Throughout the reading “ The Concept
of Discourse Community”, John Swales point out six characteristics to define a
discourse community. Our discussion in class led me to have a deeper
understanding how to reflect our social groups relating to this kind of
academic terms.
It recalls me our architectural
group, who studied abroad together to Berlin for a full semester last spring. I
call this group to be a discourse community due to fulfillment of six pillars.
I will mention few of pillars in this blog.
Firstly, we share common public
goals. More specifically, in the academic field, we hope to have a successful
experience in the research of Berlin housing not only though the site excursion
together, but also taking the same class to learn the history of berlin
architecture. In the field of our daily life, it is not obvious compared to the
academic field, I believe we still have common hopes of get a higher
international experience. It must exist a cultural shock since we become all
international students in berlin, this change of identity (American get used to
locals in Northeastern) makes us all be in the same boat.
Swales mentioned about mechanisms
of intercommunication as a second characteristic. He also pointed out that
information and feedback was a necessity when using its participatory
mechanisms. Social networks become more and more popular media to communicate
with others. We use facebook, twitter, and other similar social networking
websites to keep in touch of other “members”: comment of others’ status, reply
the care from our classmates, post excursion information before we set off. It
makes my life so different especially because I was also an international
student in Northeastern. I know it is common to use those kind of new media as
a tool to communicate with friends, but for me, specially, seldom use those
websites. It is not because I reject this social tool, but due to the Chinese
special situation towards those websites. In details, the most two social
networking websites- facebook and twitter are block in China. Instead, we have
our own “Chinese facebook” and “Chinese twitter”. Someone may doubt that I can
log in those websites at Northeaster. Good question! However, I should say the
popularity of social networking in communication is because we have a relation
net in it. If I don’t have friends in my facebook account, what’s the meaning
to log in to play this “ social game”? I do have American friends after I came
to America, but it is not enough, they were all individual ones. Whereas, in
berlin, situation changes, we became a group, not only because we share the
same program at school but also we have similar feeling of international
identity, this important reason tied us up to get closed to each other. I think
this observation is the most interesting point of my discourse community.
It is also worth to mention the characteristic “A discourse community
has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and
discoursal expertise.” Members were changing in our study abroad group. Most of
them who quit the program said they were not used to cultural shock and
language barriers. In this case, it reflects our study abroad group are not
always static.
I definitely agree with you that study abroad groups become a very distinct discourse community. In my situation, I did not study abroad, but instead I worked abroad. I find that normally this is a completely different experience for Northeastern students because they may be working individually with all locals of the respective country that they are working in, whereas study abroad tends to have a group of students who are all from abroad. I participated in a unique situation because not only did I get to work with the community and countless "locals", but I also got to live with many different groups of volunteers who were not from South Africa. This allowed me to belong to a very strong discourse community with the common goals of helping others. I would agree with you that the aspects of culture shock tend to bond people close together. I think this happens because people tend to be scared of situations that are new and unfamiliar to them, and being around people who share those feelings makes us feel more secure and outgoing.
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