Discourse Community Response
Have you been on a group conversation where they are talking about a specific activity and you know nothing about it? Perhaps, it’s about a job, sport, talent, etc; but that’s likely to happen when we do not share common interests, instead we will find it hard to fit in or follow their conversation. Now days, we all belong to a community where our same language is being spoken. It is a group where ideas, topics, abilities and other common interests are shared along with a specific purpose or goal. The way we express ourselves, behave and communicate with each other really varies depending on who we are addressing. This puts us in the community to which we belong. We all belong to a community where our purpose, genres, vocabulary, conventions, membership and audience are common. All discourse communities affect the way we behave but make us realize how and who we are.
My family/friends discourse community is kind of the most important community where I belong and enjoy being part of. In this community we can talk freely and be informal, of course still keeping respect towards the elders but aside from that we all can be just ourselves and laugh around. This community does not speak any language but Spanish, it is kind of everyone’s first language so most of us feel a lot more comfortable with it. My family and some friends live in Juarez, we all have several ways to communicate such as texting; a usual way is Skype, we consider it very useful, we also use Facebook for about everything but try to keep it for basic updates or not so important family/friends stories and we really try not to use to much cell phone because then the monthly payment might be higher than expected so it’s basically for emergencies. In this discourse community most of us have a nickname, mine is Yayi, my sisters’ is Yaya and there’s so many others for every member. We trust, love and help each other and that maintains us very united so I guess that’s why we all talk about almost everything, work, gym, parties, social events, birthdays, movies, food, cars, gossip, God, games, TV and more. The only rules would be to always keep in touch with each other, keep communication and being respectful.
In the UTEP student discourse community it is important to really manage your time so your goal can be accomplished, that way you could obtain your professional degree. This community requires too much effort because you must maintain your GPA as high as possible, do homework, study daily, attend classes, check emails and blackboard many times a day for any class or homework changes or updates but most of all you just have to really care about school so you can succeed and keep in mind you’ll have a great future. We all talk to professors in a more formal way than we do with peers and friends at college. English is the most common language, but there are too much Spanish speakers as well. In order to be a UTEP student you have to apply and be admitted, pay full tuition, take placement exams and qualify for college courses, also register for classes, attend classes and be as responsible as you can. Among students and peers we talk too much about financial aid (FAFSA), our GPA,” La Bardita” which is where many Spanish speakers go to as well as “La Union”, and we also text about homework and talk about our frustrations when blackboard is not working which is very often. In this discourse community we share kind of the most desirable goal a student has which is to graduate and have a better future.
In the Souper Salad discourse community we have a pretty good teamwork. We have very easygoing managers so they have really earn our affection and respect; we can talk to them as the way we talk to our friends and not in a formal way as you would expect it to be in a job. We love and enjoy working with them. I hope to gain good working experience and have a better working history for future jobs and have better opportunities. All of us really understand the language of Souper Salad since so many things come along with it; we talk about our tips, drinks, the cashiers, waiters, dishwashers, rude customers, nice customers and frequent costumers. We have to check our working schedules every week so we know what days we are working, we look forward to have customer’s satisfaction and always try to be as polite and courteous as possible, we have to clean and just do our part which is doing our job. We all get along very well and most important we help each other when there’s a rush hour. There are many customers that pay with the $4.99 coupon and for us waiters we just have to get their drinks to their tables and pick up their dishes and they will tip you depending on your service. All of us speak more Spanish than English except Matthew a coworker. In order to work there we just have to fill out an application and be interviewed, but what helped us all to get in was that we knew a Souper Salad worker and in my case I knew Daniel, one of their best employees. We all communicate by text messages or Facebook and phone calls even though we have to wait hours till they answer the phone. As far as cleaning we like being a Souper Salad member.
My Facebook discourse community is a time consuming but interesting hobby. To get in, you have to create an account and accept you friend request. We all get to know about everyone’s life. All members of this community chat or send inbox when they want their conversation to be private but if you don’t care about anyone looking at your conversations then you will comment other’s status updates. We can be very informal with family and friends and most of the members of this community speak more Spanish than English. I like this community because I get to keep in touch with family and friends and catch up with their lives if I haven’t seen them in a while especially the old friends. We can share our lives through status updates and photos.
Even though we all belong to various communities we still have to be able to adapt to other discourse communities in order to participate in society and kind of take something positive from every existing discourse community. While we look at our discourse communities we have to keep in mind that there’s always one similarity in every human being and that make us belong to numerous communities. Every time, we realized that there are many other details that make us being part of other communities. As we become older we are part of more since there’s so much stuff such as communication and language in common that allows us to interact with other discourse communities.