response	Quotation
This kind of explains any discourse community, because it can go along with any discourse community.	“Learning to write in and for new situations and workplaces is complex in ways that go far beyond texts and cognitive abilities” (521).
This also goes with any discourse community. It explains why individuals change.	“As writers shape and change genres, the power of those genres also shapes and enables writers’ identities (Bawarshi 97)” (524).
Discourse communities can be happy or not happy with you.	“He was immediately ascribed authority and respect due to his assumed technical expertise in a place where such expertise was rare” (528).
The members of the discourse community would not change for him, he had to change.	“Members of the department were similarly unwilling to change their view of what they found acceptable in the email” (530).
In this case the new person did not want to change.	“Alan might have viewed changing his writing habits as an admission that he did not play the role he imagined for himself within the department” (531).

Question

QD 4. I agree, most people, most of the time do not think when the talk. This means its not concision. When people hear others saying words or phrases they usually pick up on them and say them too.

Thoughts

 I agreed with most of this article. I agree that you somewhat have to be accepted into a discourse. I also agree that yourself changes while your in that discourse and around certain people. I also agree that this has its good parts and its bad.