Ben Mignogna Ms.

Fuentes English 1101 11/08/13 Discourse Community Ethnography (Rough Draft)

Language is one of the most important concepts within everyday life. It allows one to express their feelings, exchange valuable information, and helps them to understand and learn more. A discourse community simply involves language in action. People of such a community are talking, listening, and interacting with a common purpose. Striving for this specific purpose, the group is built on unifying elements. These elements involve concepts that the community practices and shares as a group of individuals.

Communities of practice are somewhat similar to discourse communities in the sense that they all share the same need to advance their own knowledge and strive for a common understanding. A community of practice is a self-organized, network of peers with various skills and familiarities in a specific area of practice. These groups provide an approach that focuses on the social aspects that allow them to learn from each other. Held together by the groups desire to help others, they develop a shared repertoire of assets: capabilities, tools, and different ways of addressing certain complications that need to be fixed. These communities of practice are more widely known as, communities of interest. The concept of a community indirectly influences principles and practice in many aspects. Adapting to these principles can be difficult, but with a sufficient amount

2 of practice they can potentially become second-nature (Hans). Soccer players use various gestures and phrases that are practiced and displayed on the field. This specific lexis enables the team to easily communicate so that they may be successful and ultimately accomplish their goal. One could agree that easily communicating can simply be seen as second-nature. This creates a sense of discourse because the players use inner communication such as hand signals and phrases that are commonly known. Examples include a simple tap on the head or words such as switch, split, off side, overlap, shift, etc (Hans). In addition, there are experts within the sport who share the common goal. Moreover, soccer is a discourse community because of its inner communication, experts, and mutual objectives.

While sharing a common purpose, it is implied there must be common communication. Discourse communities not only involve gestures and phrases, but mechanisms as well. Mechanisms of intercommunication are tools used to communicate person to person. For example, referees carry flags as they run up and down the field with the players. These flags are mechanisms that are used to indicate specific situations that occur within the game. These situations include indications of fouls, arrivals of substitutes, and possessions of the soccer ball. Without lexis and simple mechanisms, a discourse community would fail to be unique and wellstructured. One of the most important of Dr. John Swaless characteristics is genre. Genres are textual tools that are used by communities as they work towards a desired goal.

Within most cases, these genres are easily identifiable to those who are not a part of the group. These specific genres develop over time in response to recurring needs . Hans, a soccer player for the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, stated that the term, off side was not added to the game for quite some time after it was origin ated. It became an inconvenience to the game when players cherry-picked and scored goals in an unsportsmanlike fashion. Thus, off side was added and ultimately eliminated the problem. This dramatic change caused many teams to design strategies that best helped them and fit the new rule. For many teams, practicing these strategies were required in order for them to accomplish success. Practice is simply defined as, repeated work toward a goal. As stated, with a sufficient amount of practice a team may be successful in reaching the specific goal that they strive for. A well-known characteristic of soccer players is the absurd amount of running that is required to keep up with each other (Hans). In regards to a discourse community, there are various aspects that make it unique. Running, an absurd amount, is what makes this specific group unique from other sports communities. It is believed by some that this is the main concept that makes adapting to this sport fairly difficult for newcomers.

Soccer is a nation-wide sport, which leaves much room for diversity. Although every player shares the same concern and passion, with multiple backgrounds comes multiple styles of play. Players from other countries are also considered to be newcomers when coming to play for teams in the United States. They are considered

to be so because of their unique styles of play. Aside from the original definition of newcomers being amateurs, these foreign recruits share the same general language and mechanisms as American players. As the players adjust to one others styles, they share knowledge and helpful information amongst themselves. With countries such as Brazil, South Africa, and Germany being represented, the University of North Carolina at Charlotte has a considerably diverse soccer team. This specific group of individuals adds socio-economic and unique backgrounds that are tremendously beneficial to the value of work put in by the team. With past experience, Hans would happily agree that diversity is a perk within a community as such.

In juxtaposition to most American-based sports, soccer is cheered on for effort, not just results. Precise passes, countless hustle plays, and just plain intelligence on the field produces loud cheers from the crowd. The feel is entirely different than any other sport, since the fans are into it from the beginning, waving flags and chanting throughout. (Hans) This notion alone creates a significant separation between this community and other similar discourse communities. As stated in the recent interview, soccer is a beautiful game. Missing out on the game of soccer simply means m issing out on pure brilliance (Hans)(Pele).

Works Cited

Lave, Jean C. "Communities of Practice (Lave and Wenger)." Learning Theories RSS. Jean Lave, 04 June 1998. Web. Resource, Science. "Soccer Sports Quotes." Soccer Sports Quotes. Topend Sports Network, 08 Nov. 2013. Web. Swales, John. The Concept of Discourse Community. Writing About Writing: A College Reader. Ed. Elizabeth Wardle and Doug Downs. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2011.