Discourse Community of a Sports Team

The discourse community I chose to write on was that community of being part of a sports team. I played competitive softball  my whole life, up until attending Northeastern and believe it really shaped me and the values I apply to many other aspects of my life today.

The first is about the community following the same sets of rules. This can apply to the literal rules of the game, the rules set by the coach and then the unwritten rules set up by the players based on position on the field and position in the “veteran” status on the team. They are all followed and respected differently and also dealt with differently when broken. The second is based on communication. There is a lot of communication that happens on and off the field between the players themselves, the communication between players and coaches and the communication between the umpires and all the other parties involved. It is important for all members involved in the community to know how to talk to each in the level of respect and appropriateness that needs to be present. Teammates will talk to each other completely different than a player will talk to the umpire. The third is pretty straight forwards because participation is evident for a successful team. The fourth geared towards furtherance of aims would be practice. Practice is where we all work on what needs improvement whether it be hitting, throwing, communicating or sorting out personal team issues. This is where we further the team to be as best as we can be. The fifth part I think can be described as either spoken word or signs that are used to relay messages without shouting them out. For spoken word, “down” is used to imply the need to slide, “gap”, which is used mostly by outfielders when they feel the ball is going in between two players. Many plays will have names or numbers that don’t mean anything to the other team (much like basketball teams). I think the signals can also be part of the pillar because even though they are specific to a team, signals are used by every softball team in this community. The can be from coach to batter, catcher to pitcher, or teammate to teammate. The last part is basically about a hierarchy in the community. There is the difference from the head coach, assistant coach, position specific coach, and then the older players to the newest players. Even though it’s a team and we work together, there is still a respect and “veteran” understand of the players on the team. All of the sports communities have a very similar foundation and relation to the softball community and I think would follow very similar pillars.