To me, a soccer team is the perfect example of a discourse community. I have played soccer all my life and I started playing competitively for St Ignatius College Prep School. I played for the junior varsity team and then later as I learned more about the game started playing for the varsity team.
In soccer, there are no time outs and little stoppage of play, so communication with coaches is limited. For a team to play well, each player must know what they need to do on and off the field. The objective of a soccer team is very simple; score and do not let your opponents score. When your team has the ball, every player already knows to help the person who has the possession of the ball to score. As soon as the ball is lost to the opponent,
…show more content…
the team swiftly switches to a defensive mentality. In this dynamic game, players must react to the ever-changing surroundings. Every player knows their own duties and how to perform them the best. This is because every person on the field is there to win, and the smallest mistake can quickly transform into a goal for the opposition, which is not one of the goals of the team. To stop mistakes from happening, a senior member of the discourse community is chosen to act as the captain on and off the field. Having a captain is a necessity of a soccer team. With no team captain, there is no leadership on the field. The captain can be compared to a conductor of an orchestra. He knows how the team performs best and can execute the goals of the team well. He manages the team and makes them work to the best of their abilities. To differentiate between the captain and a player, a keen eye is necessary. During a match, the captain will be wearing either an arm band or a leg band that says captain so everyone knows who is in control. Seeing the difference between a coach and a player is normally easy. Coaches tend to be a lot older than the age group that is competing. They have acquired the most knowledge and experience and can teach the team how to reach their goals and minimize mistakes. Between the coaches and captains, newcomers to the discourse community have mentors to learn the necessary lexis and knowledge of the community from. From my trials, I found out about some specific words within the team.
If a player was directly to the left or right of another player on the field and wanted a pass, he would shout “square” and whomever had the ball would know there was somebody ninety degrees to his left or right who was open and looking for a pass. Instead of simply yelling “left” or “right”, “square” is used so only people in that discourse community know what is being asked. In soccer, the key to winning is being able to foresee the opposition’s next move. Thus, if a player just called out “left” or “right”, the next move of that team is known. Another example of terminology used in a soccer team is when a person asks for a “through ball”. This means a player is asking the person in possession to pass the ball not directly to him, but in front of him so the player has the ability to run into space and then receive the ball, instead of having to dribble through a defender to reach the same space. Lexis carries over from games into practices and meetings and begins to take its rightful place in the vocabulary of the player. Once the lexis is known, it makes communication easier and faster for the team and can positively alter the outcome of games by simply eliminating little mistakes which could turn into costly
errors. Besides using specific language to communicate with each other, players and coaches use e-mail, phone calls, texts, and even letters to communicate times of tournaments, games, scrimmages, practices, and meetings to every person within the discourse community. Modern technology aids communication between coaches and players a lot. Before cellular phones, people could only be contacted at their place of residency, but with modern phones, people can be reached almost anywhere at any time. This technology makes it very easy to communicate and transmit information within the discourse community. If a member of the discourse community did not know a specific piece of information, it is likely that member’s fault. It is obvious that the team has common public goals. They include scoring on their opponents, but not letting their opponents do the same to them. They have specific terminology that is used on and off the field like “square” and “through ball” to help communication between the team. These terminology are important because it helps hide the intentions of the team and leaves the opposition guessing. There are constantly new players joining the team and people leaving the team, so captains and coaches have the responsibility of teaching the new players the lexis and knowledge of the team. Finally, members of the discourse community communicate using modern technology like cell phones, e-mail, texting, and other forms of communication.
In the article “The Concept of Discourse Community” John Swales touches a few very important main ideas about what discourse community really is. I found it to be refreshing that he is able to express his feelings how he does in this article. Swales talks about discourse community and how our world today really isn 't that good at being apart of them. He discusses the six qualities or characteristics of being apart of a discourse community. You have to be active in communicating and wanting to be apart of that community and if you 're not that type of person than maybe it 's not your thing.
Discourse communities are groups of people with a unique point of view. There are many discourse communities around your everyday life. These communities are part of the entire human environment. Many discourse communities are distinctly large due to all the societies wanting the same things. My discourse communities are mostly Facebook.
Football is a discourse community I am involved in where the members have similar goals and expectations. As in what Swales describes a discourse community as groups that have goals or purposes, and use communication to achieve these goals”. In his article “The Concept of Discourse Community” (Swales 466-479) Swales argues for a fresh conceptualization of discourse community, especially as a distinct entity from the similar sociolinguistic concept of speech community, and building upon the foundations of that argument defines discourse community in his own. In the Conceptualization of Discourse Community he talks about the six defining characteristics of a discourse community. The discourse community I am part of is playing and coaching football.
UTEP Blast: A Discourse Community Khaleb King University of Texas at El Paso UTEP Blast: A Discourse Community Introduction A Discourse Community is a group of people that share a set of goals or discourses and within this group, find ways to communicate about these set goals. Discourse Communities can mean having a spot on a sports team, being a part of a school club, and even your workplace can be considered a discourse community. To be accepted into a discourse community, one must be seen as a credible source, one that has knowledge on the topic at hand and can help the group reach the goals of the discourse community.
In the Swales document we looked at in class, a discourse community has a set of common goals (Discourse Community). In high school basketball, the goal is to win the state championship. Also, a discourse community uses a specific jargon (Discourse Community). We see this in the rules and how some players and coaches communicate. Finally, a discourse community has its new members learn from experienced members (Discourse Community). This is evident when we talk about learning the fundamentals from the coaches. High school basketball can be a very diverse discourse community because while every team has different ways of doing things, they all have the same end goal of being the state champions. Basketball has always
For my project III ethnography I am researching and observing the Jackson High School Drama Departments production of Annie: The Musical. The importance of this community is that it makes students involved be on there best behavior in order to participate. They have to stay of of trouble and be able to maintain a GPA that is required to be in the group. This group is also important because it is an expressive outlet that allows the students to be whoever they want to be. The drama department is made up of students from kindergarten to twelfth grade that attend Jackson city schools. Every student on cast and crew each has an important job to to in order to make the play successful. However in order to be successful the members of this group have to communicate to each other in many different ways. Some forms of communication are verbal while others aren't, but both ways are crucial in order to make to production succeed. Also communication doesn't just take place on stage, it takes place backstage and after practice too. Another way the group communicates with each other is using terms that and average person wouldn't understand. Throughout this paper I am also going to explore the idea of Discourse community and relate it to the drama club.
In his article “The Concept of Discourse Community,” John Swales describes a discourse community as a group of people that “have a broadly agreed set of common goals, contain certain mechanisms of intercommunication among its members, have acquired a specific lexis, and have a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content discoursal expertise” (Swales #). An example of such a discourse community is the legal profession. The legal profession has the common goal of understanding and applying general principles to particular factual situations. In doing so, lawyers use language, concepts, and methods that are unique to their community. In order to become a recognized member of the legal community, a person must graduate from law school and pass the bar exam thereby demonstrating an in depth knowledge concerning all areas of the law and the specialized rules, methods, and jargon used by lawyers to communicate about legal principles.
In a soccer game there are two teams of 11 players who try to score a point by kicking a ball into the opponents net. Soccer is played on a rectangular field with a net on each short side of the field. All players must hit the ball with their feet or body and only the goalie is allowed to touch the ball with his/her hands. There are many things you can do to condition yourself to play.
Every individual is a component of some type of discourse community. A discourse community is a group of people who work to achieve a set of common goals through a unique form of terms and conditions. Discourse communities are often confused with speech communities. The difference between the two is that “a discourse community recruits its members by persuasion, training or relevant qualification” (Swales 220) rather than gaining members through birth, or accident. Discourse communities have a “reasonable ratio between novices and experts” (Swales 222) and different genres of communication that are used to progress towards the group’s goals. Another characteristic is the use of a unique lexis, or vocabulary, that sets the community apart from
Soccer the most popular sport in the world, since is the sport with more active players with around 270 million athletes. By having registered so many players, it’s not surprising that this sport has more fans than any other sport worldwide. Every team looks for a player that moves the ball, and that creates plays to score. This means a person that pass the ball through the entire game. To pass the ball in a proper way is one of the main skills a player needs to play soccer. Passing the ball, keeps the game going. Without being able to pass the ball accurately to your teammates, more than likely your team won’t be able to score a goal. The key for passing is to keep things simple. This means passing the ball to your nearest teammate that is not marked by an opponent.
Genre is very important when it comes to discourse communities. Genre serves the convention of discourse communities and it the means of communication that achieve the proposes of a particular discourse community. The discourse community in which will be discussed is Moldovian Baptist Church or MBC. From MBC three main genres of the discourse community will be analyzed and show how those conventions and language elements serve the MBC as a discourse community and achieve its main purpose. MBC is a discourse community that uses MBC choir, sermon, and youth to achieve the goals and proposes of MBC through the uses of language elements.
When playing a sport for the first time you take a while to learn the basics, before going into learning how to do tricks, or understanding the actual game. The basics of soccer are understanding how
My first observation is that the soccer game is played on a rectangle field with net goals at either end in which two teams of 11 players each try to drive a ball into the others goal by kicking, heading, or using any part of the body except the arm and hands. Only the goal keepers on either side are allowed to touch the ball with his hands and arms except in the case of throw-ins.There are two teams playing against each other with different colour of jerseys to identify each team.
Soccer is a sport comprised of many types of players, but the main three categories are midfield, defence, and forward. Each of these positions do separate jobs, as well as the sub positions that lay under the three main categories. The positions are really what makes the game of soccer flow from end to end with each player needing to hold up their end to make sure the team as a whole works because in soccer the team is truly as strong as its weakest link.
Soccer is a fun way to pass time as well as a competitive sport among athletes. It requires a combination of various skills, which include: dribbling, passing and receiving, shooting, defending, as well as goalkeeping for some. A soccer player’s skills will also vary from one position to another. These fundamental skills are learned relatively quickly for those who want to play for fun. But if you want to play soccer competitively you will need to master all of these skills above, plus a few others.