Chloe Brotherton

Medusa Response

November 29, 2012

                What we’re learning in class interacts with Cixous because the story of Perseus has to do with authority and men having control over women.  Medusa was raped by Neptune, which is a major indicator of authority.  Men looked at women as property or pleasure, and Neptune had no idea that what he was doing was more than just sex; it changed Medusa’s life in the worst way possible.  Perseus eventually killed the evil Medusa, though, which I considered fate because everything worked out for Perseus in the end.

peer review for nick

Chloe Brotherton

Peer Review for Nick

November 26, 2012

                I thought this was a good paper.  There were a few grammatical errors here and there, but other than that you basically nailed this assignment.  I like how you chose the Pittsburgh Steeler football organization as your discourse community, because I am a Steelers fan myself!  Steeler fans are very passionate about their team and they really are the definition of a discourse community.  You did a great job providing background information about the organization, but for the collecting data portion I was a little disappointed because your paper was lacking an interview.  Besides that, I’d say you did a good job writing this paper.

intro/synthesis pro 3

Chloe Brotherton

Project #3 Intro/Synthesis

November 5, 2012

 

            According to Swales, a discourse community must contain the following six characteristics: a broad set of common public goals, mechanisms of intercommunication among its members, use its participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information and feedback, possess one or more genres in the in the communicative furtherance of its aims, acquire some specific lexis, and have a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discoursal expertise.   Discourse communities are all over the world and can be ranged from academic to non-academic.  A discourse community is more of a suggestive term and is not necessarily defined.  The discourse community I am choosing to study is my job Tropical Smoothie Café back in West Chester, Ohio (about 30 minutes north of Cincinnati).  I consider Tropical Smoothie Café a discourse community because our goal is to give great service to our customers, we communicate to achieve our goals and have meetings quite frequently, we are honest and critical of each other so the employees can be the best they can, we have multiple means of communication (email, text, face to face), we all strive to be the best business we can, and we have all been trained at the same level.

            A broad set of common public goals that Tropical Smoothie Café shares are providing extraordinary service/care to our customers, keeping the work place clean and organized, always keeping busy, as well as having fun.  We treat our customers with the upmost, sincere respect.  So many of our customers have become regulars and we know a majority of them on a first name basis.  We give out a lot of free smoothies and coupons, too.  When there is downtime, the Tropical Smoothie Café employees do easy tasks, like stocking cups or sweeping the floor.  These may not sound like that big of jobs, but they make all the difference.  Jeff, the owner of Tropical Smoothie, believes, “You can’t do your best at something if you hate it,” so he lets his employees have fun on the job.  I would consider this an effective work ethic; we are eager and energetic at the work place which reflects our attitudes towards the customers.  We play upbeat music around the clock and if no customers are around, we are allowed to converse with one another as well as make food or smoothies.  There is not a single employee that doesn’t enjoy working at Tropical Smoothie Café and with that in mind it’s easier to achieve our goals.

joe miller

Chloe Brotherton

Peer Edit for Joe Miller

November 26, 2012

                I thought this was a good piece, it stuck to the topic of the discourse community very thoroughly.  It didn’t really tell me about the Athens music community, though, and how the music would be considered a discourse community.  What I liked about this paper was the fact that the data was extremely analyzed and collected in an organized manner.  You can tell that Joe put a lot of time and effort into collecting the data.  What I didn’t like, though, was the fact that the paper focused more on interpreting what a discourse community was, rather than applying the Athens music community to a discourse community.  It had complete sentences, good grammar and spelling, and a nice structure.  Overall, I thought Joe Miller’s essay was a good one.

Delpit and Smitherman

Chloe Brotherton

English 1510

November 16, 2012

 

I thought Delpit and Smitherman’s articles were both well written and made good arguments.  Delpit’s main focus was on discourse communities and shared similar ideas with Gee, which was refreshing to read.  Smitherman’s article was written through the eyes of an African American and I thought it was a unique piece.  Although it was different than other articles we have read in the past, I found it quite enjoyable.  I could sort of relate to Delpit’s article more so than Smitherman’s because we are currently learning about discourse communities.  I could take some of Delpit’s concepts and incorporating them into project 3. 

Project 3 proposal

My discourse community for project 3 is going to be my job at home, Tropical Smoothie Cafe.