Returning to our Readings

Madison Kessler

April 10, 2020

1. “No one could see the colour blue until modern times”

This article addresses that the color blue was seen as a “wine-dark”, not the color blue itself, since it didn’t exist at one point in time. Egyptians were the only ancient culture that had a word for the color blue. The article also states a study done by a researcher named Jules Davidoff who showed a Himba tribe a circle with 11 green squares though one was different, and it was blue. Some members of the tribe noticed the distinction, while others didn’t.

This was one of my favorite articles that we’ve read so far this semester because blue is my favorite color and I couldn’t imagine the world without it. I never knew that the names of colors came into existence over time and not all at once. When I observed the circle of 12 green squares, I couldn’t pick out the one that didn’t fit with the rest, which blew my mind to think my brain couldn’t pick out the lighter green from the rest; and you’d think it would be easy but it’s not. I also never knew that the Egyptians were the first ones to have a name for the color blue and produce a blue dye. I would’ve figured that it had started in Great Britain since the color blue was rare and placed in a few images as a symbol of royalty way back in time. My favorite quote in this article was “If you see something yet can’t see it, does it exist?”

2. The CCC’s article “Discourse Community”

The CCC’s article addresses and defines the term “discourse community” and provides examples at which this term can be used for.

This article is quite basic in the sense that it’s just a definition of a term. “Discourse community” is defined as “a group of people, members of a community, who share a common interest and who use the same language, or discourse, as they talk and write about that interest.” I never knew a good word to describe a specific group that share similar interests and have their own lingo as a way of communicating amongst themselves. I now fully understand the term and now I see it everywhere I look. For example, at UCBA, there are a group of students that are studying Marketing and share that common interest while also knowing lingo that no other major may not understand such as the word “data warehousing.” I’ve found that there are subgroups within a discourse community. Students that may share the same interest of getting a degree in Marketing aren’t exactly alike, some students in that discourse community may share a liking for video games or sports. Discourse community can also be as broad as dividing two distinct discourse communities such as women and men.

3. “How Language Shapes Our Perception of Reality”

This article basically talks about how different cultures, countries, and languages communicate and perspective of words and sentences are different in their usage.

I found this article to be very interesting and it made me want to read more and understand how many communicate within their discourse community. This article of language and perspective does tie in perfectly with the previous article about what exactly the term “discourse community” means. Each individual group that share a common interest have their own lingo and way of communicating that another discourse community may not understand. Since I’ve taken 3 years of Spanish in high school and 2 semesters of it in college, I related to a quote in the article which says “Numerous studies have found that learning a new language can change how your brain pulls information together, and because of that, enables you to have more perspectives on a particular issue.”  For example, in Spanish, certain objects have a gender marking in front of the noun. For nouns ending in -a in Spanish, there will most likely be a feminine gender marking of “la” placed in front of the noun. For nouns that don’t end in -a, most of the time there will be a masculine gender marking of “el” placed in front of the noun. Another thing I would like to point out that I found interesting is the way we describe direction. We usually use terms such as “left” and “right”, while in Australia, they will use words such as “north”, “south”, “east”, and “west.”

4. “Genre Awareness for the Novice Academic Student: An Ongoing Quest”

This article discusses the study of how to properly teach students genre and how to go about it. Table 2 discusses an analysis for genre awareness.

This article took some time to find, but I finally found it. What I found different in this article than others is that it doesn’t simply give a definition to the term “genre” and give examples. In a way, it shows the process of learning and teaching the subject of genre and how to identify different subgroups of genre. In Table 2, I found the questions to be very detailed to get the writer/reader to analyze the genre in a way than just seeking out the guidelines. I like how in-depth the questions are like “What are you supposed to DO as a writer when completing this task? Are you asked to make an argument? To inform? To describe or list?” This question stands out to me the most since I am always questioning myself on what the purpose of the piece is supposed to convey to my readers. The purpose of a piece of writing usually shows the distinction of genre in my opinion.

5. “Genre in the Wild”

This article is based around the term “genre” and how its used about in different situations and contexts. It also discusses the made-up guidelines for each said genre.

Before reading this article, I never had a said definition made up in my mind for what the word “genre” means. As the article defines it, “Genre is a word we use when we want to classify things, to note the similarities and differences between kinds of writing,” which makes sense to me. I also learned that the term can be broken down into three types: typified, utterance, and recurrent. I’m going to be honest the graphic presented in the article really didn’t help me understand it, but the definitions were just fine for me to understand. With certain situations, we are expected to know the guidelines of a certain genre. For example, if you’re making wedding invitations, you have to always place a greeting, the date of the wedding, the names of the groom and bride, the location, the time, and usually an RSVP phone number or email on the front of the invitation or the back. Those are known guidelines for making a wedding invitation, which are a whole lot different than writing an essay. These guidelines help divide out the difference of genres.

6. “The Concept of Discourse Community”

This article mainly focuses on what “discourse community” means along with the speech community within a discourse community. It also discusses genre as well and how that sort of ties into discourse community. At the very end of the article, there are six characteristics of discourse community.

Right away, it reminded me of the CCC’s article “Discourse Community.” The article adds more about the connection of genre and discourse community, which we have discussed and analyzed many times in class. We’ve also discussed the six defining characteristics of discourse community and which one we thought was the outlier. I remember the one that stuck out at me was the last one where it says, “A discourse community has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discoursal expertise.” The reason I say this is because discourse communities have evolved over time and the meaning of certain lingo don’t mean the same thing that they once did. For example, feminists are a discourse community. When feminism was first coined as a subgroup, their main goal was equal pay for women and equal rights for women. Even though these are still relevant goals to feminists today, some people who belong to this discourse community are degrading men and think that men should be below us. So the members who started this movement aren’t the same members who lead this community because of evolution and time.

7. “Twelve Words”

Brian Trapp wrote an article about the journey of his disabled brother and how he could only say 14 words, but he discussed how it took some time for his twin brother, Danny, to say his name, “I-an.”

In my opinion, I found this article to be very long and repetitive. My focus just got lost in the article. It was in fact a heartwarming story of love and triumph, but it unnecessarily took some time to get there. I’m not entirely sure what this article had to do with what we were learning in class or how it even related to our main topics of discourse community and genre. I assumed that this article had to do with a certain type of genre, which was a testimonial article. It wasn’t my favorite article to read but I did really like the ending where Brian’s dad had said that if Danny were to say, “who’s ugly,” then the nurse would flash Danny in return. Danny finally says “I’an,” which took a humorous turn in the article. The ending was very heartwarming as Brian discusses how he talks about his brother to his daughter as he asks, “Say Danny.”

8. “Mother Tongue”

This is about the writer, Amy Tan, and her mother and the differences between her mother’s “broken” English, and Amy’s English. She discusses that even though the language sounds different, the same intent is still there.

I love this article, and it’s probably my favorite one I’ve read this semester. It’s amazing how Amy understands her mother’s English clearly, while I couldn’t seem to understand much of it. I think it’s awesome that Amy also majored in English and didn’t go into the expected route which would have been math or English. Amy’s English is phenomenal knowing that in 1985 she didn’t speak the way she does now. I also like how she brought up the fact that English class, especially the ones in high school, are very biased and are only seen a certain way as correct in the teacher’s eyes. My favorite line in this article was, “I wanted to capture what language ability tests can never reveal: her intent, her passion, her imagery, the rhythms of her speech and the nature of her thoughts.”