Dancing has been around since over 9,000 years ago. Like all things over time, dancing has evolved from something used to be done when preforming a ritual, to something that people do to entertain, and is also used in certain competitions. Even though there are many types of dancing companies, teams, and competitions, high school dance teams are the most interesting to me. Not only is it interesting, but high school dance teams also has and uses all six characteristics of Swales’ discourse community daily.
A discourse community is described as group of people who share basic values and goals, and have ways of communicating those specific goals. A high school dance team is a perfect example of this because, all members and leaders want to
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The first characteristic of a discourse community is having the same set of public goals. Within a high school dance team, the first basic goal is for every member to have the same level of skills and technique as the rest of the team. First to become a new member of the team, you normally have to participate in a tryout so the director or coach can see if your skills and technique are enough to not be detrimental the team in a performance, and high enough so you can capture the audience’s attention. Certain skills are required like a regular leap, or how many times you can turn on one foot, otherwise known as a pirouette, and you also have to execute these skills to the proper form which is known as technique. The second goal is when the team is preforming, for every one who’s in that certain routine to be on time and to execute the skills perfectly and have the perfect technique. The third goal, which ties in all of the goals, is to win at any competition that the dance team competes at. A usual competition is when all of the dance teams from around the local or national area come, to one area and preform multiple routines in front of judges, who are highly qualified and have a higher knowledge about dance, …show more content…
For example, at the specific high school that I studied, the director had a cell phone application that gave all of the members reminders about times, clothes, and other important things. Another example is the Facebook group that the captain of the dance team makes to also give reminders and talk to the members. The third characteristic is participatory mechanisms which is mainly feedback. With dance teams you fan get feedback from many different sources. One main source that is valued over the rest is the feedback, is from the judges at competition where they critic you and tell the team what needs to be fixed and why. The other sources like parents, peers, and teachers who tell the team they did a good job and tell them what they need work on. The fourth characteristic is genre, which is referring to a textual response for communications. The judges who give back the scores and critics I would consider a genre because mistakes are a reoccurring situation and all of the community and understand and recognize it. The fifth characteristic of a discourse community is lexis, which is defined as a specialized language that a community uses. A high school dance team uses dance lexis, and the own specific school’s dance teams lexis
Discourse Communities are defined as “a group of individuals bound by a common goal who communicate through approved channels and whose discourse is regulated” (Couzelis et al. 12). Every person on this planet belongs to a discourse community whether they realize it or not. If you start at a larger scale, Texas A&M University-Commerce is a large discourse community, and within that larger discourse community there are hundreds, quite possibly thousands of smaller discourse communities. Many of the discourse communities overlap with members belonging to several communities at the same time.
... social dance. Many people in today’s society enjoy social; dancing. Chapter eleven dance concert, properly planning and establishing a dance concert is of the utmost importance. The partnership with the lighting designer usually takes priority over all other factors. One of the most important issues concerning customers has to do with mobility. The dancer must be able to move comfortably in the costume. The task of producing a dance concert is an overwhelming and tiring one. Chapter twelve dance in education and career in dance, many dance educators present the argument that teaching and learning dance as an art form is obviously absent from the American student education. There has always been and always will be people who have a love, desire, and passion to instruct and learn the art of dance, will ensure an important place for dance in higher education.
What Swales means by this is that a discourse community should have ways where members of the community could communicate with each other, and that each way should have a specific purpose. The two most effective ways of communication in the dance discourse community are dance classes and workshops, since it is mainly a community that requires members to be involved physically. There are also a lot of ways to communicate online, such as blogs where someone, usually a dance expert, posts some tips and information that might be helpful. And group chats, where dance members from all over the world can chat together and share experiences. Also live dance tutorials, where you can learn how to dance from home as if you were in a dance class. There are a ton of dance magazines, weekly newsletters and subscription services where a member can be up to date with what is going on in the dance community, especially 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.
This is essentially reinforcing the second characteristic as well as stating that a discourse community should provide information and feedback through its means of communication. Sticking with the basketball team example, information and feedback would be given to the players, to critique them. They may have meetings with their whole team or separately with the coach. They’re given constructive criticism by their players and coaches for the betterment of the team.
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.
A basketball team is a great example of a discourse community. In a discourse community you have a few characteristics such as the goals, lexis and genre of the team. Goals are the team’s main focus/points that they want to achieve. Genre is basically how the members of the team stay connected and in contact with each other. Lexis can be described as the language and terminology used between the team members.
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 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
As put by Jen Waak in regarding the human need for community, “By surrounding yourself with others working toward a similar goal, you’ll get...yourself a bit further than you would have done on your own,” (Waak). By being able to see and participate in these different communities centered around different objectives, the goal becomes easier to achieve and bonds the group into something more through trying to reach it. This new unit is called a discourse community and is defined by John Swales as containing six specific characteristics: having a common goal, showing intercommunication and using lexis, having participation within the group, being defined by genres of texts, and having members with areas of expertise for the community. When looking
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
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
Millions… millions of discourse communities exist all around us each and every day. Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, Tumblr, and Group Me are just a few of the many examples of the functional discourse communities that our world consists of today. A discourse community is a group of people who share a set of discourses that are agreed upon as basic values and expectations and use communication to achieve set goals. There are six requirements to have a true discourse community. They must include: a community of people who share the same goals, regular communication, steady feedback and advice from one another, at least one means of communication that will assist in achieving an aspired goal, a lexis which is a