Vanessa Chaffee, SID# 800218201

Discourse Community Response

Eng. 1312-067 CRN 15292
9-13-08

Communication is essential to every human. Whether it is spoken, written or gestured, we

strive to communicate our thoughts, wants, needs and expectations; however not only are the

forms of communication varied, the knowledge base, nuances and verbiage differ depending on

whom it is you are communicating with. The every shift in how you communicate with certain
groups of people dictate a different discourse community within your life, a link between the

way to project and receive and the group that it is you are communicating with. All discourse

communities have common objectives, a shared vernacular, its own minimal requirements and its

own manner of communication delivery.

Immediate family is probably everyone’s first discourse community. While immediate

family can mean something different to some people mine is fairly traditional, I was born into it

to two married parents; however what makes my family unusual for our area is that I’m bi-racial;

my mother is Mexican-American and my father is African-American. My mother was born here

in El Paso, TX, second generation in the country, while my father and his side family hail from

the Deep South, Canton, MS, to be exact, and as a result my household vernacular is an offbeat

mix of ‘average’ English, border Spanish and stereotypically southern speech. While it is

common in El Paso for families to speak English, Spanish and the ever popular “Spanglish”, it is

just as common for anyone in my household to use terms such as “reckon”, “fixin’”, or “down

about a ways”. Our daily communication consists of face to face verbal communication, telling

each other about our day and deciding on what to eat for dinner.

Most people have a circle of friends, whether it’s large or small and tight knit. Mine is a

fairly small group consisting of my best friend and a few peripheral friends. For the most part we

are the same age, all within 3 to 5 years of each other, and therefore have similar referential

knowledge. There is a shared taste in music, books, movie, and television, so much so that our

slang consists of a great deal of quotes from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, it’s spin-off Angel and

Supernatural, shows we are all avid fans of. We are friends as a result of these similar interests

because we are all able to participate in conversations with each other and we all have the same

sense of humor. When not in each other’s company, texting is our primary form of

communication and one thing that makes our community a little different is that not one of us
uses common text abbreviations such as “LOL” and the like, choosing instead to use proper

words, in fact our texts are almost always grammatically correct.

I’m not the most social individual, so one of my discourse communities is actually an

online graphics enhancement community that is specific to the Adobe Photoshop 7 software. In

this community there are discussions of techniques, as well as evaluations of finished graphic

projects. To become a member of the community one must have an existing LiveJournal account,

present a sampling of recent graphics work and wait to be accepted by a moderator by way of

invitation in order to join. To remain in the community you must participate on a fairly regular

basis, whether by providing techniques and/or constructive criticism of posted work and

techniques. In general the participants in this community use untouched photographs or

photographs with minor retouching, such as stock photos, scenery photos, and celebrity photos

and then manipulate the photos in some way, usually by use of color, lighting, depth or texture

manipulation and there is also a focus on composition and clarity. An intermediate knowledge of

the Photoshop software is required as it is not a teaching community and common software

enhancement terminology such as layer, adjustment layer, exclusion, soft light, selective color,

curves, channel mixer, color balance, cropping, unsharp mask, and PSD are used without

explanation.

Another discourse community of mine is also online, but is quite different from the

graphics community. I regularly participate in a cosmetics forum, which is a forum that discusses

various make-up products. This forum consists mostly of women ages 15 to 45 who are

interested and knowledgeable about different brands and types of make-up. There are no

requirements to joining the forum, in fact you don’t have to join you can just observe, however

anyone who does participate must be respectful or they will be banned from the forum.

Members provide reviews of products as well as application techniques, some participants post
pictures or videos of their application technique. There is a set vernacular consisting mostly of

acronyms such as E/S (eye shadow), UDPP (Urban Decay Primer Potion) and CCB (cream color

base).

Every single day we communicate. Everyday there is a flow of words or images from

ourselves to others and back again, information passing on, most likely, at a near constant level.

The basic need to convey your thoughts and feelings to others is never ending. Even as a I finish

this paper I am speaking on the phone with a member of my friends discourse community

showing that not only do different groups have different methods of communication, but in this

point in our society more than one discourse community can be addressed at overlapping times.