Feb 22 Blog Post

        In her article, "Discourse Communities and Communities of Practice" Ann M. Johns discusses how communities of practice and discourse communities tie in together. She goes through the experiences of being a part of an academic community and a professional community. Johns directs special focus to the usage of language of members within the same community and the conflicts that can arise from differing communities.
QD:
1.) Some problems that arise when trying to become part of a discourse community include the cost, just simply some people cannot afford to be part of this group and might have to make some sacrifices in order to have to money to join the group. Another complication is the potential power struggle that might rise within the group as members argue over who should be the figure of authority. A final example of a complication of joining a discourse community is disagreements made between community members which might right originate from usage of dialogue or lack of for new members.
2.) Discourse communities can change as its members grow older and their morals change or their education changes. It all depends on the views of its members. An example of this might be discourse community of the government in post world war one Germany, which was changed radically by Adolf Hitler into the Nazis upon his rise to power.
3.) Learning the language of a new discourse community has never interfered with my own beliefs. I am very stubborn when it comes to my views because I have a very scientific mind so anything that I have formed an opinion on I have done so through reading countless articles on the subject and acquiring as much support as possible.
4.) I do not think Johns's view of learning the languages of other discourse communities interfering with your own beliefs because it takes a lot to shift someones faith. No matter what no new or opposing information you learn, you still retain what you believe is true over anything else.
5.) The authority I get over my writing in college is definitely more than that in high school. 100% authority over my writing would not be good either though because there is still some structure or general topic that should be followed to help students stay on track. But overall there is a good amount of freedom or elbow room when it comes to what to write in college.
6.) It is considered a minefield because you will never know how those broken rules will affect your grade until the end. I personally have been blessed with very anal teachers who followed their assignments like the bible and took points off for anything that was off about the format or topic.
MM:  Learning form Johns article can help you realize how joining a discourse community can be both beneficial and harmful. Joining a discourse community may help enhance and support your own goals and beliefs but they may try and make you conform to all of their ideas, some of which you may not agree with. All in all, discourse communities seem to be a good thing as long as you can maintain who you are as an individual while you are a part of them because they can help back anything that you believe and support.
Summary:
       It was good that this article built off the ideas of Swales and Gee but the article in and of itself was kind of boring. I had a hard time understanding what made this article to different and special next to the two we just previously read. Johns's ideas seem very closely related to Swales's.