Discourse Communities and Communities of Practice: Membership Conflict, and Diversity ANN M. JOHNS Johns, Ann M. "Discourse Communities and Communities of Practice: Membership, Conflict, and Diversity." Text, Role, and Context: Developing Academic Literacies. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge UP, 1997. 51—70. Print. Framing the Reading Ann Johns, like the other scholars whose work you have read so far in this chapter, is a well-known linguist—in fact, she coedited a journal with John Swales from 1985 to 1993. While she was at San Diego State University, Johns directed the American Language Institute, the Writing across the Curriculum Program, the Freshman Success Program, and the Center for Teaching and Learning, and she still found time to research and write twenty-three articles, twenty-two book chapters, and four books (including Genre in the Classroom [2001] and Text, Role, and Context, from which the following reading is taken). Since retiring from San Diego State, Johns continues to write articles and consult around the world. Think of Johns's text as the extension of an ongoing conversation in this chapter. When John Swales defined discourse community, he noted in passing that participating in a discourse community did not necessarily require joining it, but he did not pursue the idea of conflict within communities any further. James Gee does not help much with this problem because he argues that people from nondominant home Discourses can only join dominant Discourses through mushfake. This is where Ann Johns steps in. She published well after both Swales and Gee, so she had time to think through some of the issues they were considering and then extend the conversation by really delving into the problem of conflict within discourse communities. When talking about conflicts related to discourse communities, Johns focuses primarily on academic discourse communities. She talks about some of the "expected" conventions of discourse in the academy (what she calls "uniting forces") and then describes sources of contention. Johns brings up issues of rebellion against discourse community conventions, change ANN M. JOHNS Discourse Communities and Communities Practice within conventions of communities, the relationship of identity to discourse community membership, and the problems of authority and control over acceptable community discourse. As always, the reading will be easier for you if you can try to relate what the author describes to your own experiences or to things you have witnessed or read about elsewhere. Getting Ready to Read Before you read, do at least one of the following activities: If you've read other articles in this chapter already, make a list of the difficulties or problems you've had with the concept of discourse communities so far. What have you not understood, what has not made sense, or what questions have you been left with? Write a note to yourself on this question: What does the idea of membership mean to you? When you hear that word, what do you associate it with? What memories of it do you have? Do you often use it or hear it? As you read, consider the following questions: What does it mean to have authority in relation to texts and discourse communities? How does trying to become a member of a discourse community impact your sense of self—do you feel your "self" being compressed or pressured, or expanding? How are discourse communities related to identity? If there is one thing that most of [the discourse community definitions] have in common, it is an idea of language [and genres] as a basis for sharing and holding in common: shared expectations, shared participation, commonly (or communicably) held ways of expressing. Like audience, discourse community entails assumptions about conformity and convention (Rafoth, 1990, p. 140). What is needed for descriptive adequacy may not be so much a search for the conventions of language use in a particular group, but a search for the varieties of language use that work both with and against conformity, and accurately reflect the interplay of identity and power relationships (Rafoth, 1990, p. 144). A second important concept in the discussion of socioliteracies is discourse community. Because this term is abstract, complex, and contested,i I will approach it by attempting to answer a few of the questions that are raised in the literature, those that seem most appropriate to teaching and learning in academic contexts. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------i. Some of the contested issues and questions are: "How are communities defined?" (Rufoth, 1990); "Do discourse communities even exist?" (Prior, 1994); "Are they global or local or both?" (Kiltingsworth, 1992); "What is the relationship between discourse communities and genres?" (Swales, 1988b. 1990). 500 Chapter 4 1. Why do individuals join social and professional communities? What appear to be the relationships between communities and their genres? 2. Are there levels of community? In particular, can we hypothesize a general academic community or language? 3. What are some of the forces that make communities complex and varied? What forces work against "shared participation and shared ways of expressing?" (Rafoth, 1990, p. 140). I have used the term discourse communities because this appears to be the most common term in the literature. However, communities of practice, a related concept, is becoming increasingly popular, particularly for academic contexts (see Brown & Duguid, 1995; Lave & Wenger, 1991), In the term discourse communities, the focus is on texts and language, the genres and lexis that enable members throughout the world to maintain their goals, regulate their membership, and communicate efficiently with one another. Swales (1990, pp. 24—27) lists six defining characteristics of a discourse community: 1. [It has] a broadly agreed set of common public goals. 2. [It has] mechanisms of intercommunication among its members (such as 3. 4. 5. 6. newsletters or journals). [It] utilizes and hence possesses one or more genres in the communicative furtherance of its aims. [It] uses its participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information and feedback. In addition to owning genres, [it] has acquired some specific lexis. [It has] a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discoursal expertise. The term communities of practice refers to genres and lexis, but especially to many practices and values that hold communities together or separate them from one another. Lave and Wenger, in discussing students' enculturation into academic communities, have this to say about communities of practice: As students begin to engage with the discipline, as they move from exposure to experience, they begin to understand that the different communities on campus are quite distinct, that apparently common terms have different meanings, apparently shared tools have different uses, apparently related objects have different interpretations. . . . As they work in a particular community, they start to understand both its particularities and what joining takes, how these involve language, practice, culture and a conceptual universe, not just mountains of facts (1991, p. 13). Thus, communities of practice are seen as complex collections of individuals who share genres, language, values, concepts, and "ways of being" (Geertz, 1983), often distinct from those held by other communities. In order to introduce students to these visions of community, it is useful to take them outside the academic realm to something more familiar, the recreational and avocational communities to which they, or their families, ANN M. JOHNS Discourse Communities and Communities Practice belong. Thus I begin with a discussion of nonacademic communities before proceeding to issues of academic communities and membership. Communities and Membership Social, Political, and Recreational Communities People are born, or taken involuntarily by their families and cultures, into some communities of practice. These first culture communities may be religious, tribal, social, or economic, and they may be central to an individual's daily life experiences. Academic communities, on the other hand, are selected and voluntary, at least after compulsory education. Therefore, this chapter will concentrate on communities that are chosen, the groups with which people maintain ties because of their interests, their politics, or their professions. Individuals are often members of a variety of communities outside academic life: social and interest groups with which they have chosen to affiliate. These community affiliations vary in terms of individual depth of interest, belief, and commitment. Individual involvement may become stronger or weaker over time as circumstances and interests change. Nonacademic communities of interest, like "homely" genres, can provide a useful starting point for student discussion. In presenting communities of this type, Swales uses the example of the Hong Kong Study Circle (HKSC), 1 of which he is a paying member, whose Why do individuals join social purposes are to "foster interest in and and professional communities? Are there levels of community? knowledge of the stamps of Hong Kong" (1990, p. 27). He was once quite active in this community, dialoging freWhat are some of the forces that quently with other members through make communities complex and 2 varied? HKSC publications. However, at this point in his life, he has other interests (birds and butterflies), and so he is now an inactive member of HKSC. His commitments of time and energy have been diverted elsewhere. Members of my family are also affiliated with several types of communities. We are members of cultural organizations, such as the local art museum and the theater companies. We receive these communities' publications, and we attend some of their functions, but we do not consider ourselves to be active. We also belong to a variety of communities with political aims. My mother, for example, is a member of the powerful lobbying group, the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP). The several million members pay their dues because of their interests in maintaining government-sponsored retirement (Social Security) and health benefits (Medicare), both of which are promoted by AARP lobbyists in the U.S. Congress. The AARP magazine, Modern Maturity, is a powerful organ of the association, carefully crafted Note that most communities use abbreviations for their names and often for their publications. All community members recognize these abbreviations, of course. These written interactions are impossible for the noninitiated to understand, might point out. 1 2 502 Chapter 4 to forward the group's aims. Through this publication, members are urged to write to their elected representatives about legislation, and they are also informed about which members of Congress are "friends of the retired." However, members are offered more than politics: Articles in the magazine discuss keeping healthy while aging, remaining beautiful, traveling cheaply, and using the Internet. AARP members also receive discounts on prescription drugs, tours, and other benefit. 3 Recently, my husband has become very active in a recreational discourse community, the international community of cyclists.4 He reads publications such as Bicycling ("World's No. 1 Road and Mountain Bike Magazine") each month for advice about better cyclist health ("Instead of Pasta, Eat This!" ) 5 equipment to buy, and international cycling tours. Like most other communities, cycling has experts, some of whom write articles for the magazines to which he subscribes, using a register that is mysterious to the uninitiated: “unified gear triangle"; "metal matrix composite." Cyclists share values (good health, travel interests), special knowledge, vocabulary, and genres, but they do not necessarily share political or social views, as my husband discovered when conversing with other cyclists on a group trip. In publications for cyclists, we can find genres that we recognize by name but with community-related content: editorials, letters to the editor, short articles on new products, articles of interest to readers (on health and safety, for example), advertisements appealing to readers, and essay/commentaries. If we examine magazines published for other interest groups, we can find texts from many of the same genres. 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 particular sport or pastime. The depth of an individual's commitment can, and often does, change over time. As members come and go, the genres and practices continue to evolve, reflecting and promoting the active members' aims, interests, and controversies. Studying the genres of nonacademic communities, particularly those with which students are familiar, helps them to grasp the complexity of text production and processing and the importance of understanding the group practices, lexis, values, and controversies that influence the construction of texts. Professional Communities Discourse communities can also be professional; every major profession has its organizations, its practices, its textual conventions, and its genres. Active community members also carry on informal exchanges: at conferences, through When asked my mother to drop her AARP membership because of a political stand the organization took, she said, "I can't, Ann. I get too good a deal on my medicines through my membership." 4 Those of us who are outsiders call them "gearheads." Often, terms are applied to insiders by community outsiders. 5 Brill, D. (1994, November). What's free of fat and cholesterol costs 4 cents per serving, and has more carbo than pasta? Rice! Bicycling, pp. 86—87. 3 ANN M. JOHNS Discourse Communities and Communities Practice email interest groups, in memos, in hallway discussions at the office, in laboratories and elsewhere, the results of which may be woven intertextually into public, published texts. However, it is the written genres of communities that are accessible to outsiders for analysis. We need only to ask professionals about their texts in order to collect an array of interesting examples. One of the most thoroughly studied professional communities is the law. In his Analysing Genre: Language Use in Professional Settings (1993), Bhatia discusses at some length his continuing research into legal communities that use English and other languages (pp. 101—143). He identifies the various genres of the legal profession: their purposes, contexts, and the form and content that appear to be conventional. He also contrasts these genres as they are realized in texts from various cultures. However, there are many other professional discourse communities whose genres can be investigated, particularly when students are interested in enculturation. For example, students might study musicians who devote their lives to pursuing their art but who also use written texts to dialogue with others in their profession. To learn more about these communities, I Interviewed a bassoonist in our city orchestra. 6 Along with those who play oboe, English horn, and contrabassoon, this musician subscribes to the major publication of the double-reed community, The International Double Reed Society Journal. Though he has specialized, double-reed interests, he reports that he and many other musicians also have general professional aims and values that link them to musicians in a much broader community. He argues that all practicing musicians within the Western tradition 7 share knowledge; there is a common core of language and values within this larger community. Whether they are guitarists, pianists, rock musicians, or bassoonists, musicians in the West seem to agree, for example, that the strongest and most basic musical intervals are 5-1 and 4-1, and that other chord intervals are weaker. They share a basic linguistic register and an understanding of chords and notation. Without this sharing, considerable negotiation would have to take place before they could play music together. As in other professions, these musicians have a base of expertise, values, and expectations that they use to facilitate communication. Thus, though a musician's first allegiance may be to his or her own musical tradition (jazz) or instrument (the bassoon), he or she will still share a great deal with other expert musicians—and much of this sharing is accomplished through specialized texts. What can we conclude from this section about individual affiliations with discourse communities? First, many people have chosen to be members of one or a variety of communities, groups with whom they share social, political, professional, or recreational interests. These communities use written discourses that enable members to keep in touch with each other, carry on discussions, explores controversies, and advance their aims; the genres are their vehicles for communication. These genres are not, in all | would like to thank Arian Fast of the San Diego Symphony for these community insights. Knowledge is also shared with musicians from other parts of the world, of course. However, some of the specific examples used here apply to the Western musical tradition. 6 7 Practice 504 ANN M. JOHNS Discourse Communities and Communities or Figure l: Levels of Community. cases, sophisticated or intellectual, literary or high-browed. They are, instead, representative of the values, needs, and practices of the community that produces them. Community membership may be concentrated or diluted; it may be central to a person's life or peripheral. Important for the discussion that follows is the juxtaposition of generalized and specialized languages and practices among these groups. Musicians, lawyers, athletes, and physicians, for example, may share certain values, language, and texts with others within their larger community, though their first allegiance is to their specializations. Figure 1 illustrates this general/specific relationship in communities. In the case of physicians, for example, there is a general community and a set of values and concepts with which most may identify because they have all had a shared basic education before beginning their specializations. There are publications, documents, concepts, language, and values that all physicians can, and often do, share. The same can be said of academics, as is shown in the figure. There may be some general academic discourses, 8 language, values, and concepts that most academics share. Thus faculty often identify themselves with a college or university and its For example, The Chronicle of Higher Education and several pedagogical publications are directed to a generai academic audience. 8 ANN M. JOHNS Discourse Communities and Communities of Practice 505 language and values, as well as with the more specialized areas of interest for which they have been prepared. This broad academic identification presents major problems for scholars and literacy practitioners, for although it is argued that disciplines are different (see Bartholomae, 1985; Belcher & Braine, 1995; Berkenkotter & Huckin, 1995; Carson et al., 1992; Lave & Wenger, 1991, among others), many faculty believe that there is a general academic English as well as a general set of critical thinking skills and strategies for approaching texts. Because this belief in a general, shared academic language is strong and universal, the next section of this chapter is devoted to this topic. Academic Communities What motivates this section more than anything else is its usefulness as a starting point in the exploration of academic literacies and its accessibility to students at various levels of instruction who need to become more aware of the interaction of roles, texts, and contexts in academic communities. Many literacy faculty have mixed classes of students from a number of disciplines or students just beginning to consider what it means to be an academic reader and writer. For these students, and even for some of the more advanced, a discussion of what are considered to be general academic languages and textual practices is a good place to start their analyses—although not a good place to finish. In the previous section it was noted that professionals may affiliate at various levels of specificity within their discourse communities. They often share language, knowledge, and values with a large, fairly heterogeneous group, though their first allegiances may be with a specialized group within this broader "club." This comment can apply to individuals in academic communities as well. Faculty have their own discipline-specific allegiances (to biology, chemistry, sociology, engineering); nonetheless, many believe that there are basic, generalizable linguistic, textual, and rhetorical rules for the entire academic community that can apply. Discipline-specific faculty who teach novices at the undergraduate level, and some who teach graduate students as well, sometimes complain that their students "do not write like academics" or "cannot comprehend" academic prose, arguing that these are general abilities that we should be teaching. The discussion that follows acknowledges their complaints and sets the stage for discussions of more specific academic issues and pedagogies in later chapters. Language, Texts, and Values This section on academic textual practices draws principally from three sources: "Reflections on Academic Discourse" (Elbow, 1991); Words and Lives: The Anthropologist as Author (Geertz, 1988); and The Scribal Society: An Essay on Literacy and Schooling in the Information Age (Purves, 1990) (see also Dudley 506 Chapter 4 Evans, 1995). Elbow and Purves are well-known composition theorists from different theoretical camps who were cited in Chapter I. Geertz, an anthropologist, has studied academic communities and their genres for many years. All three of these experts live in the United States, and this may affect their views; however, in many universities in the world in which English is employed, these beliefs about general text features are also shared, except perhaps in literature and some of the humanities disciplines. Following is a composite of the arguments made by the three academics about the nature, values, and practices in general expository academic prose, including some commentary on each topic. 1. Texts must be explicit. Writers should select their vocabulary carefully and use it wisely. In some cases, such as with certain noun compounds, paraphrase is impossible because specialized academic vocabulary must be used. Citation must be constructed carefully. Data analysis should be described and discussed explicitly. The methodology should be stated so clearly that it is replicable. Ambiguity in argumentation should be avoided. Comment. Faculty often complain that students are "careless" in their use of vocabulary, in their citation practices, and in their argumentation and use of data. Because many literacy classes value the personal essay and because many readings in literacy classes are in story form or are adapted or specially written for these classes, students are not exposed to the exactness of some academic prose. One of our responsibilities in developing socioliterate practices is to expose students to authentic academic texts and to analyze these texts for their specificity. 2. Topic and argument should he prerevealed in the introduction. Purves says that experienced academics, particularly when writing certain kinds of texts, should "select a single aspect of [a] subject and announce [their] theses and purposes as soon as possible" (1990, p. 12). Comment. Finding the argument in a reading and noticing how data, examples, or narration are used to support this argument are essential academic abilities that are praised by faculty from many disciplines. In like manner, understanding and presenting a clear argument that is appropriate to a genre are writing skills that appear high on faculty wish lists for students, particularly for those who come from diverse rhetorical traditions (see Connor, 1987). Most faculty require that arguments and purposes appear early, generally in an introduction. One of the discipline-specific faculty with whom I work tells her students not to "spend much time clearing their throats." She wants them to get right down to the argument." We must be aware, however, that the pressure to reveal topic, purposes, and argumentation early in a written text may be a culture-specific value and apply only to certain kinds of texts within specific communities. There is considerable discussion in the contrastive rhetoric and World Englishes literature about the motivations for text organization and content and the necessity (or lack thereof) for prerevealing information. Local cultures and first languages, as well as academic disciplines, can influence how and where arguments appear. 3. Writers should provide "maps " or "signposts " for the readers throughout 26 the texts, telling the readers where they have been in the text and where they are going. By using a variety of tactics, writers can assist ANN M. JOHNS Discourse Communities and Communities of Practice 507 readers in predicting and summarizing texts and in understanding the relationships among topics and arguments. Most of these tactics fall under the metadiscourse rubric. Comment. Metadiscourse is defined in the following way: It is writing about reading and writing. When we communicate, we use metadiscourse to name rhetorical actions: explain, show, argue, claim, deny, suggest, add, expand, summarize; to name the part of our discourse, first, second…in conclusion; to reveal logical connections, therefore…if so… to guide our readers, Consider the matter of (Williams, 1989, p. 28). Literacy textbooks for both reading and writing often emphasize the understanding and use of metadiscourse in texts. However, it is important to note that language and culture can have considerable influence on the ways in which metadiscourse is used. For example, in countries with homogeneous cultures, academic written English may have fewer metadiscoursal features (Mauranen, 1993) than in heterogeneous, "writer-responsible" cultures (see Hinds, 1987) such as the United States, Great Britain, or Australia. As in the case of all texts, academic discourses are influenced by the cultures and communities in which they are found, often in very complicated ways. 4. The language of texts should create a distance between the writer and the text to give the appearance of objectivity. Geertz (1988) speaks of academic, expository prose as "author-evacuated"; the author's personal voice is not clearly in evidence, because the first person pronoun is absent and arguments are muted. He compares author-evacuated prose with the "author-saturated" prose of many literary works, in which individual voice pervades. As mentioned earlier, this "author-evacuation" is particularly evident in pedagogical genres, such as the textbook. One way to create the evacuated style is to use the passive, a common rhetorical choice for the sciences, but there are other ways as well. Comment. Discipline-specific faculty sometimes tell us that students are unable to write "objectively" or to comprehend "objective" prose. 9 These students have not mastered the ability to clothe their argumentation in a particular register, to give it the kind of objective overlay that is valued in academic circles. When I asked one of my first-year university students to tell the class what he had learned about academic English, he said: "We can't use 'I' anymore. We have to pretend that we're not there in the text." In many cases, he is right. Literacy teachers need to help students to analyze texts for their author evacuated style, and to discuss the particular grammatical and lexical choices that are made to achieve the appearance of objectivity and distance. 5. Texts should maintain a "rubber-gloved" quality of voice and register. They must show a kind of reluctance to touch one's meanings with one's naked fingers (Elbow, 1991, p. 145). 9 “Objective” appears in quotation marks because, though academic writing may have the appearance of being objective, all texts are biased. 508 Chapter 4 Comment. For some academic contexts, writers appear to remove themselves emotionally and personally from the texts, to hold their texts at arms' length (metaphorically). The examination of texts in which this " rubber-gloved quality" is evident will provide for students some of the language to achieve these ends. What can students discover? Many academic writers abjure the use of emotional words, such as wonderful and disgusting; they hide behind syntax and " objective" academic vocabulary. 6. Writers should take a guarded stance, especially when presenting argumentation and results. Hedging through the use of modals (may, might) and other forms (It is possible that…) is perhaps the most common way to be guarded. Comment. Hedging appears to be central to some academic discourses, particularly those that report research. In a study of two science articles on the same topic published for two different audiences, Fahenstock (1986) found that the article written for experts in the field was replete with hedges (“appear to hydrolize,” “suggesting that animal food”), as scientists carefully reported their findings to their peers. However, the article written for laypersons was filled with “facts,” much like those in the textbooks described in Chapter 3. For these and other erasons, we need to introduce ways in which genre, context, readers, and communities affect linguistic choices. 7. Texts should display a vision of reality shared by members of the particular discourse community to which the text is addressed (or the particular faculty member who made the assignment). Comment. This may be the most difficult of the general academic requirements, for views of reality are often implicit, unacknowledged by the faculty themselves and are not revealed to students. Perhaps I can show how this "reality vision" is so difficult to uncover by discussing my research on course syllabi. I have been interviewing faculty for several years about the goals for their classes, goals that are generally stated in what is called a syllabus in the United States, but might be called a class framework or schedule of assignments in other countries. These studies indicated that most faculty tend to list as goals for the course the various topics that will be studied. The focus is exclusively on content. They do not list the particular views of the world that they want students to embrace, or the understandings that they want to encourage. In a class on "Women in the Humanities," for example, the instructor listed topics to be covered in her syllabus, but she did not tell the students that she wanted them to analyze images of women in cultures in order to see how these images shape various cultural contexts. In a geography class, the instructor listed topics to be covered, but he did not tell his students about his goals for analysis and synthesis of texts. Why are the critical-thinking goals and disciplinary values hidden by most faculty? I don't know. Perhaps instructors believe that students should intuit the values, practices, and genres required in the course; or the faculty have difficulty explicitly stating goals that are not related to content. Certainly content is the most commonly discussed issue at disciplinespecific (DS) curriculum meetings, and this may influence faculty choices. In a later chapter I will ANN M. JOHNS Discourse Communities and Communities of Practice 509 discuss one of the questionnaires that I use to elicit from faculty the "views of reality" or "ways of being" that my students and I would like to see stated explicitly in the syllabi. In contrast to DS faculty, we literacy faculty are often most interested in processes and understandings, in developing students metacognition and metalanguages—and these interests are often reflected in our syllabi. [Following,] for example, are the student goals for a first-year University writing class developed by a committee from my university's Department of Rhetoric and Writing Studies: 10 a. To use writing to clarify and improve your understanding of issues and texts b. To respond in writing to the thinking of others and to explore and account for your own responses c. To read analytically and critically, making active usc of what you read in your writing d. To understand the relationships between discourse structure and the question at issue in a piece of writing, and to select appropriate structures at the sentence and discourse levels e. To monitor your writing for the grammar and usage conventions appropriate to each writing situation f. To use textual material as a framework for understanding and writing about other texts, data or experiences No matter what kind of class is being taught, faculty need to discuss critical thinking and reading and writing goals frequently with students. They need to review why students are given assignments, showing how these tasks relate to course concepts and student literacy growth. 8. Academic texts should display a set of social and authority relations; they should show the writer’s understanding of the roles they play within the text or context. 11 Comment. Most students have had very little practice in recognizing the language of social roles within academic contexts, although their experience with language and social roles outside the classroom is often quite rich. Some students cannot recognize when they are being talked down to in textbooks, and they cannot write in a language that shows their roles vis-à-vis the topics studied or the faculty they are addressing. These difficulties are particularly evident among ESL/EFL students; however, they are also found among many other students whose exposure to academic language has been minimal. One reason for discussing social roles as they relate to texts from a genre, whether they be “homely” discourses or professional texts, is to heighten students’ awareness of the interaction of language, roles, and contexts so that they can read and write with more sophistication. 10 Quandahl, E. (1995). Rhetoric and writing studies 100: A list of goals. Unpublished paper, San Diego State University, San Diego, CA. 11 When I showed this point to Virginia Guleff, a graduate student, she said, “So students have to know their place!” Perhaps we should put it this way: They need to know different registers in order to play different rules. The more people use these registers, the more effective they can become and, not incidentally, the more power they can have over the situation in which they are reading or writing. Chapter 4 9. Academic texts should acknowledge the complex and important nature of intertextuality, the exploitation of other texts without resorting to plagiarism. Students need to practice reformulation and reconstruction of information so that they do not just repeat other texts by "knowledge telling" (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1989) but rather use these texts inventively for their purposes (called "knowledge transforming"; Bereiter & Scarclamalia, 1989). Comment. Carson (1993), in a large study of the intellectual demands on 4T undergraduate students, found that drawing from and integrating textual sources were two of the major challenges students face in attaining academic literacy. And no wonder. Widdowson (1993, p. 27) notes that When people make excessive and 'unacknowledged use of [another's text], and are found out, we call it plagiarism. When people are astute in their stitching of textual patchwork, we call it creativity. It is not easy to tell the difference. . . If a text is always in some degree a conglomerate of others, how independent can its meaning be? Drawing from sources and citing them appropriately is the most obvious and most commonly discussed aspect of intertextuality. As a result, Swales and Feak (1994) claim that citation may be the defining feature of academic discourses. However, there are other, more subtle and varied borrowings from past discourses, for, as Widdowson notes, "Any particular text is produced or interpreted in reference to a previous knowledge of other texts" (1993, p. 27). 10. Texts should comply with the genre requirements of the community or classroom. Comment. This, of course, is another difficult challenge for students. As mentioned earlier, pedagogical genres are often loosely named and casually described by DS faculty. It is difficult to identify the conventions of a student research paper, an essay examination response, or other pedagogical genres because, in fact, these vary considerably from class to class. Yet DS faculty expect students to understand these distinctions and to read and write appropriately for their own classes. My students and I often ask faculty: "What is a good critique for your class?" or "What is a good term paper?" We request several student-written models and, if possible, interview the faculty member about their assigned texts and tasks. This section has outlined what may be some general rules for academic literacy, most of which are refined within each discipline and classroom. Although it would be difficult to defend several of these beliefs because of the wide range of academic discourses and practices, listing and discussing these factors can prepare students for an examination of how texts are socially constructed and whether some of the points made here are applicable to specific texts. Of course, we also need to expose students to texts that contradict these rules for academic discourse. We should examine literary genres, which break most of the rules listed. We should look at specialized texts that have alternative requirements ANN M. JOHNS Discourse Communities and Cornmunities of Practice 511 for register. In any of our pedagogical conversations, the objective should not be to discover truths but to explore how social and cultural forces may influence texts in various contexts. Community Conflicts and Diversity So far, the discussion of communities and their genres has focused on the uniting forces, particularly the language, practices, values, and genres that groups may share. It has been suggested that people can join communities at will and remain affiliated at levels of their own choosing. For a number of reasons, this is not entirely accurate. In some cases people are excluded from communities because they lack social standing, talent, or money, or because they live in the wrong part of town. In other cases, community membership requires a long initiatory process, and even then there is no guarantee of success. Many students work for years toward their doctoral degrees, for example, only to find that there are no faculty positions available to them or that their approach to research will not lead to advancement. Even after individuals are fully initiated, many factors can separate them. Members of communities rebel, opposing community leaders or attempting to change the rules of the game and, by extension, the content and argumentation in the texts from shared genres. If the rebellion is successful, the rules may be changed or a new group may be formed with a different set of values and aims. There may even be a theoretical paradigm shift in the discipline. In academic communities, rebellion may result in the creation of a new unit or department, separate from the old community, as has been the case recently in my own university. 12 Even without open rebellion, there is constant dialogue and argument within communities as members thrash out their differences and juggle for power and identity, promoting their own content, argumentation, and approaches to research. Although much could be said about factors that affect communities outside the academic realm, the following discussion will focus on a few of the rich and complex factors that give academic communities their character. San Diego State's new Department of Rhetoric and Writing Studies is composed of composition instructors who asked to leave the Department of English, as well as of faculty from the previously independent Academic Skills Center. 12 Chapter 4 The Cost of Affiliation If students want to become affiliated with academic discourse communities, or even if they want to succeed in school, they may have to make considerable sacrifices. To become active academic participants, they sometimes must make major trade-offs that can create personal and social distance between them and their families and communities. Students are asked to modify their language to fit that of the academic classroom or discipline They often must drop, or at least diminish in importance, their affiliations to their home cultures in order to take on the values, language, and genres of their disciplinary culture. The literature is full of stories of the students who must make choices between their communities and academic lives (see, for example, Rose's Lives on the Boundary, 1989). In an account of his experiences, Richard Rodriguez (1982, p. 56), a child of Mexican immigrant parents, wrote the following: What I am about to say to you has 'taken me more than twenty years to admit: a primary reason for my success in the classroom was that I couldn't forget that schooling was changing me and separating me from the life I had enjoyed before becoming a student... If because of my schooling, I had grown culturally separated from my parents, my education has finally given me ways of speaking and caring about that fact. Here Rodriguez is discussing his entire schooling experience; however, as students advance in schools and universities, they may be confronted with even more wrenching conflicts between their home and academic cultures and languages. In her story of a Hispanic graduate student in a Ph.D. sociology program in the United States, Casanave (1992) tells how the tension between this student's personal values and language and her chosen department's insistence on its own scientific language and genres finally drove her from her new academic community. When she could no longer explain her work in sociology in everyday language to the people of her primary communities (her family and her clients), the student decided to leave the graduate program. The faculty viewed her stance as rebellious, an open refusal to take on academic community values. By the time she left, it had become obvious to all concerned that the faculty were unable, or unwilling, to bend or to adapt some of their disciplinary rules to accommodate this student's interests, vocation, and language. A graduate student from Japan faced other kinds of affiliation conflicts when attempting to become a successful student in a North American linguistics program (Benson, 1996). This student brought from her home university certain social expectations: about faculty roles, about her role as a student, and about what is involved in the production of texts. She believed, for example, that the faculty should provide her with models of what was expected in her papers; she felt that they should determine her research topics and hypotheses. This had been the case in her university in Japan, and she had considerable difficulty ANN M. JOHNS Discourse Communities and Communities of Practice understanding why the American faculty did not conform to the practices of her home country. She tried to follow her professors' instructions with great care, but they chastised her for "lacking ideas." In her view, the faculty were being irresponsible; however, some faculty viewed her as passive, unimaginative, and dependent. What she and many other students have found is that gaining affiliation in graduate education means much more than understanding the registers of academic language. These examples are intended to show that full involvement or affiliation in academic discourse communities requires major cultural and linguistic tradeoffs from many students. Faculty expect them to accept the texts, roles, and contexts of the discipline, but acceptance requires much more sacrifice and change than the faculty may imagine. In our literacy classes, we can assist academic students in discussing the kinds of problems they encounter when attempting to resolve these conflicts. However, we can also assist our faculty colleagues, who often are unaware of their students' plight, through workshops, student presentations, and suggestions for reading. Issues of Authority What happens after a person has become an academic initiate, after he or she has completed the degree, published, and been advanced? There are still community issues to contend with, one of which relates to authority, Bakhtin (1986, p. 88) noted that "in each epoch, in each social circle, in each small world of family, friends, acquaintances and comrades in which a human being grows and lives, there are always authoritative utterances that set the tone." In academic circles, these "authoritative utterances" are made by journal or e-mail interest-group editors, by conference program planners, and by others. At the local level, this authority can be held by department chairs or by chairs of important committees. Prior (1994, p. 522) speaks of these academically powerful people as "an elite group that imposes its language, beliefs and values on others through control of journals, academic appointments, curricula, student examinations, research findings and so on." It is important to note that Prior extends his discussion beyond authority over colleagues to broad authority over students through curricula and examinations. This type of pedagogical authority is very important, as all students know, so it will be discussed further. In many countries, provincial and national examinations drive the curricula, and theoretical and practical control over these examinations means authority over what students are taught. In the People's Republic of China, for example, important general English language examinations have been based for years on word frequency counts developed in several language centers throughout the country. Each "band," or proficiency level on the examination, is determined by "the most common 1,000 Chapter 4 words, the most common 2,000 words," and so on. 13 Although features of language such as grammar are tested in these examinations, it is a theory about vocabulary, based on word frequency, that is central. It is not surprising, then, that most Chinese students believe that vocabulary is the key to literacy, particularly the understanding of "exact" meanings of words. When I have worked with teachers in China, I have frequently been asked questions such as "What is the exact meaning of the term 'discourse'? What does 'theory' mean?" These teachers requested a single definition, something I was often unable to provide. The centralized power over important examinations in China, over the TOEFL and graduate entrance examinations in the United States, and over the British Council Examinations in other parts of the world gives considerable authority within communities to certain test developers and examiners. This authority permits little pedagogical latitude to teachers preparing students for these "gate-keeping" examinations. As practitioners, we can use test preparation pedagogies, or we can critique these examinations (Raimes, 1990), as we should; but we cannot institute large-scale change until we gain control and authority over the examination system. With students at all academic levels, we practitioners should raise the issues of authority, status, and control over community utterances in literacy classes. About their own social groups, we can ask: "Who has status in your clubs and why? Who has status in your ethnic or geographical communities and why? How do they exert control over people, over utterances, and over publications? " When referring to academic situations and authority, we. can ask: "Who wrote this textbook? What are the authors' affiliations? Are they prestigious? How does the language of the textbook demonstrate the author's authority over the material and over the students who read the volume?" We can also ask: "Who writes your important examinations? What are their values?" Or we can ask: "Who has status in your academic classrooms? Which students have author- ity and why?" And finally, we might ask: "How can you gain authority in the classroom or over texts?" Throughout a discussion of authority relationships, we need to talk about communities, language, and genres: how texts and spoken discourses are used to gain and perpetuate authority. We can assist students to analyze authoritative texts, including those of other students, and to critique authority relationships. Our students need to become more aware of these factors affecting their academic lives before they can hope to produce and comprehend texts that command authority within academic contexts. 13 "Most common" appears in quotation marks because what is most common (other than function words) is very difficult to determine. These lists are influenced by the type of language data that is entered into the computer for the word count: whether it is written or spoken, its register etc. If data are varied, other vocabulary become common. At one point in my career, I attempted to develop low proficiency English for Business textbooks for adults using a famous publisher's list of most common words. I failed because the data used to establish the frequency lists were taken from children's books. The common words in children's language and those most common in business language are considerably different (Johns, 1985). ANN M. JOHNS Discourse Communities and Communities of Practice Conventions and Anticonventionalism There are many other push and pull factors in academic communities, factors that create dialogue, conflict, and change. Communities evolve constantly, though established community members may attempt to maintain their power and keep the new initiates in line through control over language and genres. A student or a young faculty member can be punished for major transgressions from the norm, for attempting to move away from what the more established, initiated members expect. In order to receive a good grade (or be published), writers often must work within the rules. Understanding these rules, even if they are to be broken, appears to be essential. As individuals within an academic community become more established and famous, they can become more anticonventional, in both their texts and their lives. Three famous rule breakers come to mind, though there are others. Stephen J. Gould, a biologist, has written a series of literate essays for the general public, principally about evolution, that look considerably different from the scientific journal article. Gould has broken his generic traditions to "go public" because he already has tenure at Harvard, he likes to write essays, and he enjoys addressing a public audience (see Gould, 1985). Deborah Tannen, an applied linguist, has also "gone public," publishing "pop books" about communication between men and women that are best-sellers in the United States (see Tannen, 1986, 1994). She continues to write relatively conventional articles in journals, but she also writes often for the layperson. Clifford Geertz, the anthropologist, refuses to be pigeonholed in terms of topic, argumentation, or genre. Using his own disciplinary approaches, he writes texts on academic cultures as well as the “exotic” ones that are typical to anthropologists (see Geertz, 1988). Gould, Tannen, and Geertz have established themselves within their disciplines. Now famous, they can afford to defy community conventions as they write in their individual ways. Rule breaking is a minefield for many students, however. They first need to understand some of the basic conventions, concepts, and values of a community’s genres. Learning and using academic conventions is not easy, for many students receive little or no instruction. To compound the problems, students need constantly to revise their theories of genres and genre conventions (see Bartholomae, 1985). Some graduate students, for example, often express confusion about conventions, anticonventions, and the breaking of rules, for faculty advice appears to be idiosyncratic, based not on community conventions but on personal taste. Some faculty thesis advisers, particularly in the humanities, require a careful review of the literature and accept nothing else; others may insist on “original” 14 work without a literature review. For some advisers there is a “cookie cutter” macrostructure that all papers must follow; others may prefer a more free-flowing, experimental text. Graduate students complain that discovering or breaking these implicit rules requires much research and many visits to faculty offices, as well as many drafts of their thesis chapters (see Schneider & Fujishima, 1995). 14 Since I am arguing here that all texts rely on other texts, I put “original” in quotation marks. Chapter 4 It should be clear from this discussion that we cannot tell students "truths" about texts or community practices. However, we can heighten student awareness of generic conventions, and we can assist students in formulating questions that can be addressed to faculty. In our literacy classes, we are developing researchers, not dogmatists, students who explore ideas and literacies rather than seek simple answers. Dialogue and Critique In any thriving academic community, there is constant dialogue: disagreements among members about approaches to research, about argumentation, about topics for study, and about theory. The journal Science acknowledges this and accepts two types of letters to the editor to enable writers to carry out informal dialogues. In other journals, sections are set aside for short interchanges between two writers who hold opposing views (see the Journal of Second Language Writing, for example). Most journals carry critiques of new volumes in book review sections, and many published articles are in dialogue with other texts. Academic communities encourage variety and critique (within limits), because that is how they evolve and grow. Most professional academics know the rules for dialogue: what topics are currently "hot," how to discuss these topics in ways appropriate for the readers of their genres, how far they can go from the current norms, and what they can use (data, narratives, nonlinear texts) to support their arguments. Some professionals who understand the rules can also break them with impunity. They can push the boundaries because they know where the discipline has been and where it may be going, and how to use their authority, and the authority of others, to make their arguments. In a volume on academic expertise, Geisler (1994) comments that there are three "worlds" with which expert academics must be familiar before they can join, or contravene, a disciplinary dialogue: the "domain content World" of logically related concepts and content; the "narrated world" of everyday experience; and the "abstract world" of authorial conversation. Academic experts must manipulate these worlds in order to produce texts that can be in dialogue or conflict with, yet appropriate to, the communities they are addressing. This discussion has suggested that communities and their genres are useful to study not only because they can share conventions, values, and histories but because they are evolving: through affiliation of new, different members; through changes in authority; through anticonventionalism, dialogue, and critique. Students know these things about their own communities; we need to draw from this knowledge to begin to explore unfamiliar academic communities and their genres. This chapter has addressed some of the social and cultural factors that influence texts, factors that are closely related to community membership. Although there is much debate in the literature about the nature of discourse communities and communities of practice, it can be said with some certainty that community affiliations are very real to individual academic faculty. Faculty refer to themselves as "chemists, engineers." "historians," or "applied linguists"; they read texts from community genres with great interest or join in heated debates with their peers over the Internet. They ANN M. JOHNS Discourse and Communities of Practice sometimes recognize that the language, values, and genres of their communities (or specializations) may differ from those of another academic community, though this is not always the case. At a promotions committee made up of faculty from sixteen departments in which I took part, a member of the quantitative group in the Geography Department said of a humanities text, "We shouldn't accept an article for promotion without statistics." And we all laughed, nervously. Academics, and others, may belong to several communities and have in common certain interests within each. Thus, faculty may have nothing in common with other faculty in their disciplines but the discipline itself; their social, political, and other interests can, and often do, vary widely. In one department, for example, musical interests can be diverse. There may be country-western fans, opera fans, jazz enthusiasts, and those whose only musical experiences consist of listening to the national anthem at baseball games. Recreational interests may also differ. Among faculty, there are motorcyclists and bicyclists, hikers and "couch potatoes," football fans and those who actually play the sport. A complex of social, community-related factors influences the socioliteracies of faculty and the students who are in their classes. As literacy practitioners, we need to help our students examine these factors by bringing other faculty and students, and their genres, into our classrooms, as well as drawing from our own students' rich resources. References Bakhtin, M. M. (1986). Speech genres and other late essays. (V. W. Mc Gee, Trans.). C. Emerson & M. Holquist (Eds.). Austin: University of Texas Press. Bartholomae, D. (1985), Inventing the university. In M. Rose (Ed.), When a writer can't write: Studies in writer's block and other composing process problems (pp. 134—165). New York: Guilford Press. Belcher, D., & Braine, G. (Eds.). (1995). Academic writing in a second language: Essays on research and pedagogy. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Benson, K. (1996). How do students and faculty perceive graduate writing tasks? A case study of a Japanese student in a graduate program in linguistics. Unpublished manuscript, San Diego State University. Bereiter, C., & Scardamalia, M. (1989). Intentional learning as a goal of instruction. In J. Resnick (Ed.), Knowing, learning (pp. 361—392). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Berkenkotter, C., & Huckin, T. (1995). Genre knowledge in disciplinary communities. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Bhatia, V. J. (1993). Analyzing genre: Language use in professional settings. London & New York: Longman. Brill, D (1994, November). What's free of fat and cholesterol, costs 4 cents per serving, and has more carbo than pasta? Rice! Bicycling, 86—87. Brown, J. S., & Duguid, P. (1995, July 26). Universities in the digital age. Xerox Palo Alto Paper. Palo Alto, CA: Xerox Corporation. Carson, J. G. (1993, April). Academic literacy demands of the undergraduate curriculum: Literacy activities integrating skills. Paper presented at the International TESOL Conference, Atlanta, GA. Carson, J. G., Chase, N., Gibson, S., & Hargrove, M. (1992). Literacy demands of the undergraduate curriculum. Reading Research and Instruction, 31, 25—50. Casanave, C. P. (1992). Cultural diversity and socialization: A case study of a Hispanic woman in a doctoral program in Sociology. In D. Murray (Ed.), Diversity as a resource: Redefining cultural literacy (pp. 148—182). Arlington, VA: TESOL. Connor, U. (1987). Argumentative patterns in student essays: Cross-cultural differences. In U. Connor & R. B. Kaplan (Eds.), Writing across languages: Analysis of L2 text (pp. 57—71). Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Chapter 4 Dudley-Evans, T. (1995). Common-core and specific approaches to teaching academic writing. In D. Belcher & G. Braine (Eds.), Academic writing in a second language: Essays on research and pedagogy (pp. 293—312). Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Elbow, P. (1991). Reflections on academic discourse. College English, 53 (2), 135—115. Fahenstock, J. (1986). Accommodating science. Written Communication, 3, 275—296. Geertz, C. (1983). Local knowledge: Further essays ili interpretive anthropology. New York: Basic Books. Geertz, C. (1988). Words and lives: The anthropologist as author. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press. Geisler, C. (1994). Literacy and expertise in the academy. Language and Learning Across the Disciplines, 1, 35—57. Gould, S. J. (1985). The flamingo's smile. New York: Norton. Hinds, J. (1987). Reader versus writer responsibility: A new typology. In U. Connor & R. B. Kaplan (Eds.), Writing across languages: An analysis of L2 texts (pp. 141—152). Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Johns, A. M. (1985). The new authenticity and the preparation of commercial reading texts for lower-kevel ESP students. CATESOL Occasional Papers, 11, 103-107. Killingsworth, M. J. (1992). Discourse communities—local and global. Rhetoric Review, 11, 110-122. Lave, J. , & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. New York: Cambridge University Press. Mauranen, A. (1993). Contrastive ESP rhetoric Metatext in FinnishÆnglish economic texts. English for Specific Purposes, 12, 3—22, Prior, P. (1994). Response, revision and disciplinarity: A microhistory of a dissertation prospectus in sociology. Written Communication, 11, 483—533. Purves, A. C. (1990). The scribal society: An essay on literacy and schooling in the information age. New York: Longman. Raforh, B. A. (199()). The concept of discourse community: Descriptive and explanatory adequacy. In G. Kirsch & D. H. Roen (Eds.), A sense of audience in written communication (pp. 140—152). Written Communication Annual, Vol. 5. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Raimes, A. (1990). The TOEFL Test of Written English: Some causes for concern. TESOL Quarterly, 24, 427— 442. Rodriguez, R. (1982). Hunger of memory: The education of Richard Rodriguez. New York: Bantam Books. Rose, M. (1989). Lives on the boundary: The struggles and achievements of America's underprepared. New York: Free Press. Schneider, M., & Fujishima, N. K. (1995). When practice doesn't make perfect: The case of a graduate ESL student. In D. Belcher & G. Braine (Eds.), Academic writing in a second language: Essays on research & pedagogy (pp. 3—22). Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Swales, J. M. (1988b). Discourse communities, genres and English as an international language. World Englishes, 7, 211-220. Swales, J. M. (1990), Genre analysis: English in academic and research settings. New York: Cambridge University Press. Swales, J. M., & Feak, C. B. (1994). Academic writing for graduate students: Essential tasks and skills. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Tannen, D. (1986). That's not what I meant: How conversational style makes or breaks your relations with others. New York: W. Morrow. Tannen, D. (1994). Talking from 9—5: How women's and men's conversational styles affect who gets heard, who gets credit, and what gets done at work. New York: W. Morrow. Widdowson, H. G. (1993). The relevant conditions of language use and learning. In M. Krueger & F. Ryan (Eds.), Language and content: Discipline- and content-based approaches to language study (pp. 27—36). Lexington, NIA: D. C. Heath. Williams, J. (1989). Style: Ten lessons in clarity and grace. (3rd. ed.). Glenview, IL: Scott Foresman Chapter 4 1 Rhetorical Strategies in Machine Learning Student Name Dept. of Rhetoric & Writing Studies, San Diego State University RWS 305W: Writing in Various Settings Professor Centanni 10 October 2019 2 Rhetorical Strategies in Machine Learning Being part of a specific community entails sharing the same values as other members in the community, as well as oftentimes following the same ways of communicating those values. This is notably the case within the field of machine learning, which is a part of the larger field of computer science and software. Machine learning, which happens to be a rapidly growing yet somewhat controversial part of software, is essentially the use of algorithms and patterns to train a machine to do or recognize certain things without explicit instructions. In this field, which encompasses many new technologies like facial recognition and object detection, the typical communication patterns become clear after reading through various scholarly journals on the topic. Within the field of machine learning, authors employ statistics, popular references, acronyms, and other strategies in order to appeal to their intended audiences and show their authority within a discourse community. Before examining how rhetorical strategies were used by the particular authors under analysis, it is important to observe that common target audiences in this field includes students and members of the field of computer science who may not know much about machine learning. This becomes evident when each of the writings makes an effort to initially define what machine learning and artificial intelligence are, and what purposes they may help serve. For example, in the article “Philosophy and Machine Learning,” Canadian philosopher Paul Thagard (1990) describes the aim of artificial intelligence as “getting computers to perform tasks that require intelligence when done by people” (p. 261). By defining the aim of artificial intelligence in easily understandable terms, Thagard makes it clear that his writing is meant to reach readers who may not currently know much about machine learning or about programming at all. If readers were expected to have an abundance of experience, definitions would not be necessary. 3 This is only one sign of the audience, but being able to identify the intended readers clears up why the authors choose to use the various rhetorical strategies they later employ in the interest of persuasion. One such strategy is citing statistics. Researchers Barrington et al. (2012), in “GamePowered Machine Learning,” cite statistics early and often in their discussion on machine learning. By the second paragraph, the authors’ use of statistics shows the reader the power of machine learning when used to create song recommendations for music listeners on different streaming platforms. This is shown when Barrington et al. (2012) notes “after 10 [years] of effort by up to 50 full time musicologists, less than 1 million songs have been manually annotated, representing less than 5% of the current iTunes catalog” (p. 1611). Here, Barrington et al. use statistics to convince the reader that humans who manually annotate songs lack the efficiency of computer systems that do the same. By comparing human and machine data entry through illustrative statistics, Barrington et al. are able to appeal to logos to show the immense difference in efficiency between human annotating and the use of machine learning to accomplish the same task. This is an important signifier of a field norm because readers in this field do not just expect conjecture; they want to know that concrete data supports assertions. While statistics can certainly be manipulated if used incorrectly, this field values those that are put into an appropriate context. While statistics are often utilized in illustrating widespread effects of machine learning to audiences, it is also important that the authors are able to connect the subject to readers on a personal level as well. A prime example of this is shown in the article “Machine Learning” by Dellot and Balaram (2018). Early on in the piece, the authors show their effort to connect to the reader by naming popular shows in which dystopian futures become the norm as a somewhat 4 direct result of machine learning. They connect with readers by noting “popular culture is again dominated by tales of machines gone rogue, from Ex Machina to Black Mirror” (Dellot & Balaram, 2018, p. 44). Here, it is clear that the authors are trying to reel in the interest of the audience by almost immediately connecting the subject to television shows they might be familiar with or may have heard of. By doing this, they appeal to pathos in order to keep the reader intrigued through imagery and emotional connection. It creates an immediate sense of relevance in a reader, which shows that the argument is not just about dry claims and statistics, but also about relatable concepts. Appealing to pathos through nostalgic experience or real-life examples is an evident and seemingly necessary strategy frequently used within the field of machine learning to create a connection with the reader. Though creating a personal connection to the audience is important to stimulate the interest of the readers in the widespread and statistic-filled subject of machine learning, it is imperative that the reader is able to see the author as an authority within the discourse community of computer science as a whole. One of the most commonplace ways authors are able to show their authority in computer programming and belonging to the discourse community of machine learning is through the use of acronyms. A simple example of this is shown when Thagard (1990) almost immediately shortens artificial intelligence to AI (p. 261), but a more complex illustration occurs when Barrington et al. (2012) shortens "Gaussian mixture model" and "dynamic texture mixture" to GMM and DTM, respectively (p. 1614). Here, the authors of both texts employ acronyms to abbreviate terms that they will use regularly in efforts to demonstrate their understanding and experience with the subject of machine learning. To be sure, knowing that AI means "artificial intelligence" is not insider knowledge; however, by meeting the norm of employing the common acronyms on a frequent basis, these authors implant the idea 5 that they do have further insider knowledge, which makes them authorities in the field. There are many terms within the computer science and machine learning field that are long and specific, and these acronyms both aid in creating a sense of belonging within the field and in allowing people to reference concepts without adding confusing, lengthy definitions. By abbreviating these terms, the authors are able to appeal to ethos in the subject of machine learning while also allowing themselves to use the terms continually throughout the writings without tiring them out. Although writers in the discourse community of machine learning do well in displaying their experience within the field, one strategy that is notably absent from the field is authors directly referring to the experience. In other words, they commonly show their experience without talking about it. Whereas this may be a more suitable strategy to employ in other fields of study, it is not often used when discussing machine learning, likely since the field is such a new one that is rapidly growing and changing every day. Claiming 10 years of experience in a field is not always particularly impressive, but few people have been able to study machine learning much longer, since the earliest texts come from about 30 years ago, when the field itself was still budding. With a field that is ever-changing and continually improving, it becomes difficult to truly be an expert or to bring up experience with machine learning as past experiences can quickly grow outdated as new technology develops. With these thoughts in mind, it is clear why appeals to ethos are less often used in writings on machine learning. The rhetorical strategies within the field of machine learning begin to reveal themselves after reading through scholarly journals on the topic. Strategies used to appeal to pathos, logos, and ethos assume a pattern and are utilized by members of the discourse community to show their belonging to the field. Writers are oftentimes found using statistics in order to appeal to logos, as well as using media and imagery to emotionally connect the reader to machine learning 6 by appealing to pathos. Using acronyms to appeal to ethos become more apparent since this rhetorical appeal is found few and far between within this discourse community. As the field of machine learning continues to advance and grow, the rhetorical strategies used by members of its discourse community are one element that seem to maintain a steady pattern. 7 References Barrington, L., Turnbull, D., & Lanckriet, G. (2012). Game-powered machine learning. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 109(17), pp. 6411–6416. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1014748109 Dellot, B., & Balaram. B. (2018). Machine learning. RSA Journal, 164(3[5575]), pp. 44-47. https://doi.org/10.2307/26798354 Thagard, P. (1990). Philosophy and machine learning. Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 20(2), pp. 261–276. https://doi.org/10.1080/00455091.1990.10717218 1 Nursing Rhetoric Student Name Department of Rhetoric & Writing Studies, San Diego State University RWS 305W Professor Centanni 19 February 2020 2 Nursing Rhetoric The Greek philosopher Plato once said that “rhetoric is the art of ruling the minds of men.” Rhetoric is meant to persuade the audience and its effectiveness depends heavily on how the information is delivered. Certain fields of study rely on different strategies to convince their audience. In the medical field, authors often use statistics, refer to credible sources and concede the flaws of an argument in order to appear reliable and authoritative. In both MacWilliams et al.'s (2013) “Men in Nursing” and Koukourikos et al.'s (2019) “Benefits of Animal Assisted Therapy in Mental Health," medical scholars utilize multiple rhetorical strategies to appeal to the audience's senses of logic, emotion, and character. In doing so, they are able to strengthen their stance and ultimately persuade the readers. The target audience for articles in this field is typically those in the medical field, as evidenced by the fact that it requires a background knowledge of certain medical practices and diseases to fully grasp them. For example, Koukourikos et al. (2019) thoroughly explain how animal assisted therapy helps patients with depression, autism, dementia and schizophrenia, but they don’t define these diseases and they use many medical terms that those not in the medical field would not typically know (p. 1900). A certain level of medical knowledge is also necessary to understand the context of MacWilliams et al's text, too, because it utilizes different types of evidence to show the disparity between men and women in nursing. The article is supported by different quantitative and qualitative studies that identify the causes of the gender inequality in nursing, which can be unfamiliar to the general public (MacWilliams et al., 2013, p. 39). The article “Men in Nursing” is also for readers who are interested in gender diversity in the workplace. 3 Since the audience is so intimately aware of the medical field, one strategy that allows scholars to portray appropriate decorum is following the scientific method. Both articles follow this time-tested format. The organization of these texts is familiar to those in research and in the medical field, as each piece has an introduction, objective, methodology, results, and conclusion section (MacWilliams et al., 2013; Koukourikos et al., 2019). This, alone, shows reverence for the expectations of the scientific community, but to further their ethos appeal, the authors also explain how they found their credible sources in their methodology sections. In both articles, the evidence for their arguments was found with the use of reputable databases, which gives the authors more credibility and appeals to an audience’s sense of ethos. MacWilliams et al. (2013) chose their articles using “Education Resources Information Center (ERIC) and the Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL) electric databases” (p. 39). These are highly reputable, well-known databases that all medical and nursing professionals will recognize, This allows the information to come from a place of authority rather than requiring readers to check the research themselves. With the use of these strategies, the audience is more likely to be persuaded because the authors demonstrated their expertise on the information and presented it in the expected format and with credible sources. Credibility in science extends beyond the format and into the values of perpetual curiosity, so by acknowledging the limitations or flaws in their work these scholars actually strengthen their ethos. One example of this is when Koukourikos et al. (2019) assert that although animal therapy seems to achieve positive outcomes, “research into the involvement of animals in the treatment of mental illness needs to be broadened and enriched” because there are “obvious weaknesses and constraints” (p. 1903). In other words, while success looks like a likely result of these methods, Koukourikos et al. ensure their readers that more testing needs to be 4 done to confirm the hypotheses. This is scientific thinking at its core: the notion that the only way to confirm a truth is through replication. Scholars do not admit these limitations to degrade their work, but rather to suggest that they would prefer multiple studies find the exact same result before trusting the methods as fact. This makes the researchers appear more virtuous and honest, and the readers are more likely to trust them. This honesty is a quality that most audiences value and appreciate, but particularly in the field of science, it shows the reasonable understanding that something must be true on repeated occasions before it can be truly trusted - a core value of the medical and nursing field. Case studies and statistics are also common strategies in research articles because they can appeal to an audience’s logic. In “Men in Nursing”, the authors mention that “men still represent fewer than 10% of the RNs licensed since 2000 and fewer than 12% of the students enrolled in baccalaureate nursing programs” (MacWilliams et al., 2013, p. 38). These statistics are factual and difficult to dispute because they are objective figures, which appeals to a reader’s logic. By listing these statistics, the authors are able to emphasize how there is a lack of male nurses in the field and in school. The nursing profession often relies on statistics and facts as evidence to support an action or new practice. The same article also shares a case study where male nursing students from a public university described “a diminishing population of male students as they progressed through the nursing program” (MacWilliams et al., 2013, p. 40). Case studies are also used in nursing research because it provides detailed information and insight for further research. Nursing is a profession centered around evidence-based practice, meaning that any action or decision making is supported by various types of evidence, including experiments, statistics or case studies. 5 While most medical fields prefer the aforementioned ethos and logos appeals, audiences can still be susceptible to emotions, which is why the field of nursing does dabble in charged language at times. An illustrative example of this is how Koukourikos et al. (2019) refer to “patients suffering from mental illness" who "often feel powerless, vulnerable and dependent on other people” (p. 1900). Had the scholars only noted the feeling of dependence, a reader could infer that patients in this description are more likely to feel a particular way emotionally. However, their choice to include not one, but three words that have sad connotations "suffering," "powerful," and "vulnerable" (Koukourikos et al., 2019, p. 38) - invite the reader to feel a sense of concern rather than merely a measured decision to act on behalf of patients. Readers in this field would likely be drawn in by the hard stats alone, but this appeal can make them feel a sense of ethical responsibility, as well. Ethical responsibility is a defining factor of the medical field, as each doctor has to swear the Hippocratic Oath, so this strategy is likely to work quite well in persuading readers. By finding common ground in sympathy, the author is able to introduce the argument, which the audience will be more likely to listen too because they sympathize with the subject. The use of various rhetoric strategies can be effective in conveying an argument. The most effective argument connects to the readers’ heart, brain, and "gut." In the medical field, the use of statistics and acknowledging limitations can strengthen an author’s credibility, making them more reliable sources. The use of decorum and sympathy is also very persuasive because it appeals to the audience’s values and emotions. Ultimately, in healthcare, persuasion and rhetoric are incredibly important because it can lead to a better understanding and wellbeing. 6 References Koukourikos, K., Georgopoulou, A., Kourkouta, L., & Tsaloglidou, A. (2019). Benefits of animal assisted therapy in mental health. International Journal of Caring Sciences, 12(3), 1898–1905. http://www.internationaljournalofcaringsciences.org/docs/64_koukorikos_review_12_3.p df MacWilliams, B., Schmidt, B., & Bleich, M. (2013). Men in nursing. The American Journal of Nursing, 113(1), 38-46. https://doi.org/10.1097/01.NAJ.0000425746.83731.16 *NOTE: Sample assignments can be found in the Week 3 Module! Assignment #1: Rhetorical Analysis of Academic (or Professional) Texts in Your Field. Due by the end of Week 5. Reflecting on "Discourse Communities & Communities of Practice" by Ann Johns and the lecture(s) from Professor Centanni, write a 4 to 6 page paper (not including title and reference pages) that analyzes the rhetorical and linguistic norms of your field based on two (or more) typical texts from your discipline. NOTE: You are not merely analyzing these two (or more) texts! You are analyzing these texts AS REPRESENTATIVE of your field. In other words, while you definitely want to comment on what these authors do, make sure you keep your vision and analysis about how this represents the field as a whole. It is important to note that a rhetorical analysis should not take a stance on the topic(s) of your text(s), nor should it make value judgments about if the rhetorical norms in your field are "good" or "bad." In fact, try to eliminate all "praise" or "condemnation" language from academic writing. Instead, just observe and examine the choices that the writers in your field make to appeal to their audience. Also be sure to do the following: 1) Identify the target audience of each piece. Do not fall into the tempting trap of oversimplifying your readers as the "general public" or "common people interested in the subject." Rather, look at specific elements within the text that show what assumptions the writer(s) hold(s) about their readers. Focus less on concrete signifiers (i.e., don't worry about stating exactly how old you think a reader is or what level of education they have) and, instead, try to identify the values this group of readers seems to share - and how you can tell. (This paragraph requires cited evidence.) 2) Identify 3 to 4 strategies the writers use. Each of these strategies should be analyzed according to their appeals (ethos, pathos, and logos); however, APPEALS SHOULD NOT BE MISTAKEN FOR STRATEGIES. In other words, if the writer tells a sad story, you wouldn't say, "The author uses pathos." You would say, "The author tells a sad story to appeal to the readers' pathos." So, one more time, DO NOT USE APPEALS AS YOUR STRATEGIES. After you identify the strategy, be sure to find a quote/paraphrase that illustrates the writer doing so, and then analyze how and why it would likely persuade someone in the field. (These paragraphs require cited evidence.) Your grade will be earned based on the following characteristics: a) Genre expectations. This is a formal, undergraduate, rhetoric essay intended for an audience of academic readers who are not members of your discipline. DO: Use the academic voice c. Write focused, effective introduction and conclusion paragraphs that meet the expectations of this genre. Have a strong thesis statement that organizes your main purpose for your reader. Structure body paragraphs e according to academic writing norms, with specific topic sentences, contextualized evidence, and relevant analysis. DON'T: Use casual language; mistake speech for writing norms (such as the dreaded One Word Opener or Second-person Question); skimp on analysis (if you end a paragraph with a quote, you are not doing what is expected). b) Formatting requirements. This paper must be formatted according to APA Style 7th Edition. You can have all of your questions answered by visiting this Introduction to APA resource, and if you have questions about your citations or references page, see the APA: Citing Within Your Paper e or Formatting Your References List e pages. Know that you are in complete control of these points, so be extremely mindful of your revision. DO: Have a title page with your paper title, name, institution, course name and number, instructor name, and due date - formatted correctly. Have a references page with the word References bold and centered at the top, all of your resources alphabetized, double-spaced, and hanging indented, and meeting all other expectations. Do have one-inch margins, correct page numbers, and correct in-text citations for quotes and paraphrased material. DON'T: Use MLA formatting, APA 6th, or anything else that is not APA 7th Edition; forget citations for material you quote/paraphrase that is not original; leave out any of the above elements and expect to get an A! c) Minimum assignment requirements. Four to six pages does not mean 3.5 pages. It also does not mean 7 pages. Part of good writing is editing to get it where it needs to be. A two page range is HUGE, so please find a way to get your work into that window. Additionally, there should be a title page and a References list - these do not count toward the 4-6 page requirement. NOTE: A five-paragraph essay will earn a maximum grade of "C." It is the bare minimum, and cannot go higher. d) Grammar, usage, and mechanics. Revise your paper as you write, but also look over it before you submit. There have been excellent papers that have lost entire letter grades due to typos and lack of care. There have also been poorly written papers that gained points due to high levels of revision. Again, this is an area completely in your control. Go to the Writing Center; use Grammarly; ask a friend to read it. There are ways to get this part near perfect. Please be in touch with any questions, and carefully watch the lecture videos that help with this assignment. It regularly frustrates students who do not seek outside help to see how "harsh" the grades are. The grades are not harsh if you take all necessary, mindful steps to achieve them. I will say this one last time: THE RESOURCES ARE ALL HERE FOR YOU (including the professor himself), SO DO NOT EXPECT AN 'A' OR EVEN A 'B' IF YOU DO NOT TAKE THE TIME TO TEND TO ALL ISSUES ABOVE. Rhetorical Analysis Rubric Criteria Ratings Pts Genre Expectations This reflects your displayed understanding of the genre expectations for writing an academic paper. 70 to >62.0 pts Exceeding expectations Your paper has not only followed the norms of academic writing, but it engages with them in meaningful ways that demonstrate clear understanding. Namely, you "prereveal" your argument or purpose early, you employ evidence that is both effective and deployed in a manner that shows YOUR grasp of the content, and you maintain the "rubber-gloved" quality of voice, detaching yourself appropriately in order to maintain an academic tone. 62 to >55.0 pts Above average Your paper has followed the norms of academic writing, and it engages with them MOST OF THE TIME in meaningful ways that demonstrate understanding. Namely, do most of the following: "prereveal" your argument or purpose early, employ evidence that is both effective and deployed in a manner that shows YOUR grasp of the content, and maintain the "rubber-gloved" quality of voice, detaching yourself appropriately in order to maintain an academic tone. 55 to >50.0 pts Meets expectations Your paper has followed the norms of academic writing most of the time, but there are moments that demonstrate lack of purpose or understanding. You do some of the following, or you may do all of the following with inconsistency: "prereveal your argument or purpose early, employ evidence that is both effective and deployed in a manner that shows YOUR grasp of the content, and maintain the "rubber-gloved" quality of voice, detaching yourself appropriately in order to maintain an academic tone. 50 to >0 pts Still developing Your paper is currently breaking too many norms of academic writing, or it is oversimplifying them in a way that demonstrates a lack of understanding. Namely, you may not "prereveal" your argument or purpose early or at all, your evidence may be ineffective or deployed in a manner that does not suggest you grasp the content, and you may not use a "rubber- gloved" quality of voice enough, detaching yourself appropriately in order to maintain an academic tone. 70 pts Formatting requirements You have clearly taken the time to format your paper according to APA 7th Edition standards. 20 to >17.0 pts 0-2 Unique Errors Your title page, margins, page numbers, spacing, in-text citations, and references page are near perfect. You clearly used the APA resources provided! 17 to >15.0 pts 3-7 Unique Errors Your title page, margins, page numbers, spacing, in- text citations, and references page are all well done. One or more of them may not meet the requirements detailed in the APA 7th Edition resources, but you clearly used the APA resources provided for most elements. 15 to >13.0 pts 8-10 Unique Errors Your title page, margins, page numbers, spacing, in-text citations, and references page are sufficient for this assignment, but there are signs you did not follow the APA resources with enough care. 13 to >0 pts 7+ Unique Errors Your formatting clearly misses the requirements, showing you did not spend the appropriate care to make sure the paper meets the needs of APA 7th Edition. Please use the 20 pts resources on the prompt for further support. Minimum requirements This shows the extent to which you engaged with the minimum assignment requirements. 30 to >26.0 pts Exceeding requirements Text falls within 4 to 6 full pages, includes a title page and a references list, and ACTIVELY engages in each activity listed on the prompt, often with insightful results. 26 to >23.0 pts Above average Paper falls within 4 to 6 full pages, includes a title page and a references list, and at least touches upon each of the listed content requirements in the prompt. You may analyze appeals instead of strategies, or you may simply revert to a simple 5 or 6 paragraph essay without tying your ideas together meaningfully. There is nothing WRONG with this, but it shows only mild engagement with the requirements. 23 to >20.0 pts Meets requirements You have all required elements, but you achieve most at the bare minimum. Your paper may be only slightly over 4 pages, your title page and references list are included, and your body paragraphs at least attempt each item on the list. It is likely that you have oversimplified the task, identifying rhetorical strategies without giving enough analysis to their significance to your field. This is sufficient, but it does not surpass expectations. 20 to >0 pts Short of minimum requirements Perhaps you have written less than 4 or more than 6 pages. Perhaps you are missing a title or references page. Perhaps you are missing elements in the text. Perhaps you have analyzed only appeals rather than strategies. Perhaps you overlooked elements on the prompt that make this assignment fall short of academic expectations. Perhaps there is a combination of the above elements. NOTE: You may have forgotten to submit a rough draft of your work, which would be reflected here. Therefore, your "Minimum Requirements" might actually be sufficient other than the lack of a rough draft. 30 pts Minimum requirements This shows the extent to which you engaged with the minimum assignment requirements. 30 to >26.0 pts Exceeding requirements Text falls within 4 to 6 full pages, includes a title page and a references list, and ACTIVELY engages in each activity listed on the prompt, often with insightful results. 26 to >23.0 pts Above average Paper falls within 4 to 6 full pages, includes a title page and a references list, and at least touches upon each of the listed content requirements in the prompt. You may analyze appeals instead of strategies, or you may simply revert to a simple 5 or 6 paragraph essay without tying your ideas together meaningfully. There is nothing WRONG with this, but it shows only mild engagement with the requirements. 23 to >20.0 pts Meets requirements You have all required elements, but you achieve most at the bare minimum. Your paper may be only slightly over 4 pages, your title page and references list are included, and your body paragraphs at least attempt each item on the list. It is likely that you have oversimplified the task, identifying rhetorical strategies without giving enough analysis to their significance to your field. This is sufficient, but it does not surpass expectations. 20 to >0 pts Short of minimum requirements Perhaps you have written less than 4 or more than 6 pages. Perhaps you are missing a title or references page. Perhaps you are missing elements in the text. Perhaps you have analyzed only appeals rather than strategies. Perhaps you overlooked elements on the prompt that make this assignment fall short of academic expectations. Perhaps there is a combination of the above elements. NOTE: You may have forgotten to submit a rough draft of your work, which would be reflected here. Therefore, your "Minimum Requirements" might actually be sufficient other than the lack of a rough draft. 30 pts Writing usage & mechanics The degree to which your writing meets, exceeds, or falls short of college-graduate-level skills. 40 to >34.0 pts Exceeding expectations Your writing is mechanically and grammatically sound. You have clearly revised this piece, and your punctuation is almost always correct. Sentences are clear, concise, and cogent. There is cohesion between paragraphs and flow between sentences. This paper could be submitted to any student or professor and be understood well. 34 to >31.0 pts Exceptional work Your writing is mechanically and grammatically sound. You have revised this piece enough, and your punctuation is correct most of the time. Sentences are clear, but they may be a too wordy at times. There is a lack of cohesion between paragraphs and flow between sentences at times. This paper could be submitted to any student or professor and likely be understood well. 31 to >28.0 pts Meets expectations Your writing is mechanically and grammatically sound most of the time. You may need to alter the way you revise your work in order to assure you get the best results. Your punctuation is correct the majority of the time, but you may struggle with elements such as comma usage. The majority of your sentences are understandable, but there may be elements that confuse readers too often. Cohesion between paragraphs and flow between sentences lacks enough of the time. This paper could be submitted to any student or professor and be understood, but they may have to re-read portions or ask you to clarify meaning at times. 28 to >0 pts Missing the mark Your writing is not currently meeting the needs of college- graduate-level requirements. Too often, there are fixable grammar or punctuation errors. While you may have revised the piece, we will need to consider new strategies for catching some 40 pts common errors. Cohesion between paragraphs and flow between sentences is not present enough of the time. This paper may not be easy for students or instructors outside of this class to understand, at times. Rhetorical Analysis Rubric Criteria Ratings Pts Genre Expectations This reflects your displayed understanding of the genre expectations for writing an academic paper. 70 to >62.0 pts Exceeding expectations Your paper has not only followed the norms of academic writing, but it engages with them in meaningful ways that demonstrate clear understanding. Namely, you "prereveal" your argument or purpose early, you employ evidence that is both effective and deployed in a manner that shows YOUR grasp of the content, and you maintain the "rubber-gloved" quality of voice, detaching yourself appropriately in order to maintain an academic tone. 62 to >55.0 pts Above average Your paper has followed the norms of academic writing, and it engages with them MOST OF THE TIME in meaningful ways that demonstrate understanding. Namely, do most of the following: "prereveal" your argument or purpose early, employ evidence that is both effective and deployed in a manner that shows YOUR grasp of the content, and maintain the "rubber-gloved" quality of voice, detaching yourself appropriately in order to maintain an academic tone. 55 to >50.0 pts Meets expectations Your paper has followed the norms of academic writing most of the time, but there are moments that demonstrate lack of purpose or understanding. You do some of the following, or you may do all of the following with inconsistency: "prereveal your argument or purpose early, employ evidence that is both effective and deployed in a manner that shows YOUR grasp of the content, and maintain the "rubber-gloved" quality of voice, detaching yourself appropriately in order to maintain an academic tone. 50 to >0 pts Still developing Your paper is currently breaking too many norms of academic writing, or it is oversimplifying them in a way that demonstrates a lack of understanding. Namely, you may not "prereveal" your argument or purpose early or at all, your evidence may be ineffective or deployed in a manner that does not suggest you grasp the content, and you may not use a "rubber- gloved" quality of voice enough, detaching yourself appropriately in order to maintain an academic tone. 70 pts
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