Post 11: project proposal

For my project I would like to study the discourse community known as Twitter.  Social media has become a recent craze due to the advent of the internet as well as the ease and access of inter connectivity between people now.  Whether this be via cell phones, tablets or laptop computers it has become increasingly easy to connect with other people no matter where the location.  Twitter is currently the latest trend in social media and is expected to eventually outgrow Facebook in users.
Using Swales' six characteristics of a discourse community Twitter can be described as such.   The first of these characteristics is that of a common public goal that is broadly agreed upon.  Each different person, group or business that puts themselves on Twitter are all after something different but the main thing that every single person on Twitter does is tries to gain attention or a following of some kind.  The goals are public in that anyone who has a Twitter can follow anyone else who has a Twitter.  Another of these characteristics is that of intercommunication among its members.  With every tweet posted  online each member has the ability to see what any other person has tweeted.  If a person however decides to not make a post private they have the option to send a private message rather than a public post.   The third of the discourse characteristics talks about how the community uses its participatory mechanisms in order to gain feedback.  This can take form in a variety of ways depending on the situation of who talking.  A group such as a news network might ask what questions they should ask in an interview they are going to have later.  A person might just ask for some sort of simple advice on a life situation.  Other people are able to respond to these types of posts  and put in their two cents on the subject.  The fourth of these characteristics talks about different genres a discourse community can have.  When people post things they can take various forms..  Some post in text, others with pictures and some with links and videos.  Each of these different kinds of posts will effect the community in a different way and can be used to convey a certain type of emotion.  Along with genres another characteristic of a discourse community is the use of lexis specific to that discourse.  The most common form of this on Twitter is the hashtag.  After a tweet has been composed a person may put a hashtag at the end followed by a word or short phrase that is related to the post.  What this does is categorizes posts and these hashtags can be searched later to find other information similar to that topic.  Another form of lexis found on Twitter is the use of abbreviations or emotional texts.  In order to convey a certain emotion one must use such words as "LOL" or "LMAO."  Also because there is a 140 character limit people must use abbreviations sometimes to fit all of their text into one post.  The final characteristic of a discourse community is the threshold of membership.  While anyone can join into the Twitter sphere there are only a few of those many people who will gain a large active following of people.
Twitter is gaining popularity among the world of social media and many people are dropping their older forms in order to have more time to spend on this one.  A few people I know including one of my roomates no longer has or uses Facebook and spends him time exclusively on Twitter.  I would like to interview him as well as other friends  who have stayed on Facebook and discuss with them how maybe there can be dual discourses that can possibly overlap.

Post 10: Discourse Community

As I have stated in my literacy narrative I have always been someone who is involved online in all sorts of different sites and different ways.  The discourse community in which I am involved in that I would like to talk about is that of Twitter.  Twitter is a social media site where people can choose to follow certain people in order to see who or what organization is up to or what they thinking or doing at the moment.  In John Swales' The Concept of Discourse Community he talks about discourses as having a broad set of common public goals. What I have noticed in the way of public goals is that everyone seems to have different reasons why they Tweet what they Tweet but in the end the main purpose I believe is just for interaction.  People want to feel connected to each other and Twitter allows for people to have a metaphoric window into others minds.  In his article Swales also talks about how discourses use certain mechanisms of communication and how they use it for feedback and to provide information.  When someone tweets about something they only have a 140 character to do it.  This causes straight to the point kinds of communication.  Also people can be tagged in tweets in order to make sure that a certain person is more likely to see the post and respond to it.  In many cases people who have more followers will often get more responses especially when something offensive or funny has been posted by an individual, providing feedback from among other Twitter peers.  In addition to this characteristics Twitter also has formed certain genres and lexis among their discourse sphere.  Anyone can be on Twitter but there are three main types of categories that people often follow: friends/family, celebrities and news outlets.  This creates different ways in which people post things.  Family and friends will be much more informal and use acronyms to shorten sentences or express themselves with text such as "LOL" (laugh out loud). Many other celebrities may use the lexical texts as well depending on how what they are known for.  Other choose to be more formal and serious and speak in regular more formal English as the news outlets choose to be.  Swales also talks about how discourse communities have changing memberships.  Social media sites tend to come in and out of "fashion" and people will flock to the "newest" and "better" trend.  There are not really novices and apprentices in this discourse.  Rather its just depends on the interest of people still willing to be a part of it.