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Michelle Ponce
Ms. Murray
ENC 1102
December 8, 2014
Aussie-nalysis; Data Analysis on The Lake Nona Outback
A discourse community is a group of individuals who share objectives and use written
communication to achieve these goals. The Lake Nona Outback Steakhouse meets the criteria to
be a discourse community because it follows six essential principles: common goals,
participatory mechanisms, information exchange, community specific genres, a highly
specialized terminology and a high general level of expertise (Swales, 224). The Lake Nona
Outback is a casual dining restaurant that highlights the features of Australian society that appeal
to American people and is influenced by the Australian legend, as explained in Shirleene
Robinsons article Inventing Australia For Americans The legend is the idea that Australia is
culturally dominated by the bush which is apparent in the dcor of the restaurant. The
restaurants main goals are to create a warm environment for families to dine in and provide
great customer service at maximum efficiency.
Genre sets are the tools in which discourse communities use to communicate and reach
their goals. To make a customers visit to our restaurant memorable we must utilize various
genres within our community. Within the Lake Nona Outback there are a few main forms of
genre that are used such as the menu, seating receipts, host monitor, handbooks, BBI University
and the server board. Without these tools the restaurant would not be able to run smoothly to
produce excellent service. Although these forms of communication help the flow of the

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restaurant they wouldnt work without human action. All genres live through and depend on
social interaction (Miller).
Research and articles on restaurants are normally about customer service and reviews.
With this paper, I plan on showing readers the inner workings of a restaurant and explaining how
the use of written communication influences customer service. The research I conducted for my
discourse community was based on written communication in the workplace. My sources
support the Lake Nona Outback as its own discourse community and how nonverbal interaction
plays a huge role in the running of the restaurant.
Common Goals, Participatory Mechanisms and Expertise
Outback is a restaurant that focuses on high quality food and service to create an
atmosphere where families can gather to enjoy the company of loved ones and a delicious meal.
Outbackers have common goals like hospitality, quality, sharing and being lively. There are
some instances in which customers can witness the exchange of words through paper. From my
personal Ethnographic Observation of Lake Nona Outback, I observed one of the busiest times
in the restaurant known as a dinner rush from a customers point of view. When a customer first
walks through the doors of Outback, the hosts warmly welcome them. There are three different
hosts that work each night: the Coordinator, Greeter and Seater. The Coordinator is the
expert at hosting and they are basically the leader who decides where parties will sit, Greeter
opens the doors for customers entering and leaving the restaurant, and the Seater takes parties
to their tables with menus and silverware.
On busy nights, the Greeter is waiting at the door with an iPad in hand ready to take
down a name and the information for a party. Once the party has waited patiently the
Coordinator will use the monitor to select the party name and assign them a table. The monitor

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displays a floor map of the restaurant that relays a lot of useful information like server sections,
how many tables are clean/dirty, how many tables have been sat in the last fifteen minutes and
which servers are on the floor working or not. After this information is entered a receipt prints
out on the side of the stand, the Seater looks over the receipt to make sure they grab enough
menus and know which table they are taking the party to (Ponce). In the article The Effects of
Nonverbal Communication Of Employees In the Family Restaurant Upon Customers Emotional
Responses And Customer Satisfaction Hyo Sun Jung and Hye Hyun Yoon conduct a study on
the relationship between customer emotions and nonverbal communication. The way the hosts
handle the use of nonverbal communication can impact the customers in either a negative or
positive way. Which is why management should pay close attention to how customers react to
this method of nonverbal communication (Jung 542-550).
Information Exchange, Community Specific Genre, and Terminology
Within Outback specialized texts and genres are used as tools to improve communication.
In Suzana Jurins article The Role Of Text Genres Offer And Authorisation/Approval In
Management Communication, she talks about how specialized texts are used within the
community to better improve communication. Specialized texts deal with a terminologically
defined specific subject (area, fact). In order for a person to understand such a text, he/she needs
to have some knowledge about the area (Jurin 253). Seating receipts, handbooks and the server
board in the kitchen would be considered specialized text. Only an Outbacker would be able to
understand what the managers mean on the board when they write Disney tours every 30
minutes or Leave no tables on deck. The restaurant is not offering free Disney tours or free
boat rides with every meal purchased. The phrase Disney tours means a server or host needs to
go around with a broom and dust pant to tidy up the different dining spaces within the restaurant.

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On deck means that a table needs to be bussed and wiped. Terminology is essential in the food
industry and only members of these specific communities are able to understand terms when they
are written down in work-related texts. In Deborah Jones and Maria Stubbes article
Communication And The Reflective Practioner they discuss the research that was conducted
on sociolinguistics and organizational skills that assists communication in New Zealand
workplaces. Jones and Stubbe relates to the Lake Nona Outback and their forms of
communication because it shows how language and society coincide. Also, I found that it proves
receiving written information over spoken is better to retain and that is how the server board,
seating receipts and handbooks are vital to success in the restaurant.
In the Lake Nona Outback an important practice of genre is the use of BBI University
(Bloomin Brands Inc University). Outback falls under Bloomin Brands and within this
company there are specific tests all parts of the business must take in order to ensure proper
knowledge of the restaurant and menu. About every two months, a new LTO (Limited Time
Offer) comes up that all parts of the house (restaurant) must be tested on. The tests will vary
depending on whether you are part of BOH (Back of House) or FOH (Front of House). The test
is taken on a computer and is written in Outback terminology and the results are used to score the
community on its knowledge.
The main genre, the heart of the community, is the menu. Tony Mirabelli discusses the
importance of menus in restaurants in his article Learning to Serve: The Language and Literacy
of Food Service Workers. At the Lake Nona Outback menus are texts that are catalysts for
interaction between staff and customers, and their meaning is firmly embedded in this
interaction (Mirabelli 159). Swales he explains that information exchange, specialized
terminology and community specific genre are part of the six characteristics for a discourse

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community. These three of the six characteristics of a community support why the menu in
Outback is so essential. In the community menus encompass their own specific literacy that the
Outbackers try hard to familiarize themselves with. To ensure servers meet all of a customers
needs they are required to memorize the main menu, gluten free menu, kids menu and the LTO
sleeve.
The restaurant menu is a genre unto itself. There is regularity and predictability in the
conventions used such as the listing, categorizing, and pricing of individual, ready-made food
items (Mirabelli, 149). Servers knowing and understanding the terminology in the menus
indicates knowing the process of food preparation in the restaurant. If a customer were to ask an
Outbacker what Aussie-tizers, Walkabout soup or Barbie are, the descriptions on the
menu are better expressed by the questions and the Outbackers understanding of the menu than
by any other definition.
Conclusion
The texts used within the community are all different but serve the same purpose of
ensuring customer satisfaction. There are three levels of nonverbal communication customers
experience throughout their visit that help run the restaurant smoothly. The first level of written
communication a customer experiences is when they walk through the doors of Outback and are
warmly greeted by the hosts. Customers witness the Coordinator (the host in charge of seating)
selecting a table on the monitor and input their party information for the servers to see. The
Seater takes them to their table, customers are handed menus to look over and decide what
they will be ordering for their meal. While they look over their menus a server shows up to
answer any questions before taking the orders for the table. After the orders have been taken and
inputted into the system the final level of written communication begins. In the kitchen orders

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pop-up throughout the various stations letting the cooks know what they need to start working
on. Once orders have been expedited the kitchen staff deletes them from their screens and begin
working on the next orders. The cycle repeats itself with each and every party we invite into our
restaurant. These levels of communication help the restaurant run smoothly and make the
customers experience valuable.
The data I have collected shows how the tools for communication in my community are
used to meet Swales six points. The genres and process of genre use described previously help
further the goals of The Lake Nona Outback. Without the host stand and menus the restaurant
would fall apart. Genres are the tools for communication within a discourse community.
Personal interaction with customers helps mold how the menus are interpreted to fit the needs of
a customer and enhance their experience.

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Works Cited
Jones, Deborah, and Maria Stubbe. "Communication And The Reflective Practitioner: A Shared
Perspective From Sociolinguistics And Organisational Communication." International
Journal Of Applied Linguistics 14.2 (2004): 185-211. Communication & Mass Media
Complete. Web. 8 Dec. 2014.
Jung, Hyo Sun, and Hye Hyun Yoon. "The Effects Of Nonverbal Communication Of Employees
In The Family Restaurant Upon Customers Emotional Responses And Customer
Satisfaction." International Journal Of Hospitality Management 30.3 (2011): 542-550.
PsycINFO. Web. 8 Dec. 2014
Jurin, Suzana. "The Role Of Text Genres Offer And Authorisation/Approval In Management
Communication." Tourism & Hospitality Management 17.2 (2011): 251-265. Hospitality
& Tourism Complete. Web. 8 Dec. 2014
Miller, Carolyn. Genre As Social Action Quarterly Journal of Speech 70 (1984): 151-167.
Print
Mirabelli, Tony. Learning to Serve: The Language and Literacy of Food Service Workers
What They Dont Learn in School (2004): 143-162. Print
Ponce, Michelle. Ethnographic Observation of Lake Nona Outback. Lake Nona Outback. 2014
Robinson, Shirleene. "Inventing Australia For Americans: The Rise Of The Outback Steakhouse
Restaurant Chain In The USA." Journal Of Popular Culture 44.3 (2011): 545-562. MLA
International Bibliography. Web. 8 Dec. 2014.
Swales, John. The Concept of Discourse Community. Genre Analysis: English in Academic
and Research Settings. Boston:Cambridge UP, 1990. 21-32. Print.