Week 2: Understanding the term “Discourse Community” (DC)
For Tuesday:
Texts:
- Read “Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan
Writing:
- Think about language and the different ways you communicate or speak. Choose a word or phrase that you use with one group of people (family, friends, co-workers, etc.) that would not be understood by a different group of people in your life. What is the meaning of this word or phrase? How would you explain it to someone who is an outsider?
For Thursday:
Texts:
- Read “She’s Your Basic LOL in NAD” by Perri Klass.
Writing:
- After reading the Perri Klass article, and seeing her experience with being inside of a DC, how would you define the concept of a DC? Write a three to four sentence definition.
A discourse community is where a group of individuals who are in a certain trade or hobby create a certain way to discuss their happenings when it comes to their trade or hobby using slang and special actions to convey general happenings and observations. Sometimes a community may come about to make topics that have complex terminology or tedious names for easier discussion or to be able to openly discuss without revealing information to the wrong people or organizations. A signature aspect of discourse communities is the jargon that is used whether it be for simplification, to combine figurative language with basic actions or to not reveal information in a potentially hostile environment.
A discourse community is a specific group of people with similar interests or goals. They don’t only have specific common interests but they also have a specific language and words to go about these interests and goals when they’re communicating with each other. People outside of this community would not easily understand this language.
A discourse community is an act of a collective effort shared between a group of people with an shared goal. They communicate using various slangs and specific words in order to get to an specific goal. People that are not familiar with the community that this is upheld in might not understand or be left out of the loop as someone could say.