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Journal 10: Discourse Community

 

A discourse community I am I part of is the Cru Campus Ministry, more specifically the leadership team.  As members of the student leadership, we share common goals of being here for the campus and being a community of believers who share about God and Christ.  Cru has a goal of biblically equipping its members during the next four years for the next fifty years of their life.

 

Among the group, we have monthly leadership meetings that shares among committees their process, goals, and plans.  There is never a lack of communication and Cru is constantly striving forwards in connection with its members and participants and students. Some of Cru’s outreach genres would include main meetings, the worship band, and retreats.   Cru itself is a sort of lexis.  When the missionary movement was founded it donned the named Campus Crusade, but Cru began being used as an abbreviated term and it has officially undergone the name change into Cru.  Also, within Cru, Sunday Night Leadership is referred to as SNL, another lexis.  Since this campus ministry is based solely among undergraduates, the ratio constantly fluctuates yearly.  Seniors will graduate and freshman will flow in.  There is a certain amount of leaders available for the number of members.  

 

A discourse community I really put up a fight to resist was the IB program.  They had a purpose to equip students for college and beyond, had special classes and functions for its members, had a specific lexis and ratio of “members”.  I am in no way bashing the programs, but my personal experience was not ideal.  While the program operated under a certain set of rules and ideals, the one at my school deviated from the purpose.  I wasn’t a fan of how there was an elitist attitude among the members and how students who were doing well in academics compromised their moral standards.  There was a huge issue with cheating and academic dishonesty and I finally chose to withdraw from the program. 

 

I think the self-publishers would belong to a special type of discourse community.  Although they resist other discourse communities, this seems to be their community quality.  They share a goal of wanting to showcase their work and self-publish, there are certain ways in which they contact each other and share information (specifically with submitting their work to the Salford Zine Library.  The zine themselves are a multitude of genres within the actual zine genre and “zine” acts like a lexis.  The nature of self-publishers sort of controls the circle of members in that nature.