4Zachary Grayson

Dr. King
ENC 1102-0016L
10/18/12
How Trends Affect a Discourse Community
For decades scholars of rhetoric and composition have discussed the importance of trends
in discourse communities. In The Concept of Discourse Community, John Swales says,
[Literature Survey]
[Bridge] In this paper I will be discussing the effects that a trend can have on a discourse
community.
James Paul Gee talks about discourse communities and the ability to be able to fit into a
discourse community. One thing that a person needs to understand when entering a discourse
community are the trends that are occurring throughout the discourse community. I will be
talking about how social networking has been affecting the way people in the discourse
community of computer science have started using their knowledge. Social networking became
big when MySpace launched back in August 2003, and then became even bigger when Facebook
launched in February 2004, and in July 2009, when Twitter was launched. I plan on focusing
mostly on Facebook because it has the biggest population of users.
In 2004, Mark Zuckerberg created a social networking site that is now know at Facebook.
It is a site that allows a person to make a page that has many descriptions about a person,

pictures, and much more. Then that person can allow people to see what is on his/her profile by
adding people to his/her page.