Date: September 15, 2012
To: Carolyn Drapes
From: Jazmin Porras
Subject: Discourse Community Map Group Project Response
A discourse community is a form of communication that is used for a particular community. Sam, Robert, Roberto, and I shared the discourse communities of Undergraduate Students, Family and Friends, and Social Networking. Together as a group we contributed to each section of the discourse map. We read each of the sections and together helped fill the sections as best as we could.
Our first discourse community was Undergraduate Students. In this case, the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) community symbolized the academic section of our map. In order to join this great community, you must take time to apply, be admitted, and attend class regularly. In class you might find that students have different ways of communicating with peers, professors, teacher assistants, and even peer leaders. When addressing a professor, peer leader, or teacher assistant we speak in a more professional manner, but when we speak to our peers we use a more casual way of communication. Also, since the UTEP community is so close to the border my group and I have realized that the use of Spanish is used almost as much as the English language, which is not common in other cities. Class discussions, conversations, emails, research papers, assignments, and blackboard are the best ways to communicate in the Undergraduate Student discourse community. It helps contact peers, professors, and anyone else in this community faster.
Next, the Family discourse community was the personal section of our map. For this specific community you must be born or married into a family. A family consists of siblings, parents, and grandparents. Personally, I am Hispanic so in my family we use a lot of Spanglish, but English and Spanish as well. For example, when I speak to my grandmother I only talk Spanish because she cannot understand English, but when I talk to my aunt that cannot speak Spanish I speak only in English. Finally, when I speak to my mom I can speak Spanglish because she understands both. In my family we mostly talk casual but when talking to elders we still include professional use of language. Since some of my group members and I have big families we communicate mostly through family get-togethers, phone calls, text messages, and letters. It is fun to have people who you can gossip about relationships, problems, school, and life itself.
Finally, our third discourse community was Social Networking. In our discourse map it represented a civic community. Creating a social network page is the way to join this community. Through this you could interact with peers, family members, and even strangers in your community. The use of language in social networking is different from all other communities. Of course in our community it is made of both English and Spanish, but with a use of slang. This “slang” is really made up of abbreviations and jargon words. Examples of this slang would be “jk” and “lol”. The use of this language usually occurs when people communicate with others through messages, posts, comments, and tweets.
Lastly, I would like to say that working in a group for our first project was a great idea. It was a good way for us to get out of our comfort zone and make new friends, while learning about discourse communities. The process of my writing in this memo entailed to the creation of our map, by simply addressing the genres, conventions, topics, and how to join these communities. The challenging part of this project was to find communities that we had in common. Our solution for this was to write down the discourse communities we were each involved with. Then from there we compared our discourse communities, and kept the ones we had in common. It was a good way to work in this group because we each contributed to our map as equally as we could. Also, it was nice to share ideas and create something cool out of it, like our map. Our map looked really nice, but I would change the design of it. I would add more creativity to its design by adding different colors and changing the font. Our discourse map would definitely look a lot better with these simple changes, and it made me happy that we started out the school year with this great project.
To: Carolyn Drapes
From: Jazmin Porras
Subject: Discourse Community Map Group Project Response
A discourse community is a form of communication that is used for a particular community. Sam, Robert, Roberto, and I shared the discourse communities of Undergraduate Students, Family and Friends, and Social Networking. Together as a group we contributed to each section of the discourse map. We read each of the sections and together helped fill the sections as best as we could.
Our first discourse community was Undergraduate Students. In this case, the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) community symbolized the academic section of our map. In order to join this great community, you must take time to apply, be admitted, and attend class regularly. In class you might find that students have different ways of communicating with peers, professors, teacher assistants, and even peer leaders. When addressing a professor, peer leader, or teacher assistant we speak in a more professional manner, but when we speak to our peers we use a more casual way of communication. Also, since the UTEP community is so close to the border my group and I have realized that the use of Spanish is used almost as much as the English language, which is not common in other cities. Class discussions, conversations, emails, research papers, assignments, and blackboard are the best ways to communicate in the Undergraduate Student discourse community. It helps contact peers, professors, and anyone else in this community faster.
Next, the Family discourse community was the personal section of our map. For this specific community you must be born or married into a family. A family consists of siblings, parents, and grandparents. Personally, I am Hispanic so in my family we use a lot of Spanglish, but English and Spanish as well. For example, when I speak to my grandmother I only talk Spanish because she cannot understand English, but when I talk to my aunt that cannot speak Spanish I speak only in English. Finally, when I speak to my mom I can speak Spanglish because she understands both. In my family we mostly talk casual but when talking to elders we still include professional use of language. Since some of my group members and I have big families we communicate mostly through family get-togethers, phone calls, text messages, and letters. It is fun to have people who you can gossip about relationships, problems, school, and life itself.
Finally, our third discourse community was Social Networking. In our discourse map it represented a civic community. Creating a social network page is the way to join this community. Through this you could interact with peers, family members, and even strangers in your community. The use of language in social networking is different from all other communities. Of course in our community it is made of both English and Spanish, but with a use of slang. This “slang” is really made up of abbreviations and jargon words. Examples of this slang would be “jk” and “lol”. The use of this language usually occurs when people communicate with others through messages, posts, comments, and tweets.
Lastly, I would like to say that working in a group for our first project was a great idea. It was a good way for us to get out of our comfort zone and make new friends, while learning about discourse communities. The process of my writing in this memo entailed to the creation of our map, by simply addressing the genres, conventions, topics, and how to join these communities. The challenging part of this project was to find communities that we had in common. Our solution for this was to write down the discourse communities we were each involved with. Then from there we compared our discourse communities, and kept the ones we had in common. It was a good way to work in this group because we each contributed to our map as equally as we could. Also, it was nice to share ideas and create something cool out of it, like our map. Our map looked really nice, but I would change the design of it. I would add more creativity to its design by adding different colors and changing the font. Our discourse map would definitely look a lot better with these simple changes, and it made me happy that we started out the school year with this great project.