Discourse Communities

For my discourse community I'm going to choose skateboarding because I kind of already understand why and how they're in this group.Skateboarding is a very interesting and very big group. Its hard not to find a skateboarder in any urban or suburban area. Im going to follow a few of my friends that skateboard around campus and to a few skateparks. I think this will be very easy for me because I have already spent seven years of my life centered around skateboarding.
Skateboarding as a discourse community:
- All Skateboarders want is to get better or have fun skateboarding. Some skaters want to become professional one day but that is extremely hard.
- Most skaters communicate through text or cell phones. Also there are many skate videos and skate tutorials online.
- Online is a huge resource for any skater trying to learn. Also skateparks great places where you can find other skaters who can you show you how to do something.
- There is an entire language to skateboarding do to the hundreds of tricks there are. There is also a kind of surfer dude slang adaptation that some skaters have.
- There is always older more experienced skaters who are willing to teach younger people if they ask.

The reason I chose skateboarding is because I feel like I could get people to like and understand skateboarders. In the public eye many people see skateboarders as a menace. With this project hopefully I can change that.

Response to: The Concept of Discourse Communities

This reading was hard but I understood it. This passage explains what a discourse community is. A discourse community is explained misty like a clique. Its a group of people with a common interests who have similar tendencies and all communicate with each other because of their similarities. It also briefly talks about Speech communities which is like a discourse community with out the common interests. For example, new yorkers all have a similar way they speak and may even act similar sometimes. But New Yorkers all have different cultures and interests. Discourse communities will also have their own version of speech but does not make it a speech community because this speech they have is common to them and relates to their interests. Another example, Skateboarding is a discourse community. Skateboarders may talk the same and may not but they all have a similar knowledge of skateboarding words. The six defining characteristics of discourse communities mentioned in the passage are:

1. Discourse communities has a broadly agreed set of common goals.
2. A discourse community has mechanisms of intercommunications among its members.
3. A discourse community uses participatory mechanism primarily to provide information and feedback.
4. A discourse community uses multiple genres in communication.
5. Discourse communities also have specific lexis (Its own words)
6. A discourse community has a threshold level level of members with suitable degree of relevant content and expertise.

I liked the reading because throughout the reading I thought about the discourse communities i know and may belong too. I wonder if you can divide discourse communities into smaller parts because some communities can be huge. I look forward to studying discourse communities more.