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Katera Womack Megan Keaton English 111-06 7 July 2013 Discourse Communities The two discourse communities that were chosen are Facebook and home communities. Facebook was chosen because it is a very broad community with different languages and ethnicities. Facebook also contains numerous amounts of participants. The other community was chosen with a much smaller group of participants in it. This community only contains two adults and a dog. Facebook, the first discourse community, has over one thousand friends on its friends list. These people range from different races, ages, sexual orientation and appearances. Majority of these people are of the younger generation between the ages fifteen to twenty. Ages younger than eighteen try to be avoided. The only time the will get added is if they are a real friend outside of Facebook or if they are known to the family. In this community, many of the teenagers tend to talk the same they do when they are text messaging someone. A lot of these friends are from home in Virginia. Friends back home use a variety of slang that can only be understood by people in that county and some surrounding counties. For example, if two friends back home were messaging and one wanted to let the other know an altercation was about to occur they would say squad. This simply just states that they are about to get into a fight and letting their friends know they need to be there and have their back. This term is also used to hype people up in some situations. Another saying that is used with friends back home is need parts. An example of using need

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parts is when a person wants something. If two friends are messaging one another and one friend says that they are eating then the other friend could say need parts stating that they want some of that food. Friends on Facebook from Virginia use other sayings as well. These friends back home do not shorten words and use acronyms just for the fun of it. A lot of our sayings come from the way we talk in the country. People all around the world do this in their community and in their mnessages. In Facebook messages, acronyms are always used. A few of these are u.o.e.n.o., lol, lls, smdh, idk, and ily. Acronyms are used in these messages because it helps make the process faster. Shortening of words and acronyms are seen by everyone in the statuses that are posted and also in messages by one person. The main purpose and use of Facebook messaging and statuses is to communicate. These are used to communicate with friends that have moved far away or who have not been seen in a while. A person who has lost touch with their close friend could then use this opportunity to get that persons phone number from messaging them on Facebook. Many people depend on Facebook to stay in contact with friends. These friends play an important role depending on how much one converses with the other. They obtain their role by being added by the person they sent their friend request to. Anyone has the option to decide if they want to take that role and become someones friend. The goal hoped to be achieved by people on Facebook is to stay in contact with others. Facebook helps to ley someone know how their friends life is going by the statuses they put up whether they realize it or not. The genre used in this community is Facebook messaging or messenger. It could be considered as a form of texting since they use the same acronyms. The messaged texted is not organized in any way. Thoughts come to mind and are applied to a message. This genre has no specific content and sentence structure. The way messages are composed does not matter.

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Everyone types or texts the way they want and say whatever they want or feel. One message that was sent on Facebook stated, Yo wassup aint heard from yuh in a min. Texting this way is not a problem in this community. Most people in other environments may not be able to understand what that person has said to them. An example of exigence on Facebook could be when someone is mad. This person that is angry may feel like they need to get something off of their chest and make sure the person they are angry at sees it. They say what they need to say, tag the persons name in it, and post the status. This community allows the person whatever they please. If they feel the need to curse someone out they can do so. Doing this may result in that person being reported for what was said in the end. Nothing in this community is specific. There are different cultures, races, and dialects in this community. Because there is such a variety, all friends on Facebook message differently. This next discourse community is the home community. The home community consists of two adults and a dog. Both adults differ from age, height, and appearance. One adult is a free dresser, dressing anyway she wants and the other in maternity clothing. The ages in this community are nineteen, twenty-seven, and two. The nineteen year old attends a community college and the other adult works at Wells Fargo. In the home very little slang is used. One adult has a country accent from where they take out letters and shorten words when they speak. The other adult has a more proper accent that has become stronger from being in the corporate world. Both adults are different personality wise but blood wise there are some similarities. In their family they all have a silly, goofy trait inside of them. Their family has a lot of laughter and silly moments. They let loose and have fun but they know when it is time to be serious.

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Roles in the home vary. The nineteen year old has a role as a student attending school and trying to find a job. The twenty-seven year old has a role of a soon to be mom and the supplier of the home. She plays a role as a rhetor on a day-to-day basis. She goes to work as a fulltime project manager at Wells Fargo and she is also a soon to be mother. This adult balances the two out equally. The twenty-seven year old has had her role for eight months and the other adult has had her role for about six months. The twenty-seven year old is more of the authoritarian in the community. She pays the bills and everything else that comes along with owning a home. In the home text messaging and email are used frequently. Instead of the teenager calling to tell the other adult she is on her way home she just simply texts omw. omw stands for on my way. This is used in this community because it is a lot faster than making a phone call to tell the person they are on the way home. This is one of the few acronyms that are used in this community. Constriants on the devices used in the home affects what is said. In an email one adult may state everything they need to say but if they text the other person the message will be a lot shorter. If one needs to tell the other what to do in order to clean the house then they would email them. If they were to send it through a text message the entire thing would not be read completely. Small, simple notes are also used in the home. Notes for when things are running low in the pantry, groceries and how much was saved from couponing are placed around this community.