Post: 12

Mirabelli is looking at how waiters interact among each other and their customers. Waiters are often looked down upon by most of society. Considered to be the bottom of the pole. However, most of the public is unaware of what really goes on among waiters. A waiter must have great communication skills. The literacy skills such as writing down orders, knowing the menus, communication among staff and customer is vital to hold such a job. Its important to read the customer, and be friendly with them. “To be a good waitress or waiter generally requires being able to perform friendliness under any number of circumstances” (551). Waiters have little control over the customer and must have a positive interaction. To collect data Mirabelli looked at Lou’s restaurant and the discourse among the staff. The waiter must be familiar with the menu in order for everything to run smoothly. “The menu is the most important printed text used by waiters and waitresses, and not knowing it can dramatically affect how they are able to do their work” (544). The waiters job uses a great deal of literacy skills that take time to learn. The job is not as easy as people may believe.

Post: 11 Discourse Community Ethnography

“When a group of people shares goals or purposes and uses communication to achieve them, we can call that group a discourse community” (460). This rings very true in the Ohio wrestling community. Ohio wrestling is one of the best wrestling states in the nation. Ohio wrestling strives to be the best year after year in both high school and in college. Smaller clubs and organizations are put in place to ensure that our youth and current wrestlers improve their skills. Several wrestling clubs are established through the state of Ohio. These discourse communities have there own form of communicating amongst the group, and all share the common goal of improving wrestling as a whole by getting more kids involved and improving the skills of the members already involved. For my ethnography I’d like to focus on the Ohio University Wrestling Club. I had been in several other wrestling clubs throughout my high school years, but my current club is here at Ohio University. I have been a participating member for the past 3 years and plan to continue all through my college career. Swales 6 characteristics of a discourse community can all be applied to the Ohio University wrestling club. The discourse community has a broadly agreed set of common public goals. Our goals are to win duals, improve our individual skills, gain more members, and represent our school. These goals are the norm for any wrestling club in the state of Ohio. A discourse community has mechanisms of intercommunication among its members. We have a facebook page where we can communicate, and post relevant information about the sport and our club. Several internet forums are centered around Ohio wrestling, and information about the clubs are posted there. These forums also have general discussions on wrestling, results, tournaments, and rankings. There are also websites online that contain picture and video coverage of live matches in both college and high school wrestling in all divisions. A discourse community uses it participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information and feedback. During club practice we communicate verbally to help others with their technique. Moves are shown by a member and the wrestlers drill the move over and over again to improve. The common goal being to win duals and represent our club. A discourse community utilizes and hence possesses one or more genres in the communicative furtherance of its aims. To an outsider the way in which a wrestling team communicates may sound very foreign. The coach yelling at his wrestler during a match, the concept of drilling, cutting weight, the rules, a bracket sheet at a tournament, the weight classes. Someone not of the discourse will be very confused by all this.. In addition to owning genres, a discourse community has acquired some specific lexis. The terminology used in wrestling pertains to the specific discourse. A term as simple as weight ins may sound very confusing to someone not familiar with the wrestling discourse. A discourse community has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discoursal expertise. A coach was once a new member to the discourse. Over time he gained experience and reached the highest degree of status. I have always been apart of some wrestling community and feel this would make a great ethnography. I can research and analyze the many website and forums pertaining to my discourse community. I can interview the club president and the treasure for the project. Overall I feel this discourse works for the project, if not I have other ideas that may work

Post 9

Literacy has advanced a great deal since the early Sumerian’s. The Sumerians wrote using symbols. Over time the use of words replaced symbols. With time writing does progress. “The spread of electric power, the invention of radio, and later television, all promised similar bio-cultural progress” (427). With new technologies the form of writing changes. The pencil for instance was seen as a new technology at the time. “Teacher preferred pencils without erasers, arguing that students would do better, more premeditated work if they didn’t have the option of revising” (438). With time pencil writing with erasers become the norm. The added eraser helped students improve writing because they could revise and fix errors in their text. The same concept rings very true for computers. “When we began to use computers in university writing classes, instructors didn’t tell students about the spell check programs on their word processors, fearing the students would forget how to spell” (438). Today the spell check function only aids students in learning how to spell. Teachers today encourage spell check. The shape of writing has changed over time with the new technologies being introduced to the public. Pencil writing was once an advanced form of writing. Today the computer has replaced pencil writing. More than likely the future will bring about a new form of writing.

Post: 8

Similar to Danielle online gaming was a big part of my life when I was growing up. I gained technical literacy skills by being online during my free time. Other functions of the internet such as instant massager, email, MySpace, Facebook contributed to my learning. When in a school environment I was involved in typing classes at a young age. In elementary school we had computer class, where we learned the basic functions of the computer. A popular program “type to learn” was used to aid in our typing ability. This helped tremendously with my typing. Danielle mentions how in college she had to created ads with text on them. Throughout high school I was involved in graphic design classes, where we had to perform very similar tasks. In college I took visual communication. The classes centered around web based texts and images

Post: 7

Brandt talks about the impact sponsors have had on our society. Sponsors have improved literacy standards over time. “It is actually this large gap in sponsoring forms that we call the rising standard of literacy. The pace of change and the place of literacy in economic competition have both intensified enormously in the last half of the 20th century” (344). To make profit literacy is constantly changing and improving. Competition changes the standard for literacy, because sponsors are always trying to out due their competition. Brandt believes sponsors always have something to gain from sponsorship. The gain can be economic or non-economic. Sponsors can influence people politically. Having people take their side on political issues serves as a gain. Sponsors can also gain by having people adopt a certain religion. “Through the sponsorship of Baptist and Methodist ministries, African Americans in slavery taught each other to understand the Bible in subversively liberatory ways” (355). Groups and people use sponsors so that they can do certain things. A sports group gets money from sponsors in order to fund their program. “Little leaguers who wear the logo of a local insurance agency on their uniforms, not out of concern for enhancing the agency’s image but as a means for getting to play ball, people throughout history have acquired literacy pragmatically under the banner of others causes” (335). My high school wrestling team had sponsors for each of the 14 weight classes. Companies/Businesses would pay to have a banner hung up in the gym. Therefore at any sporting event their banner was seen by many.

Reflection Essay

Throughout my life I have always thought of Wikipedia as a worthless website. I had been told by my teachers all through high school that any information from Wikipedia was not credible. However, I always find myself going to Wikipedia to look up information. Not that I used the information to cite sources in my research, I avoided Wikipedia for academic papers. I used Wikipedia in my free time to look up things of personal interest. I had always been aware that anyone could add information to Wikipedia, and questioned the authenticity of anything I read. I never had a real understanding of what Wikipedia was all about. The whole function of Wikipedia was unknown to me, until I learned more about it in English 308. My task was to edit an existing Wikipedia page. The first step was creating a Wikipedia account; this took only a few minutes. A Wikipedia account is needed to make edits to articles. I then added my user name to the course page on Wikipedia.

I then began looking for articles to edit. Many topics are already covered in great detail, making finding an article the most difficult part of the project. I thought for days about what I wanted to work on. I was going through start class articles, which are smaller articles related to a larger subject. An example of this would be sharks, and how a start class article would a specific type of shark. I have always had a strong interest in film. I typed my favorite movies into Wikipedia to see what information was available on them. Most of them had an ample amount of text already written. I then looked up the movie Fighting Back and saw only one sentence written about the movie. Being one of my favorite movies, I began my editing process and enjoyed it quite a bit. The research and writing was the easiest part of the edit. This was only true because I had been doing research papers all my life, making it routine. The difficult part was understanding the basic functions of Wikipedia. The sandbox was of great help in learning how to properly create links. To make edits on Wikipedia certain codes must be entered. The only real trouble I ran into was entering the references and cite pages. I had to watch some tutorial videos to understand more thoroughly how to do so. Wikipedia does a great job at explaining how to use its website.

Leading up to the due date for the edit we had read many passages from “Writing about Writing.” Many of which tie into Wikipedia. James E. Porter’s concept of intertextuality is very relevant to Wikipedia. Defined by Porter as “the idea that all texts contain traces of other texts and that there can be no text that does not draw on some ideas from some other texts” (86). In Wikipedia a large majority of the text comes from other sources. A great deal of research goes into writing the articles, which is shown by the references and cite pages listed at the bottom of the articles. Other people also add their own text to articles that have already been written. The process by which others can add and take away information from others articles makes Wikipedia a unique feature composed various portions of others work. “Examining texts intertextually means looking for traces, the bits and pieces of text which writing or speakers borrow and sew together to create new discourse” (88). Various sources are used to bring information together on a single page, for a single article. Sub links in articles allow users to link themselves to other articles just by clicking the highlighted term. Each article on Wikipedia should contain some sub links, making the single article link and relate to many articles. Wikipedia would not be possible if done by a single person, it takes many contributions to make Wikipedia an effective tool. After several edits on a Wikipedia article traces of the original article will still remain. Porter uses the Declaration of Independence as an example. The original Declaration of Independence underwent many changes “actually the Declaration arose out of a cultural and rhetorical milieu, was composed of traces and was, in effect, team written” (90). The way Congress made edits to Jefferson original draft, relates to how people make edits to others original Wikipedia articles.

Articles written on Wikipedia are subject to review by discourse communities. “Some discourse communities are firmly established, such as the scientific community, medical profession, and the justice system” (92). If one were to write about a medical concept an editor knowledgeable in the medical field may review that article. The article may be deleted or edited if fails to meet their standards or lacks truthful information. Every article on Wikipedia may undergo an edit at any time, by any user. Whether the edit stays is up to the editors on Wikipedia.

Wikipedia is a great search engine. Although not a credible source in an academic sense, Wikipedia can lead to credible information. The references and cite pages link the user to other pages on the topic. These links may lead to credible sources that can be used for academic papers. Once a person understands the function of Wikipedia it can be a very effective starting point for research papers. In the future I plan to use Wikipedia as a basic starting point for my research.

Post 6: Rhetorical Situations and Their Constituents

Grant Devine writes about four important terms, rhetor, audience, exigence, and constraints. Rhetor refers the people who communicate a message. The communicator's goal is to make others perform a specific function. Rhetors use language to persuade others to do a certain task. An example would be a friend telling another friend he hasn’t eaten all day. The friend hearing this will then offer food. The friend did not directly ask for food, but used his communication skills to get what he wanted.

The people who are intended to hear the communication are the audience. Advertisements can sometimes target a specific audience who they want to sell their products to. An advertisement about barbies will appeal to little girls, making young girls the audience.

Exigence can be looked at as ones desires. At a car dealership the car salesman has a desire to sell the car while the customer has a desire to buy the car.

Constraints are problems that hinder ones needs. A person may desire something but certain factors prevent them from achieving their desires. A boy may want to ask a girl out but fear of rejection prevents him from doing so.