Mayra Karina Monarrez

A Discourse community is a social group where you share specific interests,

goals, values, genres, conventions, tasks and roles, and also communicate with other
people that forms part of that particular discourse community. Everybody belongs to
many discourse communities such as school, your job, or family. Actually, for this essay
I choose those three discourse communities that I used as example but, I wanted to be
more specific so as school I choose architecture, as my job I am going to write about
Whataburger and as being part of a family, I choose writing about being a daughter.

The first discourse community that I choose to talk about was my major;
architecture. Actually, Im not an architect yet, but Im about to finish my architecture
associates. In class, the typical genres that we use in class are AutoCAD, 3DS Max and
Photoshop and I have learned how to use these computer programs to create blue
prints, do three dimensional models and edit them. Other genres that we use are
computers and we use them to send e-mail to our teachers so we can communicate
with them and to use the programs. We also use blue prints, and books. We use books
to read and learn the class material. There are many goals that you have to achieve as
an architecture student but the most important ones are designing and planning houses,
dominating all the programs and procedures and learning the theory. In class we
obviously use some jargon or architectural language to refer to architectural terms, just
like balconet, lunette and wing. We use formal language with our teachers, but with our

classmates we have informal conversations. As an architect student, the task and roles
that you are required to fulfill are dominating all the different techniques, knowing how to
draw, knowing how to design a house from scratch, building house models, learn and
memorize the architectural theory, be creative and learn how to differentiate all the
styles.

The second discourse community I decided to talk about was about my job, but I
wanted to be more specific so I choose to talk about Whataburger. Like any other
restaurant, and not only fast food restaurants, Whataburgers most important goals are
giving the best possible customer service and serve excellent quality food. While
working, in the restaurant you communicate with your co-workers and managers
through head-sets and screens, but of course you can also have face-to-face
conversations with them. Outside work, you use cellphones to call or send text
messages and sometimes you can even send e-mails to communicate with your peers
and managers, for example to ask about your schedule or calling in sick. You have to be
really careful on how you communicate with the people you have to deal with because
there are different types of people, such as your co-workers, your managers and also
the customers. With your peers, you can stablish informal conversations but when you
want to talk with your team leaders or managers you have to be professional and
formal. When you are taking and making the orders, you use jargon and shortcuts to
communicate with all the personal. For example, if you are taking an order and
someone asks for chicken strips, you have to ask for some chicken down and that
means putting some chicken on the fryer. The person on the fryer station will know what

type of chicken you are asking for because it will appear on the screens, but if you do
not ask for it, it could take minutes before the person on the fryer station notice that an
order of chicken strips appeared on the screen and those minutes are crucial to take the
order right on time. Just like you communicate with your co-workers and supervisors,
you will have to deal with the customers and you have to be as polite and respectful as
possible. Every single person working in a restaurant have many different tasks and
roles, but in general, employees have to take responsibility of the food, the cash
registers, the cleaning, the quality of the service, and more important, the customer
service.

The last discourse community I want to write about, as a family member, is being
a daughter. As a daughter, there is not exactly a certain goal that you have to achieve
but there are some values that you have to accomplish, such as being polite, but also
loving and caring with your family members, you have to obey and listen to your parents
and being successful at school. In a family there is a lot of ways you can communicate
with each other, but some examples are communicating by cellphones (texts and calls),
social media, e-mail, writing notes, face-to-face conversations, emotional talking and
even with body language and physical affection. My very own personal opinion is that
there are no closer people to you than your family and that is why you can have informal
conversations with your family members, even with your parents that are supposed to
be the people with higher authority for you, or at least when you live with them. Just like
you have informal conversations with your family members, sometimes you will have to
talk to them formally when it is about important things. Caring and loving language is

another way to talk to your parents and siblings when you want to demonstrate affect to
them. I believe that every single person have different tasks and roles as daughters,
sons, fathers and mothers, but my personal tasks as a daughter in my family are
discipline, school, friendship, being respectful and polite, and the house tasks such as
cleaning and washing my clothes.

Every single one of us belongs to countless discourse communities, so many that

occasionally they can even overlap. We born being part of some of them, and we
become part of others as we grow and start to develop certain interests and tastes. You
just have to keep in mind those that are most important.