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I belong to a lot of discourse communities. Some of the discourse communities I am apart of are: basketball team, my family, class, social media etc. Discourse community is a group of people that share a common goal or who interact with each other. For my basketball team, our goal is to score a basket. During my High School years, when I was on the team. Me and my teammates practiced every day after school to get our plays right. So, in the game we are ready and we are not tired. Our goal during practice is to get in shape and make sure we are performing at a high level in the game. During the game we have a different goal. During the game our goal is to score more points than the other team and make sure to play defense and stop the other team from scoring. But at the end of the day, all of those tasks combined our main goal is to win games and stay on top of the league. Another form of discourse community would be my religious community. I am Muslim. Every Friday we go to the mosque to pray something called “Jummah” or the Friday prayer. Friday is an important day to Muslims. The goal for everyone on Friday is to go to prayer but if they have a really big emergency then they don’t have to attend. We all share the goal of making it to prayer on Friday.

The book we are discussing in class is called “Drown” by Junot Diaz. This book is mostly about a discourse community because this book has different parts that shows different sides of discourse community. Junior’s family is a discourse community. Their family’s goal is to all be cool with each other and make it to the United States to make money. Another example can be, when junior become a drug dealer in NJ, him and his friend share the common goal of selling drugs to other to make money. Other topics that can be discussed from this book is bullying, male vs female, victim vs victimizer etc. For Example: when we talk about bullying. We know that junior’s older brother Rafa always bullied and beat junior because he was weak and small. The author argues that Rafa might have acquired such behavior from his father because his father is really violent. This could be another type of discourse community. Rafa and his father share the same type of goal. Let’s move to their family relationship. Their family relationship wasn’t so good because his father was really violent and at that time his father was cheating on his mother with another woman. His father cheated on his mother and asked his grandfather for money to move to the United States to make money. How messed up is that? Even after moving to the United States his father sent letters to his mother saying that he will return but several times he didn’t actually come back to visit. Out of a few times sending the letters, he only came once to visit.

From reading this book I learned about how discourse communities work. I have never learned about discourse communities before. But learning about it the first time was fun and exciting. From my point of view, I would say that most of junior’s family from problem came from money. Because when there is no money and the father is trying to make money, they always act violent. If his dad wasn’t so violent then Rafa wouldn’t have learned that from him and use it against Junior to bully him. If there was money I would say most of their problems would’ve went away and they would be a happy family.

I belong to many different discourse communities for example in social media I’m always on Snap chat, Instagram , and Netflix. The community of Snap chat and Instagram is a place where people can post and be at the same time informed on a daily basis, and in this community everyone has a chance to see and re post it in their own page or snap. The community of Netflix is that everyone can watch any movie or binge watch a new show. Its a place where mostly everyone goes to watch a movie and spend their time on Netflix for the whole afternoon. Another discourse community I’m in is at my workplace, as employees our goal is to make other people feel welcome and to make it a friendly environment so the business could be running smoothly. We all communicate with each other by text messages where we talk about shift changes, ways we could make the place more welcoming,  etc. Also every time someone starts their shift they have to write their names on this booklet so that the manager can see what time we started and ended our shift. Another discourse discourse community would be my religious community. My religion is Christianity, our goal in this community is to have a strong relationship with God. In which we all attend church on Sundays and go to bible study to learn more about God and how we can all be closer to him. Our ways of communication are by prayers , songs , or announcements that invite other people to upcoming events, meetings and activities. By these announcements and prayers it helps us bring other people to come to church and have a relationship with God.

In the book my class reading right now ‘Drown’ by Junot Diaz we tend to have one common discourse communities, for example the discourse  community of family. The discourse community of families is that we are born in it, we didn’t have a choice whether we wanted to be in that family or not. In the book Rafa and Yunior  were just born in the family and they didn’t have a choice just like us. They had the same last name of their father even though they aren’t close to him. With their mom they got more respect and value her more because they grew up with her, and she raised them while their father was in the United States. The way they be communicating would be through a phone or face to face. But with the father they don’t really talk to him but when they do it would be in small sentences. That would be because the father won’t talk to them and he gets easily irritated. Even though I have a better relationship with my parents we share a common discourse community.

Another discourse community I have would be the one about friendships. Our goal in my friendship group would be to create  unforgettable memories, travel to  many different countries or cities and to move in together in the future. Our regular meetings would be at my basement, we all spend the whole afternoon there and talk about how our day went, or gossip we found out during the day, etc. We communicate with each other through snap chat, messages, or phone calls. We talk mix Spanglish because if we forget a word in English we could just say it in Spanish so we don’t complicate things. Some slang words we use would be ” pa fuera” which means take it outside, we use it when someone in our group says something stupid or does something stupid we say “pa fuera”. Another slang word we use is ” alien face” we call any guy that we don’t like an alien face because they be looking like a green alien. We also say lets go get something to eat and we already know what place we are talking about, we all just get ready and head the same direction. That place is a small Ecuadorian restaurant and they make the best morrocho ( Ecuadorian spiced corn pudding drink). To conclude, these are some examples that I am in a discourse community and some I can relate to the book Drown by Junot Diaz. Lastly a discourse community is where a group of people are set to conquer the same goal.

In Diaz’s Drown, he shows a vast amount of Yunior’s relationships. And how his connection and and view of them shapes the person he becomes later in life. For instance, Yuniors’s relationship with his mother is very different from the one he has with his father and brother. Yunior and his mother are very close him.  Yunior’s mother thought the course of the reading try to protect Yunior from his father aggressive ways, for example in the chapter “Fiesta”, When Yunior knows he is not allowed to eat before getting in to a car because he gets car sick and throws up, and the father proceeds to grab him up and yell at him the mother jumps in almost as if it second nature to try protect or shield Yunior from his fathers wrath and try to take some of the blame. Yunior  also trys to be protective of his mother, specifically of her feeling. When Papi takes Yunior and Rafa to meet his”Puerto Rican mistress” and latter that day when his mom asks what wrong he does not tell her about the mistress because he does not know how his mom will take the new but more importantly because there is no right way to bring up something like that and not tear apart whats left of his family as well as his moms happiness. Even though Yunior and his mother are  close there mother-son relationship changes  depending on the situation or setting. When they are at the Tia’s house in Fiesta and when Wilquins, the mute boy he was hanging with decides to bed and Rafa and the other kids start to go off and do their own thing and somewhat exclude him, he almost immediately turn to his mom to try and take away his loneliness but when he realize that she is hanging with the other adults so he just decided to sit on the side. Yunior growing up with his mom’s carried more of her behaviors and values then his brother, Rafa, who showcased a lot of the father’s behaviors and values

Yunior relationship of his father and brother is more as a model opposed to a suport system like his mom. His Father and brother both display this masculine role and Yunior values them even though throughout the reading  they both don’t treat him well.  Growing up with Rafa as his “older” male role model, was always try to have his brother approval. In “Ysreal”, He tells of wanting to hang with him and his friend and be seen as an equal even Rafa barely speaks to them when they are home. In “Ysreal” Rafa treats Yunior nice and lets him hang around him more even telling him story. Yunior hangs on to every word of Rafa’s story even though he does not understand what Rafa is telling him as if the story as some secret life lesson in it that Yunior will need to know for later on in life. Yuniors father was absent for a large part of his early childhood as well as very aggressive with Yunior even so Yunior care about what his father thinks about him and does not want to disappoint him.His Father and brother constantly thought the book pick on Yunior. They belittle his behavior and try to make him feel less about his self.They only treat him nice when they are trying to show off.To Yunior these were his examples of how a male should act or showcase to the world. And later on as the book goes on you can see that Yunior begins to showcase more of his father and brothers aggressive behavior then of his mom soft and loving behavior.

In the novel “Drown” I’ve start to notice that there are more than one themes present throughout the chapters. One of the theme I noticed is Sexuality and Masculinity –As a young man, Yunior learns by example. He often compares himself to both his father and Beto, highlighting the masculine traits of theirs that he most admires and even fears. The lessons he learns from his everyday interactions with these two men show that Yunior has a somewhat inflexible, performative, and often destructive concept of what it means to be a man. Also the theme Victim vs. Doer, this comes in when discussing about the mother and father relationship. Despite the father leaving to the U.S. and starting a new life, leaving behind the mother who is raising two boys on her own, in her home country. In this case, the mother is the victim,  because Yunior’s father is having an affair with another woman, even tho his sons were aware of it. Besides that, the idea of Dominant vs. submissive is very common between each character throughout the chapters. One example Rafa and Yunior have different personalities, which makes Rafa completely dominant because he lacks emotional compassion for Yunior. Another, theme was presented as oppressed vs. oppressive. This theme is shown when it comes to the complicated relationship between Yunior and his father. Yunior’s father is pretty absent in quite the first few years of his son’s life and even when the family reunites in America, it still seems as if they are strangers. Yunior doesn’t receive any type of affection from his father and often gets threatened for eating but never receives any type of confirmation that his father actually cares for him.

Throughout the first week of the in-class discussion, we had discussed the discourse community. A discourse community is a group of people who have the same goal, sharing the same interest and speak the same language.
It’s hard to join in the discourse community when you can not speak the same language as others. Six years ago, I had come to the United States. At those times, I didn’t know how to speak English, I only learned a few English vocabulary words in China. It was hard to communicate with others when you didn’t understand what they were talking about. On the first day of junior high school, my counselor had told me that, my class was an ESL class, which were many people from different countries and their first language was not English. I had met many new friends that speak the same language and we always worked in a group and push ourself forward. My friends always encourage me to pay more attention to study, and they keep reminding me that this is the last year of your junior high school, make sure to work hard and be ready to the high school. When you join the discourse community group, other people would encourage you to reach the goal that you have, which helps you a lot in your life experience.
I had joined in the discourse community since I was in high school. Me and my friends had creat a game group called “China Town” in discord. Discord is an app that provides voice and text chat for gamers. We always play games when we are all free, the members of the group are also my high school classmates. We shared the same interest, it gains friendship when we are playing the games together and community with each other at games. We use the word “baron” in our community, baron means a member of the lowest order of the British nobility. But in our community, “baron” is a key objective in games because of its massive gold bonus and global buff as well as a powerful buff that enables teams to crack the base. In my game group, we have a lot of things to talk about, and our goal is to share knowledge about the computer system, to help each other to reach their goal.
A discourse community is helpful to your career, which helps you a lot during the discussion by sharing the idea to reach the goal. Getting the feedback and improve yourself and encourage yourself to become better.

From our class discussions and readings, I’ve learned that we all belong to more than one discourse communities. Some can be professional and others can be informal such as a group of friends. Aside from siblings and co-workers, I also belong to a rather unique group of friends with a specific set of rules similar to the US Constitution. Although not as important or strict as the rule or rather articles, in the constitution, there’s  rules among my community. My group of friends are foodies meaning we go out to eat to random places. However, there’s one golden rule in this community. Every weekend, depending on our availability, we go out to a new place but this is determined by our cycle. In this community, we each have a turn to pick a place to go. Our means of communication is on the app Messenger or i Message in our group chats in which we talk mostly about our weekend plans. One of our most common words that we use is “bruh” or “ouwee”. At first, “bruh” was a word used in vines or memes as a joke and then it became a word to refer to one another or to express some slight annoyance. As for the word “ouwee” we use it to express being weirded out, surprised or simply bothering one another.

The US Constitution is far more formal than my foodie community though as it is the set of laws that we live by.  In this set of laws, almost everyone’s’ power and capability is listed. For example, the articles listed within the constitution state the power of the branches: judicial, legislative, and executive. Within each group, there are rules to follow, certain terms expressed specially to that group and of course, an goal. Also listed in the US Constitution are the 27 Amendments. Among that list states the rights we have such as the 1st amendment which explains our freedom of speech, religion, press, and to assemble as well as petition. All in all the US Constitution is very important and has a very open minded type of language as it attempts to please everyone. Similar to my discourse community, we each try to make one another happy and consider their opinions as well as their wants and needs. Although the document itself is not a discourse community in terms of amount of people, it does have a goal, a specific language, and was created by a large group for another larger group. I have learned that no matter how different each discourse community is, each one finds a way to overlap each other into one big discourse community.

A discourse community to me is a group of people who all have a common goal or purpose and they all come together to communicate their connection and experiences to help each other reach their common purpose or goal. In Junot Diaz’s “Drown”   he writes about two brothers who are spending their summer in the countries, The brothers don’t seem to have a good relationship with each other when they are home mostly because the older brother doesn’t require the younger brother when they are home because he has his friends to hang out with and listen to him and tell his story but when they are in the countryside where there aren’t as many people around, the older brother treats the younger brother almost as an equal or a friend telling him all the stuff he would a friend. After reading “Drown”  my view on what a discourse community has shifted a bit. I understand that each person in a discourse community can contribute something to the conversation that will hopefully lead to achievement in finding the purpose for the community in the first place. In “Drown” the two brothers Bother throughout the story share a common purpose that constantly changes throughout the story. In the beginning, the goal was to try not to get bored in which the older brother used the younger brother to help meet that goal. The younger brother has the same goal as the older brother so he listens to his story even if he doesn’t understand too much of what the older brother is saying. The older brother was now inviting the younger brother to be apart of his discourse community. Then as the story continues the brother’s original goal begins to shifts when they find out about Ysrael, the boy with the deformed face because a pig had eaten it when the boy was a baby. The brothers both become interested in the story and want to go and see Ysrael without his mask helping them further their agenda not to be bored. In the discourse community, that I’m apart of, I and my friends started to use words to refer to an experience that only we can relate to. In other discourse community, I would not use that reference, because other people would not understand it. 

In conclusion, a discourse community is an understanding that each person in a community can contribute something to the conversation that will hopefully lead to achievement in finding the purpose for the community in the first place.

Discourse community is place where a group of people communicate to achieve a specific common goal. Linguistic John Swales outlined 6 characteristics a discourse community should have. First, the group should have common public goals, what I understood by that was that  everyone in the group should have the same goal so that in the discourse group they could help each other achieve the goal together. Second, the group should have methods of communicating among members, lets say the group didn’t have any methods to communicate with each other, do you think any think anything will be accomplished ? No right, that’s why in the group everyone should be communicating about what they are going to do to get to their goal. Third, participatory communicating methods, everyone in the group has to participate, they all have to share their ideas that way everyone could see how to get to the goal. Fourth, the group should have a genre because that will define the group. Fifth and sixth, would be that the discourse group  should have a lexis and a standard of knowledge needed for membership. What I understand that role of the discourse community is way where people can communicate to achieve a goal or a purpose.

The social context of my writing in the academia would be that my writing has been the same always. Ever since high school I’ve been trying to get better at writing but I think it still hasn’t changed a bit, I still need help. Last semester in eng 1101 my teacher goal was to make everyone in the class a better writer and it will be really difficult for me because I have a hard time trying to know what to write about. My writing outside the academia would be better than the one in the academia because I really don’t have to write a lot which makes it easier for me. My understanding changed through our reading and discussion by making me understand that everyone has a different way of communicating with others. For example, in the book we are reading right now called ‘Drown’ by Junot Diaz, the author speaks in 2 languages (Spanish and English), this shows us that you can communicate in many ways it doesn’t have to be just one language, people express their feelings in many different ways.  In my household we speak both Spanish and English , sometimes it be difficult for my siblings and I to understand my parents when they speak Spanish to us but that’s how we are able to communicate within our family.

Another example would be that in text messages people would express their feelings and communicate  through emojis, we can admit everyone have used emojis to communicate with other people. I feel by using emojis we can express our feelings through text messages. In the book one discourse community is the one they have with their family. In the book Yunior is telling us what kind of relationship he has  with his brother ,mother and father. I could see the relationship he has with his brother is really comfortable. For example he would be calling him names , they would tell each other everything and they would both go and bother other kids about how they play any type of game. The relationship he has with his mother is actually good he loves his mom, and he be telling us how beautiful she is and how much she takes care of all 3 of them ( his brother, his sister and him). The relationship he has with his father is very strict because Yunior wouldn’t  know when his father is actually happy or not, he would always has a mean face and also he knew that if he doesn’t behave good his father would beat him up. This is a discourse community that I can compare too, and I know other people can also.  The relationship Yunior has with his family is the same relationship I got with my parents and siblings. Even though I don’t have a close relationship with my father we still communicate and laugh every time we hang with each other every chance we get. Then with my mother and my siblings we communicate with each other all the time and we also have a family group chat where we would find memes and send it to each other. Our goal as a family would be to go to many cities during the summer and have fun.

Another comparison to discourse community is the way Yunior looks up to Rafa ( who is his older brother). Even though Rafa would pick on him, make fun of him,etc, he still looks up to him because that’s his older brother. Yunior doesn’t care about those things even though it hurts his feelings he just want to be like him and share many experiences with Rafa. I don’t have an older brother but I have a cousin who I look up too because I’ve lived with him since I was six years old. At first I would think he was the most annoying person but still loved him as if he were to be my other brother. We would argue a lot, play fight a lot and even call each other names but I look up to him because I just wanted to be like him. I wanted to create many memories and experiences with him.While I was reading Drown I came across this character named Ysrael. Ysrael was this character who had a an accident when he was just a baby that made him wear a mask. What happened was that when he was just a baby a pig ate his face which made him get bullied a lot. Yunior and Rafa goal was the see what was underneath that mask they would throw rocks at him and even go to his house. But not only Yunior and Rafa bullied him it was also his cousin, and other Kids in town. Ysrael was a really nice boy but the others didn’t care because of his face. The discourse community was that they call were cruel and their goal was to see what was underneath that mask, and I don’t think they care anything about him.

In conclusion in each discourse community everyone in it should have the same goal, share the same ideas to conquer it. If none of them had same goal nothing will be done, they would understand each other and there would be no discussion to talk about. Each of these examples of discourse community that I talked about, some of us would understand but I think others won’t really know how it feels . That’s an example of how each community some people would understand what is happening but others would actually know how it feels and how it’s significant to them.

 

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.