Rebekah Gruver Discourse Community Response
As my four discourse communities I chose the four arenas of my life including personal, civic, professional, and academic. Cheerleading, community service, restaurant employee, and college student were the main topics of my communities.
Cheerleading was chosen as my personal areas for the discourse community map. It was a huge part of my life and I was honored to be with many other people while doing something I loved and enjoyed. It is a big discourse community in so many ways. Cheerleaders in a squad are involved with so many different types of people and have various ways of communicating. The many people we get to be involved with include, thousands of other cheerleaders from other schools or at local cheer events, sports players that we cheer for, coaches and assistants when going to camps or practices, and of course our job as cheering, we meet hundreds of students and communicate with them. A way we communicate with each other amongst our squad is through texting, emails, flyers for fundraising, posters to promote events, and of course as dumb as it may sound we use our megaphones at games to get the crowd involved in cheering our team on. Common goals with cheerleaders in general can include, preparing for competitions, cheering for the schools’ sports team, and being involved with the students and organizations going on around the campus. As I mentioned before cheerleaders attend conventions where they meet many other cheerleaders with common interests and goals. Some events are competitions, fundraising events, games, cheer camps, community service, and other events held throughout the year.
Community service is a huge part of a discourse community. Community service itself involves the community of people gathering together to share common goals and services. As part of being vice president and student body manager of my student council, community service was a huge part of my involvement and through it I met many other people involved in the same activities as me. Our common goals as volunteering were to improve our environment, help our community, volunteer our time, and to think of new, improved, and efficient ways of being of service to the people in our area. There are hundreds of ways to volunteer your time and events to help out at. Some conventions where I met thousands of other students with the same interests included park clean ups, retirement home volunteering, food places, work areas, Race for the Cure, Gift to the mountain, and many more events. As vice president it was my job to inform others of how they could be involved in community service and promote events. Ways of communicating information regarding those things would be through painting big posters that would be hung at the school, flyers, announcements, and emails.
Good work ethics are important to me because you go through a lot of experiences that only help you learn, and you meet many different type of people though your job. Working at a restaurant especially, you are involved with the people in your work area as well as the many of hundreds of people who attend the restaurant every day. As employees at a restaurant our common goals are customer satisfaction, to be social, patience, good service, and having manners. Being a hostess involves nothing but meeting and greeting customers who walk in. Ways of communicating with them have to be with respect and making them feel welcome. To ensure the customers are satisfied with have to communicate with their servers, the managers, or the cooks, so of course everyone in the restaurant had to communicate efficiently. Services we obtain as part of our job are food tastings, preparing and cleaning the place, professionalism, and attending to tables checking on our customers.
College is one the major discourse communities where you will most definitely meet hundreds of new people. Being involved in different organizations and events the school holds is the easiest ways to be involved with others who share the same interests or goals. Goals most student share are to graduate, study, be responsible, being organized, and to be successful. Conventions students attend to interact with other students involve workshops, preparing for tests and quizzes, and getting together for homework. Students are not the only people you are involved with throughout college; there are professors, tutors, athletes, alumni, and many others. Computers and the internet, I have learned, are the most efficient ways of communicating through to your peers or teachers. Emails, letters, phones, and written communicate are also involved. School itself is a huge discourse community with many other little communities involved inside.
