Tim Discourse Community

Timothy Capicotto 2/23/20

Unit 1 Assignment: Discourse communities

1001 words

A discourse community is a group of people with a varying size that share something in common. The common traits that form a discourse community can range from age, weight, beliefs, religion, ideals, and even ethnicity. I am a part of many discourse communities, including the discourse community that is our English 1121 Class and the PC Gaming discourse community, but the one I chose to write about was the City Tech CST discourse community because to me, it is the most mature and interesting one I could think of. I fit into this discourse community for two most prominent reasons, I am first of all, a City Tech student and second of all, currently enrolled in CST classes, which is my major. Despite being in a discourse community, not everyone involved thinks, acts, or believes the same things. This assignment will hopefully prove my idea that a discourse community is equal parts individuality and self expression and equal parts like mindedness.

To prove my point that not every individual person that takes part of one or more discourse communities, thinks, acts, or believes in completely identical methods, I have interviewed my fellow English 1121 and CST 1201 Classmate Amanda Baldeo. While we shared many of the same opinions on the CST discourse community and opinions on CST as a whole, some of our opinions and motives on certain topics started to differ from one another.

Different discourse communities have and utilize many different forms of communication for members to communicate within their own sanctum, as such, our CST discourse community is no different. During the interview I had with Amanda, I proposed to her the question of how our CST community communicates. In turn, she responded by telling me that she believes our community communicates through the sometimes intricate and sometimes simple codes and programs we formulate on a near regular basis. For this question that I proposed to her, I have to say I agree because, we in fact do create programs that ask questions, take in user input, and overall attempt to effectively communicate with the viewer of the program, be it fellow students or the professors who teach us how to program. While we don’t create programs for prolonged conversation, our programs are able to communicate.

For my second question, I proposed the question of how can you tell if someone is a full member of the City Tech CST community. Her retort to my question was that she believed to be a full member of the CST community at City Tech, you had to have full knowledge of the CST department. This is where our opinions started to bifurcate and split as I believed being a full member of the CST community was being a full time student. However, neither of our opinions are wrong, because they seem most logical to us regarding our thoughts and beliefs on the matter proving that individuality thrives in discourse communities.

The third question I proposed to Amanda during our interview was a question regarding the goals of the members of the CST community. In response she told me that in her opinion our goal is to gain knowledge from our classes and pass them so we can eventually graduate. For this question I proposed, my opinion aligns similarly with hers. Even if our opinions were different, neither would be incorrect, because our opinions are formed on a matter of experience proving once again, that despite being in the same discourse community we all think differently.

The fourth question proposed to Amanda in our 6 question interview was about what is the official “language” of our City Tech CST community. Amanda’s response was that the main language or dialect of the CST community is a mix of standard english and abbreviated versions of technical terms. Examples of these are abbreviations of networking protocol names like TCP (transmission control protocol) and POP (post office protocol). In this instance we share the same beliefs regarding what we think is the official “language” of CST.

The fifth question I proposed to Amanda during the interview was “What does a person need to know to join the CST discourse community?” This is where our opinions really start to vary from one another. Amanda stated that what you need to know is the basic terminology and basic programming to join the CST community. On the other hand, I don’t think you need to know anything about programming to get in because, I started CST with absolutely no meaningful programming experience prior to starting my classes and I feel I’ve cemented myself into the CST community rather nicely.

For the 6th and final question of my interview, I saved the one I deemed most important, “Why did you choose CST.” Amanda chose CST for a multitude of reasons, these reasons being that she liked keeping her hands busy by typing, and enjoys the thrill of complicated tasks. On the other hand, I chose CST because I enjoy working with computers for the most part, and jobs involving use of computers tend to have high pay, and I really REALLY like money and would want to help financially support my mother in the future with the money I get from what might hopefully be a career in computer tech.

In conclusion, this assignment helped me learn a lot about myself and my friend, Amanda and our opinions on our current educational situation. This assignment has also helped me feel a little less different in a way, as Amanda and I for the most part hold many of the same, if not at the very least somewhat similar opinions and beliefs despite having our differences. On a final note, I’d like to end by saying my research and findings by conducting my interview of Amanda has confirmed my beliefs that like mindedness as well as individuality and self expression play incredibly and equally important parts of being in a Discourse Community of any kind, regardless of the topic.

Amanda Baldeo Personal communication (February 13th 2020)