As explained on the prompt for assignment 1 Download prompt for assignment 1, you must begin by writing down your current knowledge about your Discourse Community (either your Major or your Minor). Please do the following:
- Begin by doing some prewriting: what do you already know about the goals, values and communication methods of your DC?
- Next, make a list of the aspects of your DC you do not know much about (related to the traits/characteristics you read from the Swales and Schmidt & Kopple texts).
- Finally, brainstorm some questions you can ask about this DC to learn more about the traits and characteristics. Next to each question, indicate where you might be able to find the answers to these questions (remember, you must have at least one source of the 3 categories of sources listed on the prompt).
### Submission
My knowledge of my cognitive science discourse community has some surface level understanding of its general goals, values, and communication methods. As I understand it, the overarching goal of the DC is to advance understanding of human cognition, primarily through a level of analysis somewhere between psychology and neuroscience. Its values are also tied to its level of analysis, where the DC strongly regards research that is reproducible, rigorous, and analyzes the brain functionally and often with clever experimental designs aiming to isolate specific components of cognition.
The DC has several forms of communication that it leverages, which relate to both its local and focal components. On the local level, lectures, lab meetings, mixers, and events of that sort help local cognitive scientists to coordinate locally. For example, local communication might have members of the same lab meet on Fridays to give updates on their experiments progress, or have interlab communications to have a biology lab culture organoids for use in a cognitive science experiment. On the focal level, communication might be more observable as research journal publications, traveling seminars or guest speakers, and topical research conferences.
The other aspects of my DC that could be mentioned are its mechanisms for initiating actions and activities could be considered as additional to the communication methods earlier. Frequently, speakers will have a ‘future directions’ section where they will expose research gaps and lab principal investigators (PIs) will often delegate tasks to lab members to begin new experiments. The cognitive science does own lexis and silential relations through domain specific terms (e.g. anterior cingulate gyrus, P-300, oddball paradigm, etc.) and the manner in which discourse leverages its lexis.
Moving onto aspects of the DC that I am less familiar with, I am a bit unsure about what the genres possessed by the DC would be. I know there are various forms of communications with different expectations associated with them, such as academic writing, formal correspondence, and casual interlab communication, but how these would be tied to domain specific genres is something I am unfamiliar with. Additionally, I am unsure about the criteria by which threshold of membership is determined. It could be determined by a variety of factors including familiarity with the subject matter, social currency within the DC, or something as simple as lab affiliation. Finally, I’m unsure about what the horizons of expectations of the DC would entail. I suspect that it includes expectations for advancement in research from members (publish or perish), weekly lab meetings, yearly conferences, and more, but I can’t speak confidently on this.
To formally dispel my confusion, there are a number of questions I could ask. First, I’d like to double check if the elements I have identified of the cognitive science discourse community are correct. To do this, I would have my current understanding reviewed by a more established member of the community, potentially a professor or TA. During this interview, I’d also bring up the areas I felt less familiar with, such as the genres involved, membership threshold, and horizons of expectations. I would also want to question what forms of evidence are most respected in the field, and to do this sampling influential research papers in the field would be effective. Finally, I could find out more about different genres involved in the DC by researching popular non-academic sources of communication, which I primarily intend to do through blogs. This will likely also provide clarification on other aspects of the DC as well, by hearing the community spoken on candidly.
---
### Drafting:
Prewriting:
- Goals: Advancing understanding of human cognition
- Values: Reproducibility, rigor, clever experimental designs. As well as functional analysis of data.
- Communication methods: Research paper, conferences, seminars, lectures, lab intercommunications etc.
- Folocal community, larger cognitive science community as well as local cognitive science community (peers, labs, etc.)
Continuing on to all the characteristics that Swale defines:
It does have a broadly agreed set of common public goals as discussed earlier.
Has mechanisms for intercommunication as discussed earlier.
“mechanisms are used to initiate actions and activities, rather than simply providing information”. This is the case here, research conferences and lab meeting discuss potential future directions of research and disperse current knowledge (among other mechanisms)
It does possess various genres, which are wielded in the specific facets of the cognitive science discourse communities (academic writings, formal correspondence, casual interlab communication)
Clearly it owns lexis (anterior cingulate gyrus, P-300, oddball paradigm, etc.)
Membership threshold - this one I’m unsure about, there’s obviously a level of familiarity needed with the subject matter to be able to communicate, but official membership is a lot less clear to me. Is it lab affiliation? Probably. This is a good follow up question.
Silential relations - Yes, nothing immediately comes to me but any line from a research paper kind of proves this.
“The P300 wave is usually identified as a parieto-central positive deflection in the ERP waveform that varies with the probability of the eliciting stimulus or event (Fabiani et al., 1987)” from The P300 wave of the human event-related potential, TW Picton - Journal of clinical neurophysiology, 1992
Horizons of expectation - Another little bit less clear to me, but can also be applied. Expectations for advancement in research from members (publish or perish), weekly lab meetings, yearly conferences, and more. Another good area for questioning.
Dont know much about:
What people in the discourse community consider as membership threshold.
What do they consider as horizons of expectations?
Values of the DC
Silential relations
Questions about DC:
Explicitly ask about the confusion above (membership threshold, horizons of expectations, silential relations).
Asking community members, what DCs do they consider themselves a part of? A sub-discourse community, like learning and memory?
Ask members about their personal goals