Purpose: To investigate a discourse community* (e.g. profession) you hope to join and to learn about the kinds of texts (genres) that community uses. This
assignment will enable you to identify some of those rules or patterns by interviewing a professional in your field of study and by doing outside research
Audience: Your instructor, your classmates, and other faculty members on the 100A portfolio committee.
*Discourse Community: Any group of people who form a community—a family, a neighborhood, colleagues, practitioners of a particular profession—and establish
informal and formal rules regarding who gets to join their community and how spoken and written interactions (i.e. discourse) occur within the community.
Anyone who wants to join that community has to learn its discourse rules and patterns.