Dangond 1

Ricardo J. Dangond
ENC 1101
Professor Pierson
September 27, 2017
Autoethnography

The Community

My family is the community I will be covering in this autoethnography. More specifically

my immediate family, which includes my parents, two sisters and myself. This community is

exclusively set at five people, two married into and the other three where born from it. More

specifically, I am the eldest of the three siblings. My parents and I where born in Colombia,

while my sisters where born here in the United States. This creates a community that is truly

unique.

Literacy Sponsors

This community of family is rooted in its literacy sponsors. The main literacy sponsors

being my parents. As sponsors they lend their resources or credibility to the sponsored but also

stand to gain benefits from their success (Brandt 73). My parents are motivated by the human

nature of wanting your children to succeed. But there are other motivations as well. As literacy

takes its shape from the interests of its sponsors (Brandt 74), my parents encouraged their

values. With my success and my sisters success in our goals, through their help as literacy

sponsors, there is a sense of pride and it provides ripe material to boast to other parents with.

There is also the side-effect that if we, as their children, are successful we will be able to provide

for them when they are older and unable to do so for themselves. As my literacy sponsors my

parents would encourage me to learn how to read then to write as I grew up. They would to read

me a night, and help me out with spelling tests. But besides the basic parental education, my

parents also talked to me in Spanish, making sure I wouldnt forget my native tongue. This was
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not just done to me but other members of the family/community, my sisters. Even now that I am

no longer under their constant supervision they still take-up the roll of a sponsor and encourage

my education.

The Discourse

My community is my Primary Discourse, that constitutes [my] original and home-based

sense of identity (Gee 279). It's rooted in values of cooperation, love, and peace. The Discourse

strives to resolve the unavoidable fights through cooperation, to leave the community in sense of

peace and love. It upholds these values through unique actions, absent in other Discourses, such

as scolding and punishments but also through encouragement either with words or goods. These

actions affect the attitudes and mannerisms of the Discourse's members. For example, if a sister

of mine was repeatedly reprimanded for attitudes and mannerisms believed inappropriate or

unsuitable of the Discourse she would likely act differently in the future. This is because each

Discourse has what it deems acceptable and not, even what might be so in one may be believed

inappropriate in another. My family, my Discourse, has an encouraging approach towards

literacy, but even more so for general education, as Gee describes in page 284, you are always

teaching more than writing or reading. My family comes from an educated background with

some of my grand and great-grandparents receiving a college education. As a result, there is an

encouraging approach towards literacy, where it is taught and upheld. From the time, I began

learning how to read and write in school, my parents also taught and encouraged my education at

home. As for what goes on in my community, we commonly have conversations from a variety

of topics in either Spanish or English, we also tell jokes, hold arguments, text in a family group-

chat, converse through social media and write down events on a family calendar. In my

Discourse, there is also a unique vocabulary, as we speak two languages, unique to the other
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Discourses around me. But we also don't use complex vocabulary as most engagements are

casual. The words used are usually simple vocabulary with Spanish thrown in as well. These are

literary activities of my Discourse, unique to mine.

Rhetorical Situations

As previously mentioned this Discourse experiences several literate activities. One of

which is arguments. This creates a rhetorical exigence, a need or problem that can be addressed

and solved through rhetorical discourse (Grant-Davie 489), that the members must resolve.

Arguments may arise for multiple reasons in a Discourse, whether they are from anger or

disagreement. Most importantly a discourse is necessary to express differing opinions. A

rhetorical situation of an argument that could occur is one over responsibilities that I must do as

a member of the Discourse. It would be opposing arguments between me and my parents as to

what responsibilities are mine and I must complete. The intended audience is those arguing, in

this case me and either of my parents. However, other members of the discourse, such as my

sisters, may be an unintended audience as they might overhear the argument. In this case, as an

argument is a conversation between at least two people to prove a point, the intended audience is

also the Rhethors, those responsible for the discourse and its authorial voice (Grant-Davie 495).

This because either side may seem themselves as the authorial voice, although that is more likely

to fall towards the elders, the parents. In an argument, there are constraints one will face. Such as

the background for the argument, or the limits one is willing to go to when arguing.

Another literate activity that occurs in my Discourse is group text messaging. This

includes both my parents and my eldest sister in a group chat. The reasons for this discourse is

that it allows one to send messages or ask questions to other members of the Discourse when

someone is too far to communicate in person and must inform multiple members at once. A
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rhetorical situation of this activity is if I were to ask of something, say when I need to know

something that multiple people may or may not know the answer to. In a situation like this one

and many others, the audiences roles are suggested by the discourse itself (Grant-Davie 497)

and as a result, the Rhetor is the person who proposes the question/conversation or who conducts

the conversation when multiple people are discussing. Group chats do have constraints however,

as it is harder to understand someone through text and someone is less likely to respond to a

message immediately.

Bilingual communication is another literary activity that my community partakes in. Its

where we have a simple conversation in either two languages, or where one speaks Spanish and

the other responds in English or vice versa. These bilingual conversations serve the purpose of

hiding statements from eavesdroppers and other unintended audiences, or when a word or phrase

cannot be properly represented in one language. They are intended to simply aid understanding

between the communicating parties. For instance, if I wanted to comment something private in a

public place, by speaking in Spanish to a member of my community I can do so and not have the

unintended audience know what I am conversing about. The audience is mostly meant for others

in the community or other strangers that cannot speak English and require help. While a different

language draws an unwanted audience it also hides what youre saying from them. The Rhetor(s)

is the person(s) initiating the conversation. This does have constraints however as it unlikely to

work with others outside of my Primary Discourse.

A fourth literary activity my community does is conversing through social media. My

parents and my eldest sister use a variety of social media to communicate with pictures, memes

or other media not expressible through text of voice. This is necessary when attempting to

communicate something that is much harder to do so vocally or to entertain another with online
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memes, gags and jokes. An example would be sending a DM (direct message) of any piece of

media on Instagram to another member of your Discourse. The audience is only those who the

message is sent to, any prying eyes are an unintended audience. Social Media does have its

constraints, however, as the parties using it must have an account with the specific service being

used.

Influence of Community on Writing

This community has unique traits, of which I see some in me. For example, my

Discourses literacy sponsors have an encouragement to excel and importantly through

understanding not just one but two languages. This is seen through me as I take pride in being

bilingual and show interest in other languages. Another trait that both me and my community

share is that reading and writing taught can greatly impact the lives of those unfortunate enough

to not receive an education. However, there are traits that arent mirrored onto me. My parents

encourage and enjoy the writing and reading of various subjects, yet for me I prefer more visual

and audible forms of communication. This community has had a great positive aspect on me. It

has positively shaped my literacy, reading, and writing. Their roles of literacy sponsors and acts

to encourage my education have provided me with better literacy, reading and writing skills

despite any of my apprehensions. If not, for the supportive community, I could perhaps be in a

less fortunate situation today. My community also influences my personal writing process. By

being one of the main influences towards my education it stands a matter of fact that my literacy

sponsors largely impacted my personal writing process.

Personal Writing Process

Despite what you learn from literacy sponsors in the end of it all youre unique in your

ways. As for how I write, there is a minimal planning process. Its comprised of reading the topic
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and background information, then occasionally writing down a short list of main topics. Most of

the information is kept in my head where I work step by step. I like to imagine to reader, and

write to the expectations of the audience.

When writing, its usually an unpleasant and lengthy process consisting of several hours.

As a procrastinator, I am limited in the time I have to write a piece, and usually write it in large

chunks with frequent breaks in-between. During writing I tend to listen to instrumental music or

go somewhere with background noise, as Im a social person, so I can focus on the words that

are going throughout my head and onto the paper.

For editing and revising, I come back to the paper after a long break so that the material

is newer to me. It then usually consists of proofreading aloud, or having someone else look over

it, although I do occasionally take a break in the middle to check how its coming along. Once

finished with the task of fixing what the paper is saying, I finish with fixing grammatical and

logical errors.
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Works Cited

1. James Paul Gee Literacy, Discourse, and Linguistics from WAW

2. Deborah Brandt Sponsors of Literacy from WAW

3. Keith Grant-Davie Rhetorical Situations and Their Constituents from WAW