Memo Response Introduction
There are a lot of different discourse communities in the world and the communication between them is essential. A discourse community is a kind of group characterized according to its impact or involvement in society. Examples of this are the professional, the civic, and the family/friends discourse communities. All of these differ in many ways depending on how people join the community, on what they do and their responsibilities, on the topic, and the media used to communicate. Marianna Ponce, Victoria Astorga, and I agreed discuss these three discourse communities and see how they are different from each other.
Academic
To join the academic discourse community, such as school, certain requirements are needed. For example, a High School Diploma is needed, an application form needs to be completed and submitted, necessarily placement test need to be taken, and of course apply for scholarships. Some genres used in an academic community are journals, notes, researches, essays, and presentations. The topics depend on the class or course been taken such as History, Math, and English. For these, the topic would be research papers, graphs and formulas, and writing formats. Also,from this type of community, you expect to gain new skills. These can be communication skills, writing skills, proper citing skills, and team work skills.
Professional
In the professional discourse community the tone or mood is very formal and serious since you are in a working professional environment. Some members of this community are workers, business owners, bankers, and managers. To join the professional community a person needs to fill out job applications, create a resume, attend job interviews, and attend orientation of course. Also, the language used in this community has to be respectful, polite, and very formal. For example, in a job when you want to communicate something to your boss whether it is a complaint or a suggestion you are not going to just text him or message him through Face Book since that is very informal. Instead you are going to write a professional e-mail or letter explaining the problem and your suggestion for fixing it, this way whoever your boss is can take you for consideration and see that you have some knowledge on how to approach and communicate with others. Another example is the writing formats or genres used in a professional community field; for example, if you work for a post office, you need to learn how to read and fill out order forms. An order form is a very important writing tool since it is where the customer describes and specifies what it is that he or she wants. Learning this writing technique is essential since it would prevent the customer and employee of having doubts about the order and it would give the customer some satisfaction about the order. Topics for this community are making labels, making sure that everything is in the right place and of course checking the orders and keeping everything clean.
Civic
For our civic discourse community, such as church, different topics, genres, and joining procedures are followed. Members of this community are church people, volunteers, and even any organization that has an effect on the community. To be part of this discourse community is a lot simpler and easy than in a professional discourse community since all you have to do is be born or form part of the family and attend church regularly. This community is not as formal or serious as the professional one; instead it is more religious and conservative. For example, if you are in a Bible study and you need to take notes or do some kind of homework you do not need to use professional writing techniques to communicate instead just write some notes about the topic which would be the Bible lesson you read about. Also it is not going to contain the same context as an e-mail or as on order form since it is mainly about church and religious concerns. This community is also a lot more conservative in the sense of the dress. For example, in some church women cannot wear jeans or slacks but only skirts or dresses and men need to always be nicely dressed up with a suit and also have their hair cut and not long.
Personal
Family and friends discourse communities also have different properties. Members of this community are friends and family and to join it, it is obvious that you need to be born within the family and or be introduced to someone and form a bond with someone else. The friendship and family community differs in a big way from all the other communities since its topic and mood is a lot more relaxed, friendly, and comfortable. For example, if you want to communicate or write to a friend or family member do not have to be formal at all and you can use whatever media to give out that message. Let say that you need to give out news or just say a simply “hi” all you need to do is grab your phone and send a text message or even make a post on Face Book. Unlike in a professional and civic discourse community using this type of format is perfectly fine since you do not have to worry about whether if it is offensive, written in the correct format with the correct grammar and punctuation, or if it is something important for others to take their time to read about. You also do not have to worry about the tone of the context; whether if it is angry, rude, happy, or sad. Members of the Family and friends discourse communities just have to worry about keeping in touch with one another and show support whenever it is needed which can be done with a simple text message, a greeting card, or even an internet post.
Summary
As you can see all the different discourse communities differ a lot in many ways. My teammates and I learned that what influence these different communities are the tones, the topics, the contexts of messages of communication and the media, the requirements for joining member, and of course the responsibilities of a member. Although every one of us is different we had a good experience working together as a group since each of us was able to input their own knowledge into the project and fill out for the missing parts of somebody else. We did not have a hard time meeting outside of the classroom; in fact, we met once in the UTEP Library to discuss the content of the project and what we each needed to do. Even though we decided not to use the map format from the example, we were successful at organizing and putting our information together. We decided to use a bubble map instead since we thought that it was easier to use, the information looked more organized, and it was a lot nicer. The only problems that we faced were that one, we did not really knew what type of information we were supposed to put for the genre and the conventions tab and two, that we had problems submitting the final project to blackboard. We overcame these problems by asking out instructor for advice and for a solution.