Post 12

Mirabelli definitely begins his article, "Learning to Serve: The Language and Literacy of Food Service Workers," very differently than most authors. The first word of his text alone is very different, as he begins it with a website address, "Bitterwaitress.com." The first paragraph goes on to talk about that website as a popular website which has links to gossip about things like celebrity behavior in restaurants, chefs and restaurant owners, accounts from famous people who were once waitresses, as well as customer related horror stories. Then, Mirabelli goes on to talk about a section of the webpage that is titled "hate mail" in which email criticisms are followed by rebuttals from waitresses. A lot of these hate mails portray waitresses are ignorant or stupid. Mirabelli includes a sample piece of hate mail in his article in which the author of the hate mail is portraying all waitresses as stupid, and that they are only waitresses because they are too unintelligent to land a "real" job. I think Mirabelli's way of beginning his article really gets people interested in reading the rest because a lot of people can relate to it. Many people have been servers themselves (who I believe was Mirabelli's intended audience) or have experienced others being blatantly rude to servers (who could have also been his intended audience). I think his first paragraph really stirs up a lot of people's emotions and makes the readers engaged, wanted to read more,, which I think was his purpose of starting his article this way.

Post 11

A discourse community I belong to is the place I work in the summer, called Canoe Island Lodge, a resort on Lake George, New York. I am the bartender at the resort. Other employees there hold jobs such as servers, boat boys, groundskeeping, housekeeping, cooks, a childrens director, a maintenance worker, a manager, and the owners. The owners live in a house right next to the resort, and almost everyone else who works there is from out of town, including myself, so we live rogether in lodges across the street. Accoring to Swales in "The Concept of Discourse Community," there are six criteria that discourse communities contain. The six criteria are: common goals, intercommunication, info/feedback, genres, lexis, and members. Canoe Island Lodge's common goals are a little different for each employee but a shared one throughout the resort would be that all of the guests are treated politely, and are having fun. Intercommunication between employees takes a few forms. employees text the manager with questions/concerns when needed, we can email them during the off season with questions/informtation, the groundskeepers and housekeepers have walky-talky type things in order to be able to be contacted quickly, and there is usually someone in the office, so you can call or stop into the office whenever you need to communicate with a manager/owner. Info and feedback generally comes from the manager, Joe, if you need to be talked to about what your doing well/bad, or what you need to work on, he is the man that does the talking to. Occasionally, one of the maagers will say something too you, but there is generally for severe cirsumstances. There are many genres used at the workplace. The boat boys have a "water wait" list for people who want to go water skiing to sign up on. As bartener, I have a ticket for each room number for writing bar tabs on. The office workers have endless amounts of genres used, between tip chart sheets, to insurance papers, to bill papers, etc. Canoe Island Lodge has some Lexis used by workers at the resort. One might consider the table numbers in the dining room a lexis, or certain names of places around the lodge such as the names of the boats, decks, cottages, etc. The members of the Lodge are all the employees who work there. There are about 35 employees, one manager, and two owners. The owners names are a couple named Tom and Carla Burhoe. Carla's father built and started the resort. When he died, her husband bought out the resort from her brothers and sisters, and therefore became the joint owner along with his wife.

I am interested in using this as my example of a discourse community because I am involved in it, and I feel there is a lot of different areas/jobs within this discourse community in which I could expand on. It is also a very tight-nit community. Everyone is knows everyone very well, unlike some other larger, or corporate societies in which you really only interact with a select few of the members.

I am thinking of interviewing either one of the owners, the manager, or my close friend, Kirsten, who is a boat girl.

Texts I can analyze would be either emails, forms, or menus.

Post 10

A discourse community I belong to is the place I work in the summer, called Canoe Island Lodge, a resort on Lake George, New York. I am the bartender at the resort. Other employees there hold jobs such as servers, boat boys, groundskeeping, housekeeping, cooks, a childrens director, a maintenance worker, a manager, and the owners. The owners live in a house right next to the resort, and almost everyone else who works there is from out of town, including myself, so we live rogether in lodges across the street. Accoring to Swales in "The Concept of Discourse Community," there are six criteria that discourse communities contain. The six criteria are: common goals, intercommunication, info/feedback, genres, lexis, and members. Canoe Island Lodge's common goals are a little different for each employee but a shared one throughout the resort would be that all of the guests are treated politely, and are having fun. Intercommunication between employees takes a few forms. employees text the manager with questions/concerns when needed, we can email them during the off season with questions/informtation, the groundskeepers and housekeepers have walky-talky type things in order to be able to be contacted quickly, and there is usually someone in the office, so you can call or stop into the office whenever you need to communicate with a manager/owner. Info and feedback generally comes from the manager, Joe, if you need to be talked to about what your doing well/bad, or what you need to work on, he is the man that does the talking to. Occasionally, one of the maagers will say something too you, but there is generally for severe cirsumstances. There are many genres used at the workplace. The boat boys have a "water wait" list for people who want to go water skiing to sign up on. As bartener, I have a ticket for each room number for writing bar tabs on. The office workers have endless amounts of genres used, between tip chart sheets, to insurance papers, to bill papers, etc. Canoe Island Lodge has some Lexis used by workers at the resort. One might consider the table numbers in the dining room a lexis, or certain names of places around the lodge such as the names of the boats, decks, cottages, etc. The members of the Lodge are all the employees who work there. There are about 35 employees, one manager, and two owners. The owners names are a couple named Tom and Carla Burhoe. Carla's father built and started the resort. When he died, her husband bought out the resort from her brothers and sisters, and therefore became the joint owner along with his wife.