Word Reflection: Discourse Community

Through our reading and discussion I have learned that I belong to several different discourse communities such my co workers vs my classmates with the same major and interests as me. Among these communities I found that I share a similar one to Rafa and Yunior from the novel “Drown” by Junot Diaz. I am the youngest and only female sibling to my 3 older brothers who can all be quite violent like Rafa or quiet like Yunior. My brothers each have a role just like in any other community. For instance, my oldest brother is the parent figure or role model and so his actions are more calm, academically focused and mature. On the other hand, I am the wild card in the discourse community, in that I bring everything to the table from advice, arguments to laughter almost similar to Yunior and his underdog character portrayal.

My discourse community is very hectic or spontaneous in that we speak in whatever manner we feel like and say what pops into our minds which is completely opposite from how we would talk to our employers. For example, you wouldn’t say “Wassup bro!” to your boss or call your co-workers “broski.” Communication is a big part of discourse communities in that it essentially defines it. For instance, you may catch me saying phrases from movies or making dark humor jokes with my brothers and think that I am just joking but that’s how we communicate. Its our way of apologizing, giving hints, and the occasional laugh. Similar to how Rafa seems to be all big and bad to his younger brother Yunior, I know that our older brothers just want to toughen us up or be a bit of a guide on how not to make the mistakes they did even if they don’t directly tell us that.

In the first chapter of “Drown” by Junot Diaz, entitled Ysrael, Yunior is sexually assaulted on the bus and later on Ysrael is also assaulted. However, both characters don’t inform anyone of the incidents in the chapter they just go about their day. In their discourse communities, violence and sexual matters are an everyday thing. After a while, you start to get used to these things and they become routine in your daily life. As I read more and learn to understand discourse communities I realized how we naturally adapt to our surroundings or at least I do. Of course you also evolve as a whole in discourse community groups as well but after the change whether big or small, you stick with it for a while until the next major change. One example of this in my discourse community is the fact they we grew up counting our sentences and paragraphs in highschool because our teacher specifically requested 8 paragraphs with 8 sentences each. After getting used to this format, my discourse community has no problem writing or typing assignments with a large word, sentence or paragraph requirement. Personally, I feel that I am a strong writer now than I was before college and there are several reasons why I say that. Not only where the achievements and the grades a sign but the fact that I read more and began to naturally use a more developed vocabulary. In the beginning of my writing process I too had trouble in that like Yunior and his dominion community I would speak “Spanglish”; mostly English and some jumbled Spanish words.

Additionally, this shows the role of communication in that sometimes one thing to us means something completely different to others such as the examples discussed in class ( Dope meaning drugs or cool etc) This idea is also common throughout the different Hispanic cultures as one word might be earring in the Spanish culture and something terrible in a different Spanish culture.