Margaret Morrissey
English 1001
October, 2015
Discourse Community Paper: Babysitters
When googling the phrase “discourse community,” the definition that pops up
is “a group of people who share a set of understood basic values and assumptions,
and ways of communicating about those goals. John Swales once defined them as
groups that have goals or purposes, and use communication to achieve these goals.
I choose the discourse community of babysitters to interview and research about.
This topic interests me because I am a babysitter myself. I babysit or work at a
daycare at least four days a week, get paid anywhere from $10 to $18 per hour
depending on the family, and I feel like I know a wide range of babysitters that would
be possible interviewee’s. I was also interested in getting parents feedback on topics
such as daycare centers, babysitters, pay rates, and more!
Through my online research, I’ve noticed that on many parenting blogs many
parents don’t find it worth it to go on a nice date, if they have to pay the babysitter a
large amount of money. Many parents say they spend more paying the babysitter
than on the actual date, and more research shows that teenage babysitters aren’t
willing to turn down a night of going out with friends if they aren’t getting paid
decently. I can see both sides to these arguments. In most cases, babysitters get
paid per hour per child, and in my case and like many others, I get a few bucks more
if I have to drive the children anywhere. The going average rate is about $8 per
hour.
In regards to daycares, parents feel as if daycare if more affordable and they
find that it helps children learn social skills, manners, and receive better discipline.
Daycares provide meals, snacks, nap times. However, children may pick up bad
habits from other non-behaved children and won’t get as much individualized
attention which are major drawbacks to some parents. Other say even though
babysitters come with a higher price tag, many parents find the individualized
attention, flexibility of a babysitter, and their child feeling more comfortable in their
own home worth it. Babysitters may also be able to help with meals, consistency in
house rules, transportation to after school activities, and housekeeping.
I think babysitters as a discourse community strongly go along with the six
main principles of discourse communities which are that they have a broadly agreed
set of common public goals, have mechanisms of intercommunication among its
members, uses its participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information and
feedback, utilizes and hence possesses one or more genres in the communicative
furtherance of its aims, in addition to owning genres, it has acquired some
specific lexis, has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant
content and discourse expertise. Their main goal would obviously be to care and
nurture children who they are called upon to watch. Babysitters often use phone
calls or texting in order to keep in contact with parents, and many babysitters contact
other babysitters to babysit for someone if they aren’t available when asked.