In Tony Mirabelli’s writing, “Learning to Serve”, Mirabelli completes an ethnographic study of the service industry. Mirabelli writes on a topic he is quite familiar with, being a waiter. Mirabelli discusses the complexity of being a waiter, although most of these complexities are unknown to people outside of the discourse community. Mirabelli uses his ethnographic study to undermine criticism towards waiters. The main critique Mirabelli rebuts in his writing is that being a waiter does not require skill. Mirabelli uses examples from his own experiences, as well as his research to show that this claim is not true. Through his writing, he displays the communication skills and knowledge it takes to be a waiter. Mirabelli is also able to portray …show more content…
Mirabelli uses example to show the inaccuracies of this claim. The first example Mirabelli presents is the skill it takes to memorize an entire menu. A waiter must memorize the entire menu, as well as have a full understanding of the menu. Mirabelli provides the reader with an example of what happens when the waiter does not have a full understanding of the menu. “Harvey then told me that a customer had asked him about the sauce, and since he could not explain what it was, the customer did not order it” (Mirabelli 150). In this example, Mirabelli illustrates the effect an unskilled and unknowledgeable waiter has. Harvey was a new waiter and was unaware of what a pesto sauce was. This resulted in him not being able to provide the customer with a valid response. This example is able to negate the criticism and prove that waiters do need skill in order to do their job …show more content…
Mirabelli helped me decide what discourse community I want to study. Like Mirabelli, I am going to study a discourse community that I was a part of. After reading the extensive knowledge Mirabelli had on the community, I realized it aided his ethnographic study. Without prior knowledge of the community, an ethnographic study is harder to complete. I also noticed the passion Mirabelli had for the discourse community he studied. I realized that having this passion makes the research easier to complete and the writing more effective. I decided to do an ethnographic study on my high school. The high school I graduated from is not a normal high school. The school has fewer than two hundred kids and has many foreign students. I have a lot of passion for the school and have access to resources needed to complete the study. Mirabelli illustrated the importance of having passion and prior knowledge. For this reason, I decided to study a community that I have knowledge and passion
In the selection, “Serving in Florida”, Barbara Ehrenreich described her experience of working at the low-wage American workplace and the worker’s struggles with minimum wage. When she depicts the work as an outsider, she states “customers arrive in human waves, sometimes disgorged fifty at a time from their tour buses, peckish and whiny.” (Ehrenreich 395) It demonstrates the hardships of the workers when dealing with customers. Even though the customers are complaining for no reasons and being obnoxious, the workers have to deal with them with respect.
In “Learning to Serve: The Language and Literacy of Food Service Workers”, Tony Mirabelli presents the genre of communication used by waiters and waitresses as one which requires more skill than is usually assumed. Through the use of internet sources such as “hate mail” directed at websites, Mirabelli shows us that people who think the job of a food service worker is easy are quite common. He shows us the assumptions people tend to make through many examples such as economists who suggest that food service workers lack education needed to be considered “knowledge workers” and do mindless, routine tasks that anyone can do. Through examples of food service workers, including himself, Mirabelli contends that waiters, though in some cases uneducated,
In “The Case Against Tipping,” Michael Lewis argues that we are growing into a society that tips someone “for doing what they’ve already been paid to do” (22). Lewis believes that the more thought the customer puts into deciding whether or not to tip, the more unpleasant it becomes (21). It is putting you under pressure to make a decision based on whether or not the employee needs the money. Lewis continues by arguing that no one who is going to buy a coffee is “evaluating the performance” of the person behind the counter (21).
In the essay “Working at Wendy’s,” Joey Franklin states, “I only applied here because I knew I would get hired, says Sara the first night I work with her.” This situation related to my experience when I am hunting the job. In that time, I do not care what my job is as long as I realized that I need to help my family to pay my tuition fees and to other expenses. However, on the first day of my job I am not sure how to associate with another employee and to communicate to the customer because I am
A restaurant worker’s work is never complete: many restaurant workers feel that they are public servants because they make harsh comparisons, generalizations and arguments. Barbara Ehrenreich’s piece titled “Serving in Florida” represents the condition in which workers are treated while working in a restaurant. Ehrenreich describes this condition as unfair because she must perform duties as if they are “strictly theatrical exercises” (130). By this she means that even if there is no work left to do, the managers do not want to see workers sitting. Ehrenreich believes that she is performing in a play while she is at work because she must pretend to be doing work at all times so that the managers, who sit around, don’t yell.
Everyone knows that tipping is an act of kindness that I put towards those who provide service beyond the expectation. Michael Lewis, a convincing author that addressed the pros and cons of tipping. Whether the workers were an excellent server or a poor server determines the amount of the tips that is given. In “The Case Against Tipping,” Michael Lewis created an arguable topic that can in truth get people thinking, but his essay lacks the evidence of logic. Michael Lewis’ first point was valid.
We communicate in many ways, either by email, telephone, text, face to face, social media or letters and the language we use allows us to get things done, nonetheless the language and communication method in which we chose to use can vary depending on the discourse community. Much like John Swales suggests a discourse community involves a group of people who share the same common public goals, such as shared interests, rules, structure, and vocabulary. When thinking about the several discourse communities I am evolved in, which include family, coaching football, college student, and a few friends. These discourse communities have influenced me, given me insight of where I come from and tell who I am as a person. I also believe much like Swales,
In relation to discourse communities, intertextuality is important in assisting writers to conform to the social setting, enabling them to make reasonings that will not distance the individuals from the community, guide them to construct the logical decisions that are in comparison with the philosophy of the group, and become more aware of the peculiarities of a discourse community the more that they socialize. In addition, "acceptability is the key standard for analyzing a writing within a discourse community" (Porter 1986, p. 405). Therefore, a writer's achievement is estimated by their capacity to recognize what can be presupposed, and obtain the community's patterns adequately to make a text that adds to the support or conceivably of the community's
Ehrenreich mentions “The regulation poster in the single unisex rest room admonishes us to wash our hands thoroughly,” in her essay; However, there is almost no one following the instruction because “there is always some vital substance missing—soap, paper towels, toilet paper”. Although workers may want to follow the instructions, it is impossible for them to do so because they “never found all three at once ”. The effect of describing the deficient rest room is to highlight the fact that the owner of the restaurant is so stingy to the workers that the owner refuses to provide enough substance. Thus, the readers can better understand the terrible environment that the workers live in. In short, with mention the dreadful environment of the kitchen and the rest room, the audiences are able to know that lower workers work in a grubby environment and how they have been treated by the upper class.
A discourse community is a group of people that share a set of values and goals. Members of a discourse community have their own way of communicating within the group and with the public. Although the communities may differ in subject matter and appearance, they do share varying levels of similarities. The three-discourse communities that we will be focusing on are: art, research biology and finance: specifically, the financial service sector. Furthermore, we will be comparing the three-discourse communities on: similarities among all the groups, similarities between each group and the differences among all three.
Despite being a teenager, Nuñez displayed a very high sense of maturity at work. She claimed that she enjoyed being employed at the fast food center, due to the fact that she was being exposed to new circumstances on a daily basis. The circumstances found within McDonald’s allowed for her to learn “how to be a responsible person”, for she was “meeting all kinds of people and learning a lot about them” (440). Although, she enjoyed working at McDonald’s due to these instances, there were some instances when Nuñez did not enjoy working at McDonald’s as much as she normally did. The main reason for this was due to the fact that she faced many problems with her customers while working her job.
Similar to most restaurants that start out it had struggled financially. While most of the staff, made up of high school students, did not know of the difficulties, management did. On this day, management was in a festive mood since there had been significant improvements in the finances. This had also contributed to Ben’s desire to do something special for the
An important discourse community that was a part of my life was my volleyball team during my four years of high school. I started playing my first year going into high school and continued until I graduated. Until now I wasn’t even aware that would even be considered a discourse community, but it fits all of the qualifications of Swales’ definition of a discourse community. Goals
Creations, like most things in life, are improvable. Ideas and theories are always evolving into different ideas or more sophisticated ones. Discourse communities is a term that has been debated over the years. Three of those debaters are James Paul Gee, James P. Porter, and John Swales. In this essay I will analyze what each of these writers see as the definition of a discourse community while comparing specific points that each of them have regarding their personal view on the subject.
ANTH150 Mini Essay 2: Fieldwork Observation Word Count: 734 I conducted my ethnographic observations over the course of a few days. During my fieldwork observation, I recorded observations of customer behaviour, the general layout of the restaurant, culture significance, and décor. Siam Corner is located in Rouse Hill on Resolution Place. While entering, you can immediately feel the intimate environment of the restaurant and sense the sudden shift from the streets of Sydney to a Thai restaurant. It is viewed as an upscale restaurant with excellent service.