You know how it feels when you travel to a different country
and everyone that is around you is speaking a different language? That feeling
can also be found when you are listening to people talk from another discourse
community. Recently, I just joined a sorority where I was forced to learn a
whole new language and letters of the Greek alphabet. Since, I am only a new member there are
certain things that I am not allowed to know until I am officially initiated.
My discourse community that I have chosen is my sorority. I am in the Alpha
Gamma Delta Sorority. My sorority is very laid back, and doesn’t make us do as
much as other sororities do. We have sisterhoods and do our philanthropy. We
give back to our community by helping people with diabetes. Our language is how
we communicate with our group. We have chapter every Sunday. We also have
sisterhoods where we meet as a whole group and just hang out and get to know
each other better. We have socials with other fraternities to get to know other
people and to learn how to get out and to meet new people.
John Swales defines a discourse
community by using his six defining characteristics for identifying a certain
group of individuals. He claims that these six characteristics are that a
discourse community has a broadly agreed set of common goals, has mechanisms of
intercommunication among its members, participatory mechanisms primarily to
provide information and feedback, uses one or more genres in the communicative
aims, has acquired some form of lexis, and a suitable degree of relevant
content and discoursal expertise. These qualities can be applied to the
discourse community of my sorority because all of these things were met. One
example of how these criteria can be met is by the first characteristic. It is
met because in order to join the sorority, you have to have the same common goals
as the other girls. This would be our philanthropy and beliefs towards helping
the community.
In addition to Swales, James Paul
Gee believes that (at any moment we are using language and we must say or write
the right thing and the right way while playing the right social role and
(appearing) to the right values, beliefs and attitudes.” (484). In my sorority
we have multiple chairs and opportunities of leadership to display certain
values, beliefs, and attitudes towards the people that are apart of our
community. My sorority’s values are very important to who we are and what we
represent. These values define the women that we are and what we want to
become. This goes along with the idea of a discourse community because the
things that we say have a certain meaning attached to the specific words that
we use within our sorority.
As to our beliefs, values, and
attitudes of what Swales is referring too, Wardle has three interrelated modes
of belonging: engagement imagination, and alignment.
“According to Wenger, “layers build upon each other to
produce our identity as a very complex interweaving of participative experience
and reification projections.(151) This quote is used by Wardle but Wenger is
the actual writer to quote that. (524). In our sorority we have big and
littles. These are girls who are older than freshman who want a girl that is
younger to help show them around our sorority and to make us feel welcomed. We
build and learn from each other to produce our identity. We have to stay true
to our beliefs, values, and attitudes or that would make Alpha Gamma Delta not
look so good. We are always experiencing to projects such as our philanthropy.
We are dedicated to our sorority and are joining a discourse community that is
not only during college, but for our entire life span.
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