Writing Project : Rhetorical Analysis-Discourse Community Document Analysis
Special Note: For this assignment, whenever discourse community is used, you should imagine your desired profession, academic discipline, or major.
Purpose:
• To explain the common textual conventions and writing behaviors (style and structure) of a professional document used in your discourse community (academic discipline / major)
• To assist new members of a profession in engaging with professional documents
• To enhance your academic discipline and professional literacy (think Swales) and, hence, your critical thinking about your major and profession.
• To rhetorically analyze a discourse community document / professional document.
Audience:
Your audience for this assignment is a group of recent university graduates who are entering your professional field for the first time.
Writer's Task
Write a document analysis profile of a common professional document used in your discourse community. The profile should examine and explain the rhetorical heuristic categories (Purpose, Audience, Persona, Text, Context) for the chosen document, as well as attend to the discourse community behaviors exhibited in the writing that help to identify this document as part of a particular academic field or profession (structure, lexis, genre, common goals, etc.).
Focus you're profile on howthedocument communicates those rhetorical categories, and uses the content (what's being said in the document) as examples and evidence of those writing behaviors specific to your discipline and discourse community
Strategies (Steps to take to complete the assignment)
1. Begin brainstorming a list of common genres and documents used by professionals in your discourse community.
2. Search for real world examples of the genres and documents from your list. Make use of Langsdale Library and the reference librarians. Choose one document to analyze.
3. Think about your audience-i.e., Their Knowledge, Attitudes, and Needs
4. Rhetorical Analyze your chosen document using the "Rhetorical Analysis Questions Handout" pay attention to the structures and that arise out of discourse community behaviors and goals.
5. Draft and present your analysis of the document as a profile that demonstrates how the document is representative of the discourse community that uses it.