Ok so I misunderstood the whole showcase taking the place of blogs, so now I get to write a lovely blog about my discourse communities and how they overlap.

So what is discourse community? I had never heard of the idea before today actually. In the Webster dictionary, discourse is defined as “social familiarity” or a “verbal interchange of ideas.” Now when involved with a community, the term discourse describes a certain group of people who share this “social familiarity” as they have the similar interests and thoughts. According to my research, a discourse community can be anything from a church group to an Elvis fan page. If you can remember back to the beginning of the semester when Linda asked us what were activities are literate at, this would be a group of people who all have the same literacy. Everyone has several discourse communities that they are involved in they just may not realize it. Think about all the clubs you are involved with and all the organizations you are associated with, those are you discourse communities. A discourse group is similar to a group of expertise; they all share a similar thought process about a certain issue. An example of this could be a discourse group of cello players. They are going to share similar thoughts and be able to discuss these thoughts in detail with each other. An example given on wisegeek.com explains a group of people involved in a Rolling Stone fan discussion board. If you are still having trouble understanding it, think about it like this: it is almost as if you and your discourse community have their own language, you understand each other without having to go into detail, and they are all experts of their topic. Think about if a stranger walked into one of your clubs or activities, would they have any idea what you were talking about with out having to explain, probably not, this is your discourse community.

So what are my own discourse communities? Well I was the Sierra Club Chapter President at my high school. For those who don’t know what Sierra Club is: Sierra club is an environmental group created after the Great Depression. Today the Sierra Club is often thought of as a radical protest group, but our chapter mainly just recycled, cleaned parks, and planted flowers and trees. We all shared the same interest of saving the environment. Another discourse community I was involved in during high school was yearbook. I was definitely Adobe literate with Photoshop and InDesign. The group of students I worked with all understood and appreciated the different ideas of yearbook such as theme, design, layout, etc. We were able to discuss these in great detail in order to create our yearbook. I had been a part of the discourse community of Pike High School. We all had similar thoughts about education and classes. As a large high school I did not know everyone in this discourse group but sometimes you don’t, such as the example before with discourse groups on forums. Within the Pike High School group I was also in the Advanced Placement discourse group. We discussed more advanced literature and had similar ideas about the philosophy behind the books and how to analyze them. These have all been discourse communities that I have been involved with at some point in time during high school and although we are still a discourse community, we don’t see each other as much since college. During college I have made new discourse communities.

Currently, since I am a student at Purdue, I would be in a Purdue University discourse community. We have common interests of further education and are able to find smaller discourse communities within this one. I am also in the discourse community of Alpha Xi Delta, my sorority. We have common interests and share the same sisterhood secrets. There are also the other Purdue students who are elementary education co-dos which share discourse community. We have the similar goal of making it into elementary education and also share the same thoughts on the process to get to this goal. I am also in the discourse community for my club, Purdue Student Union Board. We design events and discus the different committees and their events. It is impossible to name all the discourse communities one is involved in because there are so many that you may not even think about. My discourse community with Purdue is still small but it is growing as I become more involved.

I participate in many different discourse groups which all seem to overlap. Discourse communities remind me of a ripple in a pool of water, as there are very generalized discourse groups, such as being an American or a Hoosier, and very specific discourse groups, such as being a sister at Alpha Xi Delta. Many of the groups overlap or are contained within another group. You are most likely in numerous discourse communities that you have never realized.