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. …show more content…
As a coach, I used a large amount of inappropriate language during coaching, as I would think of this as passion for the game, not really just frustration. Nearly all communication in football uses loud tones to communicate messages, whether the message is a play call or just a coach yelling at a player. When it comes to the written text relate to football whether it be a play, or a breakdown individual or team play. Such as specialized languages to understand football terms within the community or when talking to a coach about an offensive plan, terms may be used like: huddle, line of scrimmage, cover two, corner route, post, and several other terms used exclusively for football. To become a member of this community the team and its players must understand the terms as when a coach says cover two the players all know that it is a specialized defensive passing coverage. We also have someone who is calling the offensive plays in the huddle; who is the Quarter Back (QB) and is often referred to as the signal-caller. Therefore, this means he calls signals, or should I say the plays. He often gets these plays from the head coach on the sideline. This all happens within seconds from the sideline to the huddle, then all players line up on the line of scrimmage and the QB yells signals again. Although, there are all levels of members starting at the youth, to freshman through seniors in high school and college, which will change their language based on what level you, are at. The community specific genres of communication in this discourse community predominantly involve non-verbal methods of communication, including secret hand signals and other body language. This community contains many examples of highly specialized terminology for practically every football play or technique. There are experts players such as juniors and seniors in this community who will provide
Football is not a game but a religion, a metaphysical island of fundamental truth in a highly verbalized, disguised society, a throwback of 30,000 generations of anthropological time. (“Football Quotes, Great”, par. 12)
A discourse community has mechanisms of communication amongst their members. A discourse community uses its sharing mechanisms mainly to provide information and feedback. A discourse community applies and holds one or more genres in the communicative progress of its goals. In addition to holding genres, a discourse community has to obtain some specific lexis. Lexis is the total stock of words in a language. A discourse community has a level of members with a proper degree of appropriate content and discoursal expertise, ranging from a novice to an expert. I will further explain each characteristic and how it relates to the dance
Joining a discourse community is when you all share a common like or belief. Joining a discourse community can sometimes be a challenge. Rather you’re new at it or been participating in something for a very long time. Every discourse community is different and can be operated differently and by different type of people. They say drill team and dancing is easy and doesn’t take a lot of hard work like in other sports so in this paper I will be sharing with you all my journey of joining drill team/dance team and appealing ethos, logos and pathos.
Communitas can be considered an important value to the world of sports. However, some people do not understand the concept of communitas. According to Victor Turner (1969), communitas is “an unstructured community in which people are equal, or to the very spirit of community,” (New World Encyclopedia). Trujillo’s study of baseball showed what he thought of communitas. In his periodical, Interpreting (the Work and Talk of) Baseball: Perspective on Ball Ballpark Culture, Trujillo (1992) said that ballpark community results in the development of interpersonal relationships at yearly “family reunions,” known as employee orientation (Western Journal Communication). Communitas is thought differently by other writers and scholars. However, they all come to a Turner’s conclusion that it deals with a temporary community that is equal in every way and is there for single purpose.
According to Swale’s (1990), a discourse community is a group of people who communicate with each other and share a common goal to which they will help one another achieve using specific mechanisms and lexis (p. 217). The six characteristics used in the identification process are as
A discourse community has an agreed set of common public goals. It is a group of individuals that have a specific way of interacting and communicating with one another. It is also used as a means to maintain and extend a group’s knowledge, as well as initiate new members into the group. Specific kinds of languages are used as a form of social behavior. Such discourse communities vary in size, purpose and importance.
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.
To examine various discourses, it is crucial that the idea of discourse and the way in which discourses operate is clear. A discourse is a language, or more precisely, a way of representation and expression. These "ways of talking, thinking, or representing a particular subject or topic produce meaningful knowledge about the subject" (Hall 205). Therefore, the importance of discourses lies in this "meaningful knowledge," which reflects a group’s ideolo...
“A discourse community has a broadly agreed set of common public goals, has mechanisms of intercommunication among its members, uses its participatory
When a person is asked what he or she knows about discourse community, they might not have any idea of what that means. However, they are probably involved in more than one discourse community. Discourse community in a general definition means that a number of people who have the same interests, values, concerns, or goals. The discourse community term spanned to include everything from religions and morals to sports and games. In all these various kinds of discourse communities, there are some common fundamental forms of communication that participate in keeping these groups related like written regulations, requirements, instructions, and schedules. Being a
In the book entitled Out of Their League, David Meggyesy describes his life as a football player from high school through his days with the St. Louis Cardinals of the National Football League (NFL). Born in 1941, Meggyesy was raised in a low-income household in Solon, Ohio. Like many athletes from impoverished backgrounds, he was able to use the game of football to better himself though both a full scholarship to Syracuse University and financial stability with the Cardinals. During his career, however, Meggyesy became increasingly disillusioned with the game of football and how its athletes were subject to tremendous physical and psychological turmoil from those in power—namely the coaches and the NFL team owners. He began to see the game of football from a conflict theorist point of view. This is the belief that sport is an opiate used to benefit those in power through the exploitation of athletes which enables those such as coaches and team owners to maintain their power and privilege in society. (Coakley, 1998) Meggyesy's growing disenchantment with football and adoption of a conflict theorist point of view led him to retire from the Cardinals in 1969.
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.
A discourse community is a group of people with relatively the same goals and interest to achieve a specific goal. Discourse communities gain there members by qualification, shared objectives, training, or persuading others to join their discourse community. In order for a group to be a discourse community, they must have their own languages, text, rules, and ethics that will make the discourse community run more efficiently. They will also have a form of intercommunication among the group to keep everyone involved or informed with upcoming events or just important news. Discourse communities will have a type of mechanism to provide feedback to help improve the group. The participatory mechanisms provide feedback from inside and outside of
My discourse community is Christianity. My discourse community involves people who believe in God and lives up to the guidelines of the Bible. The people from this community are trying to enhance themselves by learning the Bible. An impeccable member attends church, strive for better lives, and aim to help others spread and disseminate words of wisdom. There are several reasons why Christianity is a discourse community. My discourse community has all of the six characteristics defined by John Swales. In my paper, I will describe how my discourse community meets all of Swales characteristics.
Discourse communities play a big role in life and how humans interact in general. A discourse community refers to a group of people who have language, life patterns, culture, and communication in common with each other. The idea of a discourse community has also been used to bring people of different orientations together, like family members, students, or committees. All of these types of people might have different standards of living, like their level of income, education, and work abilities. Discourse community can also refer to a speech community, because the main feature of a discourse community is communication. A discourse community can include groups of different regional areas that may or may not share norms and living patterns