Peer Review

The peer review session certainly helped, at least marginally in giving me other viewpoints to base my paper on. Since the paper deals with primarily personal issues and memories, review is limited to writing technique and fluidity of thought. Content cannot very well be scrutinized. In that respect though, the session allowed me time to work out technique improvement.

Discourse Community

My understanding of discourse communities is basic at best, but its formula seems to follow common sense. First and seemingly most important is the necessity for a common set of goals. Without this, there is little need for a specialized intercommunication between individuals. When focusing on professions, this is easy to understand. For example, a laboratory technician and an elementary school teacher have dissimilar career goals. A specialized vocabulary or communication technique is not necessary or even practical. However, a second laboratory tech would have use for communicating with the first as a way of furthering career expertise and understanding. In this respect, discourse communities seem defined by the individual bettering the group in order to better the individual. The language and jargon used by these individuals in their speech and writing promote the growth and maintenance of the whole. Another good example might be law enforcement officers. Communication is available and efficient throughout that community due to its personalized language. The ability to send information and recieve feedback quickly is paramount toward the efficiency of the group. Common sense would make me assume that in each community, there is a level of expertise in the given field or genre which each member must possess in order to be useful to the group. In this sense, certain fields, such as the law enforcement community, might have many loosely connected sets of discourse communities with varying degrees of experience and usefulness for each other group.