For the discourse community I chose to do for Project 3 is my
sorority, Alpha Gamma Delta. I just rushed a couple a weeks ago so I am a new
proud member of this sorority. The main goals of my sorority we support
lifelong learning as a means to gain understanding and wisdom, we promote the
value of fraternal membership and commitment to higher education, we help
prepare members to contribute to the world's work, and we advocate lifetime
involvement in Alpha Gamma Delta. The mechanisms of intercommunication among
our sorority are that we have chapter every Sunday at 6. Right now since I am a
new member we have a new members meeting to learn all the goals and everything
about the alpha gamma fraternity. At chapter we discuss what all we have to do
in our chapter like sisterhoods, philanthropy, and anything else our president
says we have to do. We also have Rho Mom’s that are like Big Sisters’ to us.
They are girls who are going to help you if you have questions, and to be a
future great friend.
In participatory
mechanism primarily to provide information and feedback to our sorority, the
main big thing we use to get information out to everyone is by e-mail. We have
a facebook page and we text each other to let us know information. We pay money
to be in our sorority, and we do philanthropy to help out people with diabetes.
We do different types of socials, sisterhoods, and fundraisers throughout the
year. We have alumni’s that come back every year for homecoming, and we give
them a tour of the house. New members always join in fall when we have formal
or sometimes informal rush.
My interest in my sorority is to gain life-long friendships,
sisterhoods, and networking. I am currently becoming part of a sorority that is
all about sisterhood, and personal development through that sisterhood. What I am
interested in is finding out what Alpha Gamma Delta mean, and what different
types of sisterhoods we do. When I interview someone I will interview a
freshman/ new pledger, and existing member. I have two girls I have in mind
that I want to interview and we have a sisterhood coming up to meet all the
older girls. The text I will analyze are going to be our e-mails, and chapter
minutes. E-mails tell us information we need to know and what is going on.
Chapter minutes are sent to us in e-mail of what we discussed in the chapter
meeting. I am very interested in learning more about my sorority and what it is
all about and the language/writing it has in this discourse community.
Hi Courtney,
ReplyDeleteI think you've got a great topic proposal here. And I like how you mention so many interesting details about this community. You can definitely gain a lot by doing this ethnography. One way to think about this might be to think about how your roles as a neophyte (remember wardle's term) influences your use of communication/writing within the community and how members who have been there longer, and who perhaps hold different roles of authority, communicate differently. In other words, you might try to examine how identity and writing are always connected to each other and how we need to think about identity if we want to be successful participants and writers in a community. You might think about drafting a couple of questions around these ideas in addition to some more general questions and focuses you're interested in. Great work so far. THis is a really nice proposal. Let me know what I can do to help you through the process!