Kevin Buscemi ENC 1102 Professor Wolcott September 19, 2013 Being a part of a discourse community means that

you share a similar goal to the other members of the community. Whether it be pursuing a similar medical career, working towards a certain health goal, or something as minor as a simple study group; there are tons of discourse communities out there. Considering that I am pursuing a dental career, I am currently a member of the Pre-Dental American Student Dental Association (ASDA). This is a group of students here at UCF all pursuing some sort of dental career, and we definitely have all of the necessary characteristics of a discourse community. One of these characteristics happens to be having a genre for our discourse community. A genre, as defined by Devitt, is some sort of specific document that is used within a certain discourse community. For my specific dental related discourse community, I chose to use the medical paperwork of numerous dental offices. I received these documents by surfing the internet for local dentists and then downloading the required paperwork provided on their websites. It was a bit difficult to find these genres at first as not all of the local dentists provided their paperwork online. After downloading and analyzing these documents, I came to notice that they were all quite similar. All of the documents seemed to ask the patients very similar, if not the exact same question. For example, all of the documents started off by asking the general questions such as

the patients name, age, address, gender, and other basic information. The documents then started to ask the patients information that may be more valuable to the doctor, such as their medical history and any possible medical problems they have. I also discovered that all of these documents were set up extremely similar when it comes to the format and the way the questions are set up. The documents seem very patient friendly, easy to understand, and a great way to introduce the patients into your dental practice. For this specific career and genre, it seems that it is necessary to have this specific

piece of documentation. It is required that the secretaries and staff have all of the essential information of the patients, such as their age, phone number, and other information. It is even more important that the doctors receive the information they need, such as medical history and any potential medical issues, and this genre serves to acquire this information as well. All of these genres serve to be very efficient, as they are all well organized and target all of the necessary information that the patients are required to provide them with. Works Cited Devitt, Amy J. "Generalizing About Genre: New Conceptions of an Old Concept." College Composition and Communication. 44.4 (1993): 573-586. Print.