Post 12: Mirabelli's "Learning to Serve"

Mirabelli is looking at the idea that some people see waitresses and/or waiters as stupid and the contradicting idea that the literacy of being able to serve food is rather complex. As Mirabelli denotes "Assumptions that waitresses (and waiters) are ignorant and stupid and that waiting on tables contributes little to society are not new. The rebuttals to commonplace, pejorative, understandings of the food service industry suggest, however, that there is a complexity and skill that may go unrecognized by the general public or institutions such as universities" (540). He begins his ethnography talking about a website that is a forum for people who have worked in the food service industry. Once person posts on the horror story page, that if you don't like serving then go get and education and find a REAL job. I feel Mirabelli is trying to disprove this original notion about food industry workers and through out the ethnography he brings up evidence to support this claim. A lot of this evidence was due to the fact that Mirabelli was in the food service industry and he used his personal experience to show that serving is not just an easy job that any one can do; it takes and incredible amount of skill and knowledge.

Mirabelli gathered his data from personal participation, observation, interviews, and the menu of a small town diner called Lou's Restaurant. He also acquired some data using tape recordings and from historic and bibliographic literature. Mirabelli himself had been a waiter for a ten-year period and this was how he was able to easily gather all of this data. Using this data Mirabelli is able to conclude that serving in general is not a stupid and ignorant job it is way more complex than that.

Proposal: Discourse Community Ethnography

I plan on doing my discourse community ethnography about a baseball team and more specifically the Ohio University Club Baseball (OUCB) team. According to John Swales there are six criteria for a discourse community and I believe that this baseball team fits these criteria. The First characteristic is the discourse community has to have a common set of goals. This is true for OUCB team because the goal for the team is to make it to regional, which is basically the end of the year tournament for the National Club Baseball Association (NCBA). The Second is the discourse community has have methods for intercommunication. The OUCB team uses many different mechanisms for intercommunication including mass texting, email, and Facebook. Third a discourse community has to have participatory mechanisms, which for the OUCB team would include going to practice and trying to become a better baseball player in preparation for the season. Fourth, a discourse community uses one or more genres to complete it's goals. There are two major genres for a baseball team and that would be competitive and noncompetitive. Competitive teams scout the best players and tries to be the number one team in the conference. Noncompetitive teams play more for fun then to win, these teams are playing for the entertainment value of baseball. The Fifth, is a discourse community has to have there own specific lingo or lexis. Baseball in general has there own lingo and a good example of this is the term "Got Heem". The sixth characteristic is a discourse community has to have a hierarchy of it's members. The OUCB team fits this because as new player come in they start out as rookies and as they continue playing they move up in the chain of command. The Ohio University Club Baseball team fits all six of Swales criterion and thus qualifies as a discourse community.

I am involved in the OU club baseball team and I have been for the last three years. For next year, I will be the only remaining senior on the team, and because of this I have been elected as the coach for the team. I am very interested to find out how language is used to complete the goals of the baseball team. Baseball teams in general have an interesting use of language to achieve there goals and I would like to understand more about the use of language.

The most important individual that I should interview would be the OU club baseball president of this bast year. He would have the most knowledge of all of the behind the scenes paper work and also most of the on field knowledge aswell. Another person I can interview would be the general manager of the team for next year. This guy will be doiing all of the paper work for next year and it would be great to get his input on the language of this discourse community.

I will be able to analyze many different kinds of texts including text messages and emails. These two are the main forms of communication outside of practice. Due to the fact that I am involved in this discourse community, I will be able to collect a lot of emails and text messages very easily.

Post 10: The Concept of Discourse Community

The discourse community I have decided to take a look at is a fraternity/sororities. Fraternities are groups of college students that form there own discourse community. All the guys in a fraternity all fallow the same basic set of rules created by the founders of that fraternity, most of the rules include doing community service hours and hanging out with brothers. Intercommunication occurs through carious methods some of these would include: email, Facebook, newsletters, chapter meeting, phone, and by online discussions. The reason for such a wide array mechanisms for intercommunication is because fraternities have alumni. As a person joins a frat he is the low man on the totem pole. As they get older they become upperclassmen and then move on to alumni status. This progression is exactly what John Swales explains in his article "The Concept of Discourse Community", this progression would be considered the threshold level of members for a discourse community. The lexis for a fraternity is a little more complicated, but we can consider the slang used by college students would be roughly the same as those students in the discourse community. Minute differences can be observed in the discourse community because these people form their own friendships and come up with new slang words all the time. A fraternity allows the members to participate in meetings and events, these meetings convey information to the individuals about the week and other important details about the brotherhood. Finally, the genre would be the restrictions that a fraternity needs to abide by. These restrictions could be handed down from the university or the national chapter of that fraternity.