Blog 5: Discourse Community

Hello! It's been awhile since we have had to write a blog, so welcome back! Lets get right to it. Discourse Communities. Trying to decipher exactly what a discourse community was kind of confusing for me at first, but as Professor Flewelling started to explain exactly what defines a discourse community, it made more sense to me and I realized I am a member of a few different communities.

Basically, according to Swales, a discourse community is a group of people that all hold the same characteristics, and follow the 6 guidelines that each discourse community follows.

As we were going over these in class, I kept applying it to my job at a restaurant. We all have the same goal, to first off, make money, and then to give good service. I am cross-trained in many different restaurant positions, so I get to view the restaurant differently when I am doing something different. I host, banquet serve, lunch serve, bar serve, and drink run.

Restaurant people form their own Discourse community. All servers, as well as smaller discourse communities in each restaurant. There are thousand of restaurant memes that apply to me every day I walk into work. The 6 guidelines that Swales determined characterize a discourse community apply to us restaurant people to a T.

1.  Agreed set of common public goals. Basically, when we get to work, we want to get through the shift as easily as we can, hope for good tips, busy but not slammed, and to not get terrible rude people at your tables. 

2.  Has mechanisms of intercommunication among its members. At my restaurant, we work as a "team" and are constantly communicating with each other throughout the shift. We are lucky enough to have a really cool computer system that we use to put in our orders to the bar and kitchen. But we all make mistakes and then have to verbally communicate to each other. My entire kitchen is staffed with cooks that speak Spanish. I always struggle with trying to use my best Spanish and Spanglish to communicate with them.

3. Uses its participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information and feedback. Working in a restaurant is a very social job, as we are constantly communicating with everyone we work with, and our customers. We are expected to give good service, which includes socializing with our guests like they are family. Our managers stress giving excellent service, which also means better service = better tip.

4. Utilizes and hence possess one or more genres in the communicative furtherance of its aims. Like I said before, as a server I am constantly communicating with others around me, and I have to switch genres if I'm informing my customer about the menu or to my busser to bring out waters. We also have an app that posts our schedule online, this is the only was to access our schedule. Our managers post important information through the messages, and we can release and swap shifts with our co-workers.

5. Has acquired some specific lexis, in addition to genres. Us restaurant people have a whole language of terms that we use everyday, and that other people would have no idea what we were talking about. Just a few: phased, bus, ALOHA, 2-top, clear, expo, hands, side work, I could go on for hours.

6. Has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discoursal expertise. My restaurant has a whole system of hiring people. The new employees start out their first shift with other new hires and a trainer, and basically get a summary of how everything works, and then they sit down for dinner and get to try a bunch of food. Then they have about 4-5 training shifts and will finish off their process with a test to make sure they are knowledgeable before their first shift.