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The Church of Scientology: A Discourse Community

The Church Of Scientology is a religious denomination that is regularly under fire for their outrageously large fraud-scheme; the Church Of Scientology is also known for their aggressive recruitment, and brainwashing techniques they use to instruct/control their members. The Church Of Scientology is a discourse community. We know this because it meets all six of the criteria laid out by John Swales in “The Concept Of Discourse Community”. (1) The church has members of differently ranks, lifestyles, socioeconomic groups, genders, and ethnicity; (2) it promotes the common goal of achieving eight dynamics to become a supreme being; (3) it has communications, both physical/verbal (through “auditing” and “trainings”,) and online through social media’s, newsletters, and web-based communications (video chatting, Facebook Messenger, email, etc.); (4) when participating in church-based activities, the members do so with the common goal of reaching supreme being, and are being led to do so by a common doctrine; (5) the organization uses more than one genre (or method) of communication; and finally, (6) the church uses a specific lexis, or vocabulary, to communicate with its members (examples: Supreme Being, Eight Dynamics, Auditing, Etc).

Often times, we’ll see famous celebrities promoting the religion, such as John Travolta or Tom Cruise), but you can also find their churches in small cities and their media online. The members of the religion attend “auditing” and “training” (similar to a church service). Most scientologists boast their religion, and are every insistent on active participation within the church. “Auditing” and “training” is typically done in person, but the church is active in public eye through membership participating and social media. Members participate in activities suggested by the church to help rid yourself of “spiritual disabilities”. Much of the church’s lexis is unique to their own members, as most people don’t know what “auditing”, “training”, or “supreme being” mean.

On scientologyreligion.org, a website ran by the official Church of Scientology, you can watch. When you examine the selection of testimonials, you will notice many options, including those of an American Soldier, a South African tribal prince, and the Taiwanese president. The most interesting one for me was the South African tribal prince, Sephan Mmirwa Pheeha. Pheeha preaches of a religion that provides aid, instruction, and guidance in a way that promotes the religion to non-members. I feel that the selection of videos was aimed at diversity and inclusion, as I had several options. The video of Pheeha stuck out to me because of the state of South Africa, and the inclusion of a community of people that probably doesn’t produce the financial gain sought for by scientologists.

“HRH Sephan Mmirwa Pheeha, Tribe Prince, Gauteng, South Africa.” Scientology Religion, www.scientologyreligion.org/videos/sephan-mmirwa-pheeha.html.

charlierose98

I wish I could have read this paper of yours, this seems like a very interesting topic. I have always heard of Scientology but I have never actually looked into it or studied it. This seems like a very confusing discourse community to be a part of. The lexis I think is what interests me the most. You mentioned a few words that are a part of their lexis that I did not understand but caught my attention. The way they promote the diversity of their following and how many celebrities they have supporting this is insane. You talk about it in a way that kind of makes it seem like a cult. I never knew of the fraud that was going on by this organization and it seems interesting to do research on. Since I did not read your paper, I have no idea if you spent much time on that specific topic but it seems important to the overall community. Their common goal seems to be what is messing with me. Considering I do not know the term, "Supreme Being", I don’t understand what their goal as a community. If it is about gaining members and being the largest followed religion on earth that's one thing but trying to become a sort of united god is another. When you say their forms of communication are physical/verbal I do not understand how a communication can be physical unless someone is speaking in sign language. This would have been really good to elaborate on.

advancedcompblog-deactivated201

Blog Post 10

In honor of Stephen Hillenburg passing away to the great beyond, a spongebob gif.

So.

What have I learned this semester?

For real, I think my writing has improved. I mean before, I was alright. I’ve always been good at writing and doing papers and such. But no one has ever taught me to write. I just assumed that what I was doing was okay cause I kept getting A’s on all my stuff. But I actually learned how to form sentences and make my writing seem more professional. I have written more papers this semester (as a result of your class and two others) than I have written in my entire college career. I really think that overall your class made me a better writer. I can see it in my papers that I submit. I catch myself when I start writing “there” a lot in my papers. I used to do that all the time now that I think about it. I didn’t really think it was wrong, which goes back to the fact that I’ve never been taught how to write. Also, the peer review that we did on the last paper really helped as well. Having questions to ask others and answering their’ in my paper really made me think about my writing. That peer review really helped me move along the paper. I recommend doing that a lot more for future classes.

I’m not really sure that my writing process has changed that much. I think that part is set in stone.The way that I edit has changed though. I’m better at seeing my mistakes, and hopefully recognizing them in the future. Also, I never really did get down the paragraph- sentence structure. Those notes you always put down at the bottom of my papers. I dont know why I could never get the structure down. I think its because I usually write what I’m thinking at the time. I of course could improve that in the editing process. That is something that I need to work on in the future.

I’m also not sure the readings did me much good. They didn’t hurt of course, but overall I learned more from the powerpoints and your lectures. The older ones with more examples than reading, I didn’t get anything out of. I think the ones about style and cohesion by Williams. There was not enough explanation. I felt like I could look at the page and get the information I needed without reading it.

I dont think that my thinking style has changed much. I think that is something that will stay the same. Maybe my thinking style when I write papers, but other than that I’m the same. I think I’ve always been a pretty good critical thinker.

Overall, I think that this course was beneficial to me. Even though I changed my major and will not be pursuing a degree in writing( maybe a minor) I still think that this class was a good use of my time. I’m glad I took it. It helped me become a better writer and analyzer. I met some pretty cool people. I got to complain about my upbringing and get a grade for it. I found a possible non profit that I would like to work for once I’m kicked out into the real world. I learned alllll about discourse communities.

charlierose98

The way you explain your writing in the beginning of the semester/past school years to now is exactly like me. I would get A's on my papers and would think it was good until I got to this class and realized I did not even know how to write. It's not that my writing was wrong but that it could be improved tremendously. You say your writing process hasn't changed but that you know how to better revise. Just spending more time on revising is a bit of a change to your process.

The readings helped a bit when they were explained on our level. Reading them, I felt as though I was reading gibberish half the time which wasn't to helpful. I agree that the in class lectures though helped tremendously including the presentations and white board activities. In the Williams styles, I found myself to have the same perspective. I felt like what I was reading was redundant but then found it helpful to focus on every detail.

My style of thinking hasn’t changed either but I agree with you that it has helped me think deeper into my writing and reading. Being able to think with this mindset can be helpful for many social situations as well. This can be helpful in job interviews as well. Even dissecting what you say to the most minor of details.

It is sad to hear you are no longer pursuing writing, the peer reviews did help a lot but reading your paper, it was fantastic! I hope that your new major brings you joy!

musingsofacollegejunior

Blogpost #8, 11/12/18

Some potential issues I’m considering for Project 4 are sexual assault awareness, voter suppression, and directing state funds to implement rehab facilities in prisons. The first would include teaching sexual assault awareness alongside drug/alcohol abuse prevention in high schools. The second would involve the unfair suppression of voting ability in certain groups. The third issue, which is the issue I’m leaning towards, involves redirecting state funds to providing rehab facilities in every state prison for offenders with drug-related charges.

This issue affects the offenders themselves, their families, the prison system, and the stigma surrounding drug offenses. While I understand that not every offender with a drug charge is a drug user, it’s important to let those inmates know that there is help if they want it. The exigency of the situation is evidenced by the ridiculous amount of inmates in the United States incarcerated with minor drug offenses. This is causing mass overflow and a need to build more facilities, thus draining state funds and making the U.S. the #1 country in the world for percentage of incarcerated citizens. The audience of the situation is the American population, and the constraints are greedy corporations that benefit from the rate of incarceration.

This is not a “recent” issue. Mass incarceration is almost a hallmark of American culture and the rate has rapidly increased since 1985. Most of the attention given to the issue has come from activists, columnists, or scholarly articles about prison culture.

There are several ways I could present this multimodally. I am considering a sort of interactive infographic that opens a new window when you click on a certain section. These sections would be smaller-scale infographics detailing ideas associated with the larger issue and how the two are connected. There is a program I used for a similar assignment two years ago (Piktochart) that I plan to utilize; it was easy to navigate and left room for creativity.

charlierose98

I love your topic idea. This topic can provide a lot of useful information during research. I have a single question, are you wanting rehab facilities to be built into prisons or have them be separate facilities all together for those with drug charges and having their sentence be spent in the facility? This topic will bring up a wide range of issues and I think it would be helpful to also talk about the drug trafficking inside prisons. I have a friend who used to date someone in a prison on Oklahoma. The amount of stories I heard about inmates using in front of guards and the guards doing nothing to prevent it along with guards being a source for drugs is insanity. You may see if you can find personal stories/interviews from former inmates that talk about your issue. This would help make things seem more real in the eyes of readers. It is one thing to hear about all the bad things about our prisons from an outward perspective but from the perspective of an inmate, that would be attention grabbing.

Your idea for using pictochart for your multimodal experience is great! I had to use it in a previous assignment as well and it worked very well in presenting information. Try not to make it too wordy, I see that a lot in infographics and it kind of ruins the point of them. You seem to focus a lot on how over crowded these prisons are and I wonder if this should be the main topic that provides a single solution to the problem. This may be another way you could form the pictochart.

This picture is to show how much I’ve grown over the past 20 years to go along with how I have grown this semester in this class. I have found my writing to change dramatically. It has gone from very casual writing with few grammar mistakes to precise and more academically pleasing writing. This semester I have had my ups and downs. My first paper was strongest, in my opinion. I spent a lot of time on it and read through it about 10,000 times. The third project was my favorite to write but I did not spend as much time on the sentence structure and flow than I should have. My writing process has changed a lot as well. I focus on the revision step a lot more then the initial draft. The draft is more rough then they have ever been in the past. I would write a final paper for my drafts in comp 1 and 2 but this class my writing words on a page to meet the word limit then fixing it a thousand times before turning it in.

In class when we would discuss our readings which typically helped a lot when we talked about Williams styles. His lessons 6 and 7 were the ones that were hardest for me to understand but with group discussion it became clear of what he was telling us to do. A lot of key concepts that we discussed in class were helpful to my writing in making it more precise with a good flow. I also enjoyed the activities where you would group us together and have us each teach a part of the lesson, this was helpful having it be explained in simple terms. I need to continue building on my revision process with all of the concepts I have learned while finding my own style in writing. Having peer reviews is helpful just in having a second set of eyes looking at my work. I must build off of past advice and lessons for my writing to reach its full potential.

I have had a few ideas on what social issues I want to talk about for this multimodal project. My first idea was to talk about the war on prescription drugs and how it is affecting the population as well as incarceration problems involving prescription drugs. I talked about something similar to this in a paper from last semester though so I decided against this idea. My next idea was to talk about the issues of police shootings. I do not know much about this issue but it is very prevalent in todays society. My next thought was to talk about the mass shootings that plagued the US in 2018 alone. There have been over 300 mass shooting around the US this year and most have been conducted by white men. I did not want to speak on gun control but just the statistics and maybe a few ways that these shootings could be prevented. My last idea was to talk about rape statistics and sex trafficking. This is a huge issue for women all around the world. Children and families being affected by this issue are in astounding numbers. Women and children are being abducted and forced into sex trade being sold as nothing more then a body. There are many people who have inserted themselves into this problem to help get these people out of the sex trade. There are organizations that work to get these people home and safe. This issue has been stressed by famous people over the internet through social media and websites created through their organizations. They raise money through spreading their message about this issue in speeches and posts.

To communicate this message, I thought about creating an art piece to convey sexual assault or sex trafficking. I was thinking of creating a girl chained up with bruises and in a dark area. Of course this has to be multimodal so I was thinking of either having this art piece scanned and put to music or have a spoken word behind it. I am not sure whether I will write my own or use a pre existing piece of course giving recognition to the author. I also thought about putting a statistic of how many people daily are raped. Just kind of a 1 in 5 kind of deal. I have all of the art material I will need and I will probably end up using movie maker to do the audio if needed.

Enjoy this super old photo of me at Warped Tour.

So my life hasnt been full of too many large experiences that made me view something differently. I grew up with parents who taught me how to love and laugh but also when to be serious. A few moments I can recall that probably changed me in any way at all would have to be my parents divorce, my first music festival, and my testimony.

My parents got divorced when I was eight but they seperated when I was seven. My dad decided to be unfaithful to my mother and she found out. This was hard to understand at my age and I didn't really get it until later that my dad was a player. I love my dad but yes, he is a man whore. He has dated around ever since while my mom chose to wait until all of us kids were moved out of the house. Living with two homes was cool when you got to have two christmas's but having to pack your bag for a sleepover at your dads house is a little sad. Of course I got used to it but it truly became a hassle. I did not see my parents as much as I wanted to because every day when I would go home, I would only go home to one of my parents.I live every day hoping to never turn out like my parents did. I hope to find a happy partner for life without needing another. Anyway, onto better and brighter things.

My first music festival was Warped Tour in OKC when I was a good 16 years old. I have been to a plethora of concerts and festivals since and I plan to go to many more. Festivals have taught me self love and how to love others without judging. It is truly just a large group of people running around listening to good music and enjoying the day. I am gonna move on because I already know what I want to write about.

My testimony is something that I truly hold dear to my heart. I am of the Christian faith but I do not really have a denomination. I have many beliefs about this religion that some people may think are crazy. I guess you could call me the more liberal Christian. Anyway, when I was only 14 years old, God really showed up in my life. I was meant to go on a missions trip to San Antonio Texas with my church group but all I wanted to do was take my own life. I had been depressed and suicidal with self harm issues for about three years. I was ready to take my own life and I had even written suicide notes. After one failed attempt, I decided to wait until after my missions trip since I had already raised up the money for it. While on this trip, God showed up in my life in a way that is extremely hard to explain. My friends had visions of Heaven and Angels while I collapsed on the ground crying out to my God to save me from my demons. A lot of details fill this story but by the looks of it, I am still alive, so thats a good sign. I do not attend church regularly ,due to not findng one in stillwater yet, but I have faith in a God that I know exists and I am pure joy because of Him.

So, for project two I want to talk about how teachers, specifically English teachers, can help students handle their emotions. This can lead to a variety of topics and research articles but many ordinary teachers have ideas about this as well. My first article is titled, "Emotion Regulation Difficulties, Youth–Adult Relationships, and Suicide Attempts Among High School Students in Underserved Communities." This article really focuses on suicide rates and what common causes would effect this, such as youth-adult relationships. Their goals are really to help in preventing suicide attempts and finding different ways that adults can intervene into this process. Being a student studying education, I want to be able to help student grow into the happiest and most successful forms of themselves. I want them to be able to use my English class as a form of venting. There are ideas such as a beginning of class warm up where they just write in their journal for twenty minutes or have them create poetry that best suites their style and individuality. This is very important when trying to handle emotions. Not many students let out their emotion in any way so having a source of venting can be helpful to many.

The problems in this community are all student focused. We push students to be more then they want to or even can be sometimes. We give tests and grade them based on knowledge while we may not even know why they did not try. There are problems within the system and there are very few teachers that actually do what they want to do and enjoy it enough to care about each student. We need teachers that care and that is kind of the main focus in these articles. Emotional regulation is a term used in many articles about this topic and it is hard to accomplish sometimes. So with this, my sources could be better but there are a lot of thoughts on how to keep our focus on our students excelling not only academically and physically but also emotionally.

Looking back at my second blog post, I realized I did really well with these new methods. I spent less time in the pre-writing stage and just tried to get my thoughts together. I did not use the method of planning out multiple topics but I did manage to stay mostly to one topic only altering it slightly. This method has kind of messed me up in a way because I did not fully grasp the prompt before I wrote the paper. I did not understand the purpose of the paper or how I was suppose to write it. I understand the concepts but am not sure how to write it out. I am spending a lot of time in the revising and editing stage for sure and hope to get my paper in a good place by the time it is due.

When I look at my draft, I am baffled by how terrible it is. In thursday's class, I felt rushed in searching for where to highlight certain things in my paper. I did not get through all of the colors at one point but I am hoping my paper is not as bad as it seems. I noticed that I have one sentence that is both bolded and highlighted purple. This is because, when I discus the message being communicated by my artifact, I bring in how it is communicated with pathos. I also made a connection in the red highlight and the italicizing. When I talk about how each tattoo is specific to its maker, it is common to see ethos in this. A person will likely go to an artist if they have seen their work before and approved of their style. It is all about crdibilit when looking for someone to tattoo your skin.

I realized I am missing a problem or, in other words, the exigency.I noticed that my paper is full of filler sentences and I have barely highlighted anything. I can honestly go into more deatil about just about eveything. This paper needs a lot of help and I believe it will work out pretty well.

This is a picture of one of the tattoos I received from Tulsa Tattoo Company. I chose this discourse community because there was a time where I thought about becoming a tattoo artist. This Community is a discourse community because it meets Swales' six characteristics. Their common goal is to find clients to tattoo for money. They have a website that gives you information on their artists as well as pictures of each artists works. Hovering over the picture with your curser will give you the option to comment or like it. This option gives a communication channel. They also have contact information provided on the website. The genre is something that I am honestly still a bit confused with but if I am guessing correctly then I would assume it is tattoos. I do not understand that characteristic quite completely. The community has their own lexis. An example of their lexis is saying "Do you want your piece shaded or with just simple line work?" Another example is within their piecing sections where they use terms like dermal, septum and cartilage. The experts of this discourse community would be the artists themselves. They are the ones using the terminology, doing the art, and selling the idea.

I am using the Tulsa Tattoo Company website at the text/artifact that they have used because it truly embodied their ideals. The goal of their website is to draw clients in to continue their practice. They depend on ethos for clients. The first thing you see on this website are the words "Professional Piercings and Tattoos." With all of the picture proof of each artist’s work, it has to be enough credibility of professionalism for just about any client. The audience is really anyone who is looking to get inked up. If you search tattoo companies and you live in the Tulsa area, this is one of the first places that pop up. The audience is really based off of clients who seek out this kind of business. As far as constraints go, they had a Facebook logo next to "contact us" in the top left corner but when I went to click it, it wouldn’t work. Eventually I clicked it enough that it somehow took me to their Instagram account but for the most part that was their only constraint. They do not have many forms of advertisement besides maybe one billboard but their main form of advertisement is through their clients. Well Phil, I hope you enjoyed reading about some tattoo stuff!

I am using this photo to help peolple better understand my personality and mind set when starting a paper and what I do to keep my mind in order. I find my writing style to be very fast pace and squirly, not knowing fully what I am thinking but just trying to get all of my thoughts in order. After a nice smoke sesh, I will usually start on an outline to get my main points and thoughts down in some sort of order. Once I see what I already know about my topic, I will research to expand my knowledge and understanding to fill in my outline just a bit better. From this point, I take nike's advice and "just do it".

This method can have a lot of problems assuming I usually cram it all into a matter of hours. My biggest roadblock is procrastination in trying to find a topic. I am a picky person when it comes to writing and will change my mind about five times at least before I settle on a topic. To overcome this block, I came up with a method of writing out all of my topic ideas and creating an outline for each of them. This will help me see what I know about each topic and how much is needed to be researched to turn it into a well written paper. This seems like a lot of work but it is better then me half writing about two papers before choosing to finish the third choice topic.

A very large distraction I come by a lot is sitting on my phone doing absolutly nothing important. Social media can be an addiction and I came up with a few ideas to help myself get rid of this distraction. I could either put on music, set my phone to the side, and continue my paper in hopes I do not pick it up, or I could use my phone in the research process. I think option one seems a bit more realistic considering researching on a computer is much easier then a phone. I could also leave my phone in another room while I work on my paper or even hand it off to my roommate to keep it away from me. These are all pretty simple fixes but they seem to be effective for other people.

My paper writing abilities tend to be better when I cram but I know I am capable of much better. If I really take my time and get it done over a course of days where I set time aside for it, I can do amazing things. I want to challenge and test myself with these new methods giving myself the full oportunity to excell in my writing. Roadblocks are just roadblocks, you can always just get out of the car and move them.

Composition and Rhetoric have always kind of been a part of my life and without them I would not have found my major. I took a philosophy class which taught a lot of the structure of arguments and how they are put into logical standing. Rhetoric is something I find ease in composing my own way. Although I am decently comfortable with this stuff, I hope to learn more on developing structure in my writing and work on my writing process as a whole. I have the tendency to "wing it" and do everything last minute. I get good grade with this method but it is not how I want to continue my learning process. These goals can be met by me asking a thousand different questions and receiving clear answers as soon as possible. I personally have a problem with asking questions if the answers come off rude or in a snotty way. I do not enjoy being made to feel as if I am dumb, so instead of answering a question as if I should have already known the answer, do it as to provide information to a confused mind. (This is not me trying to call you out, just in general.)

I do not have many concerns about this course other then the time management. This is my own problem but it is the overload of other classes that ultimately makes me worried I will not be able to keep up. I am also attempting to order books which is a problem due to money at the moment but it is a work in progress. Overall I am confident in the teaching capabilities that nothing really concerns me about the course itself.

I bring old composition books and many written papers to this course for myself. I feel very unprepared in that my classmates seem to be ahead of me but I am ready to catch up and excel past my own expectations. I have read a thousand pieces of literature and in that way have developed my writing capabilities. Reading pieces from the past into the present really helps one understand how the language has evolved and how writing has changed over time.

Nothing tends to impede my learning in any way necessarily. If we are having an in class discussion and people start babbling and being disrespectful then yes, I have a problem but this class seems well mannered enough to keep it simple.

Do Not Read Past This Phil