In any Discourse community there are reasons on how to join that community along with guidelines/ rules, language, genres used in the society along with topics that are talked about in each community. There are four Discourse Communities I am going to be discussing which are school-College, Family, Church-Confirmation, and Work- Corner Bakery Café-Cashier.
The first discourse community is school-college. In order to join this community you must have graduated from high school and you must have applied and been accepted to the college. For Example I applied and got accepted to the University of Texas at El Paso. The conventions/ guidelines are you must use proper grammar when doing assignments as well as following your professors instructions. When doing an assignment you need to make sure you pay very close attention to the instructions because your grade depends on it. You must be formal when speaking to your professors and you may be informal when speaking to your classmates. The types of writings you will do in this community are papers, assignments, and projects, etc. The topic of what you would write about depends on the courses the student is taking.
In the Family discourse community in order to join you must be born into the family or married. The only way you could be included in a family is if a person marries someone who is in your intermediate or extended family which means they could be your step mother/father or step sister/brother. If married into your extended family they would be you cousin or step aunt/uncle. The conventions/ guidelines are you must be formal when you speak to parents, aunts, uncles, etc. and Informal when speaking to siblings and cousins. When you speak to your parents you would probably use words like please, thank you, May I, etc. While speaking to your cousins and siblings you would probably use phrases when talking and especially when text messaging them like asap, lol, omg, smh, etc.. The types of writings you will do in this community are some letters, lists, text messages, e-mails and occasionally birthday cards. The topics would be the everyday things that happen in your life.
In the Church-Confirmation discourse community in order to join you must be catholic. You must attend church every Sunday or at least once a week and you must have been baptized. The conventions/guidelines for this community are you must be formal when speaking to your instructors. When speaking to friends you may be informal but you may not use foul language. So you may not talk use bad words or speak about things that shouldn’t be talked about in church. You must be very quiet when speaking in church as well. The writings you will do in confirmation are occasionally assignments. The topics of the assignments may vary from the bible, prayers, sermons, god, etc. For example during my conformation I had to write a half page summary on a saint I look up to.
In the Work/Corner Bakery Café-cashier discourse community in order to join you must apply and have some experience. You must be interviewed and go to orientation. The conventions/guidelines are you must be very polite and always have a smile on your face when dealing with customers. For example you must use words like sir/ma’am when speaking to customers and use your manners. The most important rule you must follow is you may never raise your voice, yell or be rude to a customer. If so, that can cause immediate termination. You must speak English and a little Spanish due to the fact that some customers may be bilingual. The type of writing you will do if any is writing on the coffee cups, labels and occasionally lists. The topics may include types of coffee and the things you need to clean at night along with the things that need to be prepared for the next morning. Every night every employee is assigned an area to clean for the night to help keep it organized and spotless for the employees that work the next morning.
As you can see each community has its own way of functioning and uses different language, guidelines, etc. By being involved in each of these different communities can give you a feel on how different or similar each discourse community may be from one another.
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