My Discourse Communities
A discourse community is a group of people whose main purpose is the same, and have a
lot in common such as the use of a particular language to communicate with each other.
A discourse community could be any group that comes to mind, it could be the school, a
team of any sport, a job or even people who have fun by playing the same videogame or
console. There are numerous types that we could consider to be a discourse community.
So my two favorite discourse communities that I am enrolled as a student and as a
Christian are my youth group from my church called “Zona 24”, and my school
organization which is the American Society of Mechanical Engineering (ASME).
Zona 24 is a house for any teenager, and doesn’t require a lot from someone to get
accepted. The only thing that you need to have in order to be in our youth group is that
you come to our meetings with a great attitude and a desire to know God. You don’t
necessarily need to be a Christian, just come as who you are, we welcome everyone.
Zona 24 has certain rules that all members must follow, and they are to be respectful to
others, and even more to the new members. For example not criticizing or judging to
condemn anyone for what they did in the past. Having a bad language or gossips is not
permitted during the meetings. And a failure to obey will be given a second chance to
stop doing it; otherwise it is necessary to release the person. I don’t have a specific
position or authority in this group, I am only a member. The activity that we use to do is
not only teaching the Bible, but community service, and having fun such as arranging
mini-tournaments of soccer and football. Our language is basically normal, among
friends we use words like “dude” which means in formal language friend. We as friends
and Christians don’t use bad vocabulary because to us is inappropriate and sinful. So,
Zona 24 is a discourse community because it has a certain type of language that might
sound different to others, and we all have something in common which is that we all have
a purpose to serve God.
In my other discourse community, the American Society of Mechanical Engineering is
more complex to join because there is a cost per year in order to get involved in any
ASME activity and event. The fee is 20 dollars per year if you are not a freshman;
someone who is a freshman can join for free only for that year. There is also an online
application at ASME.org to be officially a member since this is a national organization.
The language used to communicate with others is formal, we don’t have a specific
language when we talk, the only difference would be that we often use our math, science
and engineering knowledge about innovations, technology, materials or tools. For
example we often make sessions to teach new people about a program called MATLAB,
but in order to understand the program, one must know calculus, and physics because we
use vectors, differentiation, and integration. The rules are that everyone must be
completely enrolled and informed about the events and projects, if one doesn’t follow this
engagement towards the organization, it doesn’t matter, but if he is pursuing a position, it
will not be given to him because of that. For this time I am only a member of ASME, but
I wish to obtain a better position when I get more pre-professional experience as
Mechanical Engineering student.