Guindo1 Idriss Guindo Megan Keaton English 111-08 08 July 2013

Discourse community comparison essay A discourse community is a group or community of communicators with a common goal or interest that uses certain ways of participating in public discussion. Nowadays people are involved in all kind of communities or groups such as groups on Facebook, at church and school. These preferred ways of discussion are called discursive practices. These discursive practices involve various types (academic papers, books, lectures, debates, TV and radio programming, etc.) and require the use of some special terminology or jargon. "Membership" in a discourse community requires a certain level of expertise in the common goal; the more "expert" one is considered, the more influence one has over the preferred discursive practices. The boundaries of discourse communities are often hazy, and frequently overlap, and many broad discourse communities have smaller, more specialized sub-communities. Most people participate regularly in several different discourse communities. Two discourse community that are not quite similar will be compared, the first one is a group on Facebook called Saviors and the second one is a group at school called Student government organization. For someone that wants to join in, before joining a discourse community it is important to know who the participants are, also the role and the goals as well so that the person that wants to join in wouldnt be surprised; knowing how the group is organized and what type of writing they use is important as well, The last thing to know is how the goals of the community are related to the type of writing used. People choose to be part of a discourse community because the communities they choose to be part of have common goals. The participants are usually students which is the case for both

Guindo2

discourse community saviors and student government organization but they are at the same time open for everybody to join in. The goals of the first community saviors which is an online group are the organization of all types of event such as parties, charity events and Concerts and also the donation of money to some independent or non-profit organizations that need help. The role of that organization is to support the community, help people that are in need and create events. The goals of the second discourse community Students government organization also known as S.G.O are a little bit different since it is a school organization they aim the success of all the students by improving the study condition and by helping students that are struggling with their classes; they also organize events but all the events they organize unlike the ones organized by Saviors, have to be school related which means they are not allowed to organize events that dont have nothing to do with school and education. The role of that community is to support and assist student and provide them the help they need in order to be successful. The goal of both organizations is all about support, help and assistance even though the field of action is a little different since the second community is school related but they both have the same purpose which is helping people. S.G.O has a basic organization which means the organization is quite simple. It has a President, a vice president, and the executive members. Each of the members has particular duties to accomplish; the higher position a member of the organization has the more responsibilities he gets. The duties of the group members are a little different since they dont have the same position in the group, some are in charge of organizing the events, some are in charge of helping the students while some manage the budget. The type of writing that are used are emails, text messages and memos; all the writing they use has to be formal and wellstructured since it is a school organization and the objective is still to learn, They make complete

Guindo3

sentences when writing among them, no grammar mistakes are allowed, The use of the punctuation is obligatory, the use of emoticons is tolerated, they have some expressions that are only used in the community such as MT which means meeting tomorrow, MC meeting cancelled , UE(upcoming event) and EMA (everybody must attend). They have also some rules just like to turn off the cellphones before each meeting, be respectful with everybody, dont discriminate any members because of their skin color or country of origin. Those are some of the rules that each member must follow. saviors unlike S.G.O has a quite complex organization because its a quite big organization in a sense that it has a lot of members more so than S.G.O. They have three administrators which make sure that the online page on Facebook work perfectly and is accessible to the members, they also have a general manager, a manager and a coordinator. The type of writing they use is called blog writing; but they also use text messages and memos. In blog writing the writer can write whatever he feels like writing, emoticons are allowed, there is no need to respect the punctuations and grammar mistakes are tolerated no matter how big they are, no insults are allowed. Blog writing is used to interact as fast as possible with all the members of the group and it allows them to do the same without being worried about the spelling errors. Both groups use a writing style that is quite different from one another, one is more formal and structured (subject-verb-complement) and the second one is more liberal and allows the writer to express himself the way he wants to. S.G.O writing style is determined by their goals in a sense that it is an organization that helps the students at school, so their writing style should be shaped to help the students improve in their writing and not the opposite, formal writing help the students improve because it is a style of writing that is well-structured, coherent and which will allow error so that the student

Guindo4

will have to research a lot and correct his grammar error, no abbreviations allowed; thats why they went for a formal style of writing. Saviors writing style unlike S.G.O is not that formal since the writer can write the way he wants to and thats because this community is not school related in other words, there is no learning involved. Its all about making the group more accessible for those who want to join up but are concerned about their writing ability which may keep them from joining the group. Both S.G.O and Saviors have pretty much different styles of writing due to their goals and the objective they seek to accomplish. Saviors and S.G.O are two discourse communities that are a little different due to their field of action, however they both aim to help people even though they have different ways of helping. Participants are mostly students on the other hand anybody that is willing to help and respect the rules of the group are welcome to join up. Their writing styles are different; the first group uses formal academic writing to communicate, while the second one use a more liberal style of writing where the writer can express himself as he wishes.