Discourse communities are a group of people openly agreeing to

objectives and they communicate in different ways to reach their

goals, according to John Swales The Concept of Discourse
Communities. At times these groups create a specialized vocabulary
to communicate in between themselves. This specialized vocabulary is
called lexis. To be able to communicate with these communities you
must be integrated and taught the types of communications and
specialized vocabulary. The concept of discourse communities at first is
a hard concept to understand in general terms. To make it easier to
understand the idea, I will introduce my two communities and try to
explain what these discourse communities are and how they work. My
first community is a High School Speech and Debate Interpretation
(Interp) team. I will only speak about the Interpretation part of the
community due to the fact that there are two communities in the
speech & debate team, Debaters and Interpreters. The Interp. teams
main goal is to get their point across successfully through literature.
My second community is Money Gram Representatives. These are
people who are the front line of Money Gram. Their main goal is to
make sure customers are educated about the services Money Gram
provides, and the convenience in using Money Grams machine. I
wanted to research on these topics on the sole bases that people
should be informed on what it takes to part take in these certain

communities. I also wanted to know, in depth, how these communities

communicate and their similarities and differences of lexis.
In a community like a high school speech & debate Interp. team
you must understand there are steps to being integrated into the
team. According to Senior Salvador Mendoza, I had to look up some of
the events I was going to compete in in order to try out for the team. I
had to learn most of the ropes before taking a chance at trying out.
Mendoza explains that when he first tried to join the community he had
to learn the content of the Interp. community. In order for him to be
part of the community he was taught some of the lexis and types of
communicating between themselves. He was informed when they have
meetings and their way of communication, which is through via text
message. I also learned the more complex ideas and secret words as
time passed on and while I participated as much as I could, Mendoza
added on. Mendoza indirectly knew what a more highly educated
concept was without even knowing it. His communities secret words
are Lexiss. The word that I need to explain to people that dont
compete is pieces, Mendoza explains, People dont understand
because they dont participate in speech & debate. What Mendoza
meant with pieces was that they are literary books that are cut up
into parts, then those pieces are put together to tell a story. The story
is going to then back up the point they are trying to make in the
competition. The more efficiently they make their point the better they

do in the competition. Before they even think about competing they

must get these pieces ready. The beginning is always hard. We have
to find our pieces, then make sense of what we are trying to argue.
The Interp. team get together at the beginning of the year and look up
the books they are going to make into pieces. Usually we just text
each other, but the captain ultimately tells us when and where to
meet. This community communicates through text message and
through meetings/practice. At practice they have to create ideas for
the way they are going to perform their pieces.
Mendoza feels frustrated when people tell him and his team
that Interpretation is easy, but Mendoza claims that, Its harder than it
looks. For example, Interp. is proving your point with acting. Most
people dont have the guts to act! Mendoza explains, Acting and
trying to prove your point at the same time is extremely hard! Thats
what makes it fun. The community works to prove their point through
acting, and with their pieces. They are interpreting their literary
pieces argument.
This makes connections to Mirabellis multilteracies, a way
people communicate through different channels within
different cutlers and languages. In this community they have to go
through different channels and find the channel that the judge can
understand the argument. This community must understand their
piece, and its argument, then they must interpret it to the judges,

which are the audience, in an efficient way that makes sense to any
type of judge. The judge(s) are the ones in charge of deciding on who
expressed their argument the most comprehensibly. The only
requirement to be a judge is that you must be out of high school, and
no affiliation to the competitors. This makes it hard for the Interp. team
in that they have to make their pieces easy to understand due to the
fact that there is a wide range of judges. They need to make their
pieces understandable to both the highly educated and the not so
highly educated. Once the judge(s) sees their performance the judge(s)
comment on their performance. What they did right, or wrong. What
they should emphasize on, or take out. What made sense, what didnt
make sense. All these comments are received through text on a paper.
This is another way the community communicates. At the end of the
round you receive your ballets, then you find out what place you got.
Ballets is another example of the communities Lexis. Their ballets
tell them what the judge thought of their performance and also what
place they got. The places start from first place and goes down,
depending on how many people compete the final place is
established. The better you prove your point the higher you place on
this pyramid placing system. The less affective you prove your point
the lower you are in the pyramid.
Once the tournament is over the team meets again as soon as
posable to practice for the next tournament. At practice the team

revise their ballets and start to figure out what they need to change to
make their performance more understandable. Ballets communicates
the judge with the performer. Ballets tells the performer different
opinions from the judge, about how they can make their piece better.
The competitor then takes these opinions into consideration. Ballets in
the long run helps the Interp team achieve their goals.
The second community I chose to analyze was Money Gram
Representatives. There is a simple relationship between the
representatives and the customers. If the customers have any
questions or concerns the representatives must be able to answer to
their customers needs. The way the representatives communicate
with each other is vocally and the way they communicate with their
supervisor is through text. Money Gram is a machine that provides
services for customers, let it be paying bills or sending money out of
town. Mrs. Mendoza explains. You must be able to clarify everything
and anything the customers are uncertain about. This also associates
with my first community and Mirabellis multilteracies. They both
have to be able to explain their reasons in a clear and persuasive way.
On the other hand this community must explain to multiple cultures
and in two languages. They must explain to the Mexican and American
culture, and in English and Spanish. Most of the customers are
Mexican, Im Mexican, so its easy for me to inform them and persuade
them to use Money Grams services. When I have to explain to

Americans they understand the information, but they are harder to

convince. Billes is a Spanish slang for bills, Mrs. Mendoza remarked.
The Billes is considered slang because it is the improper way of
saying facturas (bills). They do not have many specialized vocabulary
due to the fact that everyone pays bills. Although they are some
notable Lexiss in this community is services, and beneficiary.
Services by Money Gram is by helping people pay their bills or send
money in a convenient and safe way, Mrs. Mendoza explains, A
beneficiary is a person receiving money through any means of
transaction. Unlike the first community, this communitys goal is
inspired by the want of a company to satisfy the needs of the
costumers.
The Money Gram machine is also a way that customers
communicate with the representatives. The costumers must input their
information into the machine. The representative is there to guide
them through the process. Sense the representatives have had training
they are more experienced on the process and are able to speed the
process of registering. The first thing the customer must do to register
is send money. They dont actually have to send money, its just to
have them integrated in the system. They must inter their phone
number, name of beneficiary, country and state of beneficiary, their
address, birthday, birth place, and create a four digit pin. The pin is
made for the customer to be able to use the machine at any time. They

inter their phone number and pin and their account information pops
up. After they are register they can either pay bills or add another
beneficiary. If they want to add another beneficiary all they have to do
is enter the beneficiaries name and the country and state they live in.
If they want to pay any bills all they have to do is insert the bills name,
example being El Paso Electric. Then they inter their account
number. Next they insert the amount they want to pay. After the
machine takes the money it prints out their receipt. The receipt
communicates to the customer when the transaction was made and
when the beneficiary will receive the transaction.
Throughout the analyzation of both communities, which I am a
part of both, I learned that it is harder to explain on paper. I had to step
back and understand what I was about to write because it is more
complex than I thought. The first community qualifies to be a discourse
community greatly. There are diverse ways of communication which
qualifies it as a discourse community. The second one as well qualifies
event though there is little communication through text. It qualifies due
to the fact that the machine communicates with the customer, and the
representative explains the communication to educate the customer
about the way the machine works .These communities are similar in
that they both are informing. However, the first community is super
complex and divers, while the second community is simple and to the
point. The second community is still complex but doesnt have a bunch

of moving parts like the first community. Both of these communities

helped me gain knowledge on how to communicate to certain types of
people. I understand that people will always have different points of
view, and I learned how to overcome that boundary.

Mirabelli, Tony. Learning to Serve: The Language and Literacy of Food

Service Workers. What They Dont Learn in School. Ed. Jabari Mahiri.
New York: Peter Lang, 2004. 143-62. Print.
Swales, John. The Concept of Discourse Community. Genre Analysis:
English in Academic and Research Settings. Boston: Cambridge UP,
1990.21-32. Print.