Discourse Communities 1.1

P.1 Our social contexts

This post includes the first in a series of introductory lectures on Discourse communities as well as some homework for further reflection.

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The first time I encountered the concept of Discourse communities was as an undergraduate in college. In my civil discourse class we learned that John Swales, Professor Emeritus in the University of Michigan Linguistics program, defined “Discourse community” using six characteristics:

• a “communality of interest” or shared, public goals;
• mechanisms for intercommunication between members;
• continual attention to the first two characteristics — feedback about their form and function;
• expectations for the roles of texts and the topics texts engage — that is, the features and purposes of genres;
• shared and specialized language, such as jargon and inside jokes;
• enough members with expertise in both content and communication methods to ensure the operation of the group as a community.

These defining characteristics are intentionally broad so as to include many different types of communities. Everything from a friend group to a political party to a church choir would be considered a Discourse community and we all are part of many Discourse communities and adopt different identities and roles within them. Over the last several years that I’ve taught the concept of “Discourse communities” in my composition courses I’ve come to believe that evaluating our personal social contexts (what communities we belong to, what communities share our values, how we show up in our communities, and how we interact with communities we don’t belong to) is of key importance in figuring out our shared political future.

Unpacking this concept and learning how to apply it to our own lives in a meaningful way takes time, study, and effort — more than I can possibly cover in a single blog post. So we’re going to start with a lesson to understand what Discourse communities are, and then we’ll end with a bit of homework to begin to notice them in our own lives.

In the chapter “Discourses and literacies” from Social Linguistics and Literacies, James Paul Gee, a retired professor of Literacy Studies, writes that

A Discourse with a capital ‘D’ is composed of distinctive ways of speaking/listening and often, too, writing/reading coupled with distinctive ways of acting, interacting, valuing, feeling, dressing, thinking, believing with other people and with various objects, tools and technologies, so as to enact specific socially recognisable identities engaged in specific socially recognisable activities . . . to get recognised as a given kind of person at a specific time and place.

Gee goes on to say that “What is important in communication is not speaking grammatically, but saying the “right thing at the ‘right’ time and in the ‘right’ place.” What does this mean? Gee gives the example of someone entering a biker bar and asking “May I have a match please?” of the tattooed biker on the next stool. I always imagine the episode “You Can’t Tell a Crook by His Cover” from Season 1 of Frasier when I think of this scenario, or just the Crane brothers walking into a biker bar in general (Niles would likely dust the stool off with his handkerchief before sitting down, distaste plain on his face as he did so). Stede Bonnet’s entrance to Spanish Jackie’s on Our Flag Means Death is another great example.

Basically, Gee is saying that communication is more than just what we say, it is also “who you are and what you’re doing when you say it”. When he says “specifically socially recognisable identities” he is talking about the roles we play in our communities (teacher, mother, boss, Muslim, dog-person, politician, etc.). As an example, I ask my students if they would take me less seriously as their professor if I showed up to the first day of class in pajamas, with my hair unkempt, snacking on chips while I lectured. Would they think that I took the class seriously? Would they question my intelligence? Would they drop the class? Invariably, they say that it would affect their view of me as their instructor. But why? I hold a master’s degree in the subject and have years of teaching experience, regardless of how I’m dressed or how I behave. If the lesson plan is the same, why should it matter? Because in order to be seen as a professor, I must dress and act according to how a professor is “supposed” to act, according to socially prescribed rules we’ve all agreed upon. To dress or act outside of that norm is to invite scrutiny.

Another example I give my students to illustrate this is the dinner scene in Titanic. If you’re unfamiliar, here is some quick context for the linked scene: Jack Dawson, a third-class passenger, has been invited to the first-class deck for dinner. He is able to attend wearing a nice tuxedo because a first-class passenger, Molly Brown, has lent it to him. Unlike the rest of the first class passengers in the scene, who were born into wealth, Molly Brown is “new money”.

After watching the video, I’ll ask my class some questions about the scene (some possible answers in the footnotes)¹:

• Jack and Molly are both dressed correctly for the occasion of this first class dinner and might visually be able to blend in with the crowd, but there are obvious tensions between the “old money” characters in the scene and the “new money” or “no money” characters in the scene. In what ways do Jack and Molly “give themselves away” that they are not part of this old money community?
• Based on this scene, what might we deduce are the values of the old money community? What are the rules of acceptable behavior?

In another scene, we watch from Rose’s point-of-view as a mother teaches her daughter the “rules” of being a lady in polite society while Rose herself is contemplating feeling trapped by those same rules. Gee says that

While there is an endless array of Discourses in the world, nearly all human beings, except under extraordinary conditions, acquire an initial Discourse within whatever constitutes their primary socialising unit early in life. Early in life, we all learn a culturally distinctive way of being an “everyday person”, that is, a non-specialised, non professional person. We can call this our “primary Discourse”. Our primary Discourse gives us our initial and often enduring sense of self and sets the foundations of our culturally specific vernacular language (our “everyday language”), the language in which we speak and act as “everyday’ (non-specialised) people, and our culturally specific vernacular identity. 

The interaction between the mother and daughter in Titanic makes it clear why Jack and Molly do not fit in with the rest of the first-class passengers: they were not socialized to. The characters who were born into money navigate social interactions with the rest of their community with ease precisely because it is their community. They have come to understand the “rules” of their community so well that they are able to intuit what is and is not proper to say and do. In Gee’s terms, they know how to be “recognized” as old money in the “time and place” of a first-class dining room in a way that Jack and Molly do not because this is the Discourse community they have been socialized for since birth.

Gee calls these primary Discourse communities our “lifeworld Discourse” and says that “Our lifeworld Discourse is the way that we use language, feel and think, act and interact and so forth, in order to be an “everyday” (non-specialised) person.” So our primary Discourse communities would be things like our native language, the gender we are raised as, the class our parents belong to, the generation we belong to, our cultural heritage, our race, etc. Our lifeworld Discourses are the communities that we are born into and which teach us how to be a person in the world.

In addition to these lifeworld Discourse communities, Gee also describes “secondary Discourses”, which are all of the groups we become part of in the “public sphere . . . acquired within institutions that are part and parcel of wider communities, whether these be religious groups, community organisations, schools, businesses, or governments.” Secondary Discourse communities would then include things like the religion we choose to belong to, our friend groups, our workplace, the major/discipline/vocation we choose to study in school, the bar we frequent, the discord servers we join, etc. Our secondary Discourses are the communities that we choose (or sometimes which are chosen for us) as we grow older and our world expands beyond our families and upbringing.

Some questions you might answer for yourself about your own Discourse communities:

• List some of your lifeworld Discourse communities.
• List some of your secondary Discourse communities.
• Choose one or more of these Discourses to look at more in depth.
  • What are some of the shared interests/values of this community?
  • How has being part of this community shaped your values?
  • How do members of the community communicate with one another? Is any special language or terminology used (e.g. a friendship might have inside jokes, doctors might use medical terminology like “myocardial infarction” rather than “heart attack”, gamers will use language like “ult” or “DLC”, etc.).
  • What is your role in this community? Remembering the Titanic example from earlier, how does one correctly present themselves as a member of this community? How might someone who is new to or not part of the community might present themselves “wrong”?
  • Why are you part of this community? Are you proud to be part of this community? Are you a “good” member of this community (by the community’s standards)?
  • Gee says that “we are all multiple kinds of people”, meaning that, you might be a wife, a mother, a receptionist, and a student. You are all of these things at once, but some of these roles might take precedence in different contexts. When you are at home with your kids you present differently than when you are at work with your co-workers and boss. You might speak, dress, and act very differently in these different contexts. With this in mind, how big of a role does this particular community play in your life? Do you like this role? Does being in this role/community make your life better or worse? How have you used your role to shape the community?

In lesson 1.2 of this topic, we will delve deeper into Discourse communities by looking at the ways that Discourses define themselves.

1. Some examples of Jack and Molly’s “wrong” behavior in the first-class dining room as well as some of the ways that the first-class passengers interact with them to let them know that they don’t belong: (1) When Jack first comes downstairs he leans against a column until he realizes that the other men are standing straight. He then proceeds to practice how to be a gentleman by mimicking the first-class passengers. (2) Rose’s mother and fiancé intentionally ignore Jack as they come down the stairs and after Rose makes a point of introducing them her fiancé comments “he could almost pass for a gentleman”. (3) Rose introduces Jack to her social context by giving him information about the other first-class passengers. (4) Molly tells Jack “Remember they love money so just pretend like you own a gold mine and you’re in the club.” Rose says that the other passengers did assume he was “part of the club” but that he was new money “of course”. (5) Molly addresses John Jacob Astor (the richest man on the ship) by shouting “Hey Astor!” at him. (6) Molly’s previous advice is incomplete (and is also an example of her not understanding the Discourse community like one native to it); Jack may initially be able to get away with pretending that he has money, but Molly’s assertion that money is all it takes to belong is only partially true. Rose’s mother’s and fiancé’s treatment of Jack and Molly indicate that another important old money value is good breeding (i.e. being born into wealth and exhibiting the proper class behaviors). (7) Rose and Molly must help Jack navigate proper dining etiquette like caviar and cutlery. He eats while talking and throws a cigarette lighter to Rose’s fiancé from across the table. ↩︎