Michael Batista

ENG 1121

February 9, 2021

Introduction to Discourse Communities

My thought on the quotation

Quotation

ā€œIndeed, many types of discourse communities develop shorthand expressions, such as abbreviations and acronyms, to aid speed of communication. Members of such groups can be of different nationalities, ages, and occupations, and can differ quite considerably in their economic circumstances and educational backgrounds.ā€

I think this quotation is a very interesting piece of information. It explains that many different discourse communities have different way of communications that others may not understand. In addition it also explains on how members of discourse communities can all be different than each other and are not all the same.

ā€œConsider the situation of the local branch of your bank, or a car dealership in your area. The people who work in such places have both their own ways of going about their tasks, and their own conventionalized ways of talking about those tasks and with their customers. However, they also are in contact and receive instructions from regional or national offices that in part determine how they carry out their duties. In effect, they are subjected to both centripetal and centrifugal forces.ā€

This quotation caught my attention as I was reading it. It made me think of the various of different places or groups that fall into the ā€œFolocalā€ discourse communities. In which I think many places and groups can be Folocal discourse communities as in almost all businesses who have to deal with their customers. I say this because when you are a worker at a particular shop you treat the customer differently than how you would treat your co-worker. You might use words or do actions that only the workers of your business are aware of but not the customers.

Three discourse communities I am apart of are school, sneaker reselling, and music production. My school discourse community is a community of students and teachers who work to enhance our education. In the school discourse community the students all share the same interest which is to graduate and excel our education. While in the school discourse community teachers share the same interest of teaching the students. Another discourse community I am apart of is the sneaker reselling community. In this discourse community we all share the same interest which is to resell limited sneakers for a profit. In this discourse community we use various of different words that others outside of the community may not know. As for example a commonly used word in the sneaker reselling community is the word ā€œjigā€. This word simply defines as to make our real information like house address slightly modified. An example is before jig the address is 123 Street Ave and after the jig the address is 123 Street Ave ABC. We use this to bypass the stores who only allow one pair of sneakers per customer. Lastly, another discourse community I am apart of is the music production community. In this discourse community our shared interest is to produce different types of music. In this discourse community we also have words that others outside of the community may not know. As in for example the word ā€œmasterā€. The word master in our community means to make the overall music production louder to the ear so that it can easily be heard with the same amount of quality. So as we can conclude, all various discourse communities have differences in the way they can only understand.