Discourse Communities _ Iqra Khan

   The discourse communities that I am apart of are BTS Army community and Muslim women in STEM field community. BTS is a South Korean idol group. There are 7 people in the group who have different talents including singing, rapping, dancing and music writing etc. Their fans are called “ARMY”. I am one of the millions of those fans. I have been an ARMY since 2019. When, I started following BTS, there were so many things that I didn’t understand. Every BTS introductory YouTube video that I’ve watched used words like “maknae”( youngest member) and “hyung”(oldest member). In addition to this, every member had about a million nicknames (i.e Kookie, Tae, Jiminshi, Mochi, Hobi, Min Genius, Yoongles) that I got confused over for so long. There were so many inside jokes that I didn’t understand (i.e “lachimolala”).The ARMY used a special language to communicate with each other and I felt like an outsider for so long. However, after so long, now I can say that I can speak this “ARMY language” very fluently. I am aware of all of the inside jokes of the fandom and we as their fans have only one purpose and that is to support the group no matter what.

   Moreover, I am a part of the Muslim women in STEM field discourse community. In the short time that I have started college, I have realized that there aren’t many women in STEM or more precisely Muslim women. Nonetheless, when all the Muslim women come together, you will realize that we have a special language and similar problems that we bond over. Many of the Muslim women that I have met and interacted with are the first in their families to get into college and in a STEM field. They are the first women in their families to even receive an education. Moreover, in our discourse community, our purpose is also very similar. We all want to prove ourselves and to the world that there is nothing in this world that we can’t do if we put our minds to it.