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Juan Rodriguez
Dr. Marinara
ENC-1101H
2 October 2014
More than Just Winning
Growing up immersed in Hispanic culture, soccer is almost a religion. No matter what
sport we individually play and love, we are all fans of the game of soccer. This sport has always
been a part of my life, and although I have played on some recreational teams, I have never
experienced the competitiveness present at the college level. John Swales and Kain and Wardles
articles has made me realize that all soccer teams are not only discourse communities, but they
are also activity systems. My curiosity was sparked from his article, and it led me to analyze how
an intramural soccer team here at UCF functions on the basis of such a community. Its pretty
obvious that the goal of soccer is to win; while that may be true, I have learned that there is much
more to being a member of a team than winning. Throughout this essay my goal is to prove how
our common vision of the goals of soccer are not everything they seem to be as a fan watching
from outside.
Looking into the article Discourse Communities by John Swales, he describes that all
discourse communities must meet all of the following characteristics; share common goals,
participatory mechanisms, information exchange, community specific genres, highly specialized
terminology and a high general expertise (Swales 224). Intramural Soccer seems to fit all of the
characteristics that Swales defines, but it is the teams that function within these characteristics on
a daily basis that succeed. The goals the soccer team shares is not only to win the game, but to
better everyone on the pitch from your teammates to yourself. The mechanisms of

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communication used by this discourse community include text messages, face to face
communication, emails, and the IM soccer website. The mechanisms that it uses to give
information and feedback is through communication between the teammates, referees, fans and
opponents. This team also holds many genres including the style of play and positions that the
players have. For example, players can focus on being scorers, playmakers, defenders or
dribblers.
Soccer also has a specific lexis that is used within the team during the game, practices or
even social communication. This is seen with in game sayings like a meg referring to the
humiliating move where the player dribbles the ball through the defenders legs or rainbow flick
a skill move where you flick the ball over the defender. It is hard to conceive of a group of well
established members of the community communicating amongst themselves on topics relevant to
the goals of the community and not use lexical items puzzling to outsiders. (Swales 222) Every
soccer player must have expertise in the game in order to make the team successful. However
there can be novices on the team that just joined and are not to familiar with the customs the
team uses. This is when the experts of the team are to serve as teachers and allow the novices to
grow into better players. This not only helps the novices but it allows team chemistry to improve
and the relationships between the team to become stronger.
Prior to this analysis, I had always thought that soccer was a pretty basic concept where
the goals and motives of it are to simply win the game. These thoughts swiftly changed when I
was invited by one of my friends to watch their practice two days prior to their game on
Saturday. My friend Mario Alvarenga, the captain of the soccer team called Money Team, lives
across from my dorm so we end up spending a lot of time together. He told me to come over

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before their practice; this is when I was first introduced to the method of communication that
they use between each other. They had a group chat on iMessage which included all of the
teammates. This genre would allow them to talk about their upcoming practices, games and any
other news that they had to share among each other. Mario also showed me the internet website
that the league uses where the schedule is posted. The commissioner of the league would email
the captains of various teams any news about the league. These are all the mechanisms that they
would use to communicate not only with in the team but stay in touch with everyone around the
league including other teams and players.
During their practice I was able to notice a couple of things about the team; who was in
charge of the team, and who was on the outsides. The captain of the team was Mario, who
directed the majority of the practice, decided what drills and plays they needed to work on.
However, John was on the outside; he was the last person to join the team and his expertise on
the game of soccer was minimum. It was easy to tell right away that he was the novice of the
team as he always seemed to be on the outside looking in, with the least contribution out of
everyone else. Although he was a novice, the team never seemed to fail in making sure that John
was being properly incorporated in the team. A discourse community has a threshold level of
members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discoursal expertise.(Swales 222)After
all, the key to success in soccer is teamwork, and from what I had seen they seemed to live off of
teamwork.
They were always communicating with each other, constantly giving one another
feedback on ways to improve ball movement, skill and defense. During this practice they defined
who was to play each position, who was to start the game and when they were going to substitute
in players. There are six members on the team and only three would be able to play on the field

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at a time. This causes a problem because everyone wants to play but they have to plan
strategically who gets to play and at what times of the game. This is a perfect of example of Kain
and Wardles Activity Theory, in order to achieve the common motives there must be a division
of labor and a set of rules to follow between the team. (Kain and Wardle 228) All of these small
conflicts are resolved during practice as game day approaches.
When Saturday morning arrived, I woke up and headed to Marios dorm, surprisingly I
was the one to wake him up. Mario reminded players through the group chat, Game starts at
1pm today, be there at 12:30, bring your cleats, shin guards and IDs. Thirty minutes until kickoff and the players gathered outside the fields where the game was to be played. Some of the
players had a Latin decent from Venezuela and Colombia and still carried specific lexicon from
their culture. They would talk to each other in Spanish from time to time. On the field they
would say things like crusala or mandala. These terms meaning cross the ball or send it. On
the field, during practice, or game it became evident that the language they used was clear to all
players, but to me someone from the outside looking in seems it would be puzzling. Terms like
set pieces, one-twos, laces shot, and even some Spanish terms would cause me to ask them,
What does that mean? They would all look at me like a fool, as if everyone knew those simple
terms but they were just blinded by their levels of expertise.
Before the game the referees called up the two captains of the two teams, Money Team
and Man-chest-hair United. He ran down the set of rules and stated that this was to be a clean
game and no foul play was to be tolerated. Mario, Chris and Mark would start the game for the
team. The pre-game jitters seemed to vanish as the game began. Off a beautiful one-two
combination play from Mark to Chris, Chris was able to slide the ball into the back of the net and

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put the team up with its first goal. The first signs of difficulty showed up when it was time to sub
in the players but Mark refused to get subbed out. He insisted that he stayed for longer but Mario
was quick to tell him that next play, John was to go in for him. When John was subbed in, it was
clear that he was having difficulty fitting in, and off miscommunication on the field between
John and Steven led . Mario screamed from the sideline John stay back and defend, Steven play
in the mid and trackback when possession is lost! These few clarifications seemed to organize
the structure in which the team was to play and, they seemed to hold down the lead much easier.
This demonstrates the importance of being dialectically structured, When one aspect changes,
other aspects change in response. (Kain and Wardle 276) These three players finished the game
off and the game ended with a score of 3-1.
Huddling up after the game, Mario congratulated his team and talked over some
improvements that could be made and then concluded by saying the next practice would be the
upcoming Thursday. Following the game, I had a few questions in mind so I told Mario to grab
something to eat with me. I asked him how long he had been part of this community and why he
is involved in it. He answered by saying he has been playing on different soccer teams since he
was about 10 years old. He said that ever since he was a child, soccer has become part of his life.
Its a sport that brings everyone together and the love and passion that the game holds is like no
other. He assured to me that it was obvious why soccer is the number one sport played in the
world. (Alvarenga, Interview) Scoring goals and winning games is one thing, but the game itself
is an art of teamwork that brings enemies, cultures, even religions together. Putting a soccer ball
between two people could causes such a powerful impact that creates a bond between the two
players and explained to me how soccer has changed lives. Everyone plays soccer to win but its

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the journey that keeps everyone around, the teamwork used is like no other and it puts smiles on
peoples faces when the soccer ball is beneath their feet.
The goals and characteristics of this community were enlightened to me during my
analysis of this intramural team at UCF. I found it to be that the goals and motives in soccer are
much greater than just winning games. The values that you learn from it exceeds the expectations
one perceives from playing the game. Albert Camus once said, Everything I know about
morality and the obligations of men, I owe it to soccer. To be a great soccer team it takes using
all six characteristics John Swales talks about in discourse communities. Aside from these
characteristics, the team must follow organization, structure and discipline. Each player is
actively engaged and taking part of this discourse community and as a result is able to provide a
positive influence on the success of the soccer team. Winning isn't everything in soccer and as
you have seen there many goals to reach than just the the goal achieved from putting the ball in
the back of the net.
Works Cited
Swales, John. The Concept of Discourse Community. Writing about Writing: A College
Reader. Elizabeth Wardle and Doug Downs, eds. 2011. 215-27. Print.
Elizabeth A., and Doug Downs. "Activity Theory: An Introduction for the Writing
Classroom." Writing about Writing: A College Reader. Boston: Bedford/St.
Martins,

2011. 273-83. Print.

Alvarenga, Mario. Personal Interview. 13 September 2014.

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