Discourse Analysis Two

University Housing (several authors), Living Learning Community Newsletter, Web Feb. 23, 2011 http://housing.boisestate.edu/llc/newsletter/NOV10LLCNewsletter.pdf

Before I try using Wysocki's framework to analyze this article, I thought it would be best to explain it first. This is the Newsletter for the collective Living Learning Communities at BSU. Each Community has a Faculty In Residence, or FIR, and a Program Assistant, or PA. To my knowledge, the FIRs and PAs for each Community are the authors for their respective portions of the Newsletter. Since I am unsure, I listed University Housing as the author as that is what is given in the Newsletter itself.

Each Community has it's own page in the newsletter, describing what the community has been up to over the month, plans for the immediate future, etc. In essence, this makes the newsletter several articles in one, but I felt they were tied together enough to be used as just one article. I also thought about describing the differences in style of organization for each section.

As for Wysocki's framework, I was somewhat confused by the text, but there are several things in the article I noticed. First, the text throughout the newsletter is not consistent. There are larger fonts for different sections, even inside of a single communities portion. I believe this is designed to cue the readers in to those main ideas, followed by the smaller text after they are "hooked" in. Seeing as this is a newsletter, I somewhat expected this kind of text arrangement. Other than text, the newsletter is very visually striking. One of the most notable visual elements is the color of the newsletter. The newsletter is deliberately color coded by the Community the page is concerning. For example, the Engineering section is an orange color, whereas Arts and Humanities is a red. These color choices are based on the community's logo, and instantly aligns pages with the communities they address. I found this to be an excellent decision as it tells a reader what the page will be about without even reading the title. For instance, readers from one of the communities could just scroll down to their color without needing to read each page. Also, there are several pictures throughout the newsletter. The purpose of the newsletter is to tell others what the communities have been up to, and providing pictures helps in this. Sometimes the pictures don't even show what is being described in the text, but instead show what isnt being described in the text. Either way, the inclusion of pictures really helps bring the point of the articles together.

With all of these elements combined, you have the LLC Newsletter. While this kind of organization and style may not be appropriate for an academic paper or technical report, it fits perfectly here. The newsletter is for students and their families, mainly, and is designed to best communicate with that target audience, based on what I could understand from Wysocki.