11 Andrew Martin – The Discourse Community of My Family

Andrew Martin is a second-year student majoring in Mathematics. He grew up in the Kalamazoo, MI, area.  This paper is the Discourse Community Research Report Andrew completed for English W-131 in Spring 2023.  Professor Kelly Blewett notes, “In “The Discourse Community of My Family,” Andrew Martin makes an argument that families are discourse communities working toward common goals. I appreciated how he pulled in outside research to support this position, and the way he provided specific examples of his family’s literacy practices.”

The Discourse Community of My Family

Foreword 

     Every person is a member of a discourse community, and there are many kinds of discourse communities. For example, Tony Mirabelli (2004) wrote about the discourse community of food service workers at a small Italian-American diner in his article “Learning to Serve: The Language and Literacy of Food Service Workers;” John Swales (1990) discussed the discourse community of the Hong Kong Study Center in his seminal work “The Concept of Discourse Community.” Most study into discourse communities is conducted in professional communities, hobby communities, or other communities in which members share a goal that interests people from many walks of life. However, not much study, except for a few studies into family discourse, has been done into families as a discourse community. This essay is intended to show that a family is, in reality, a discourse community just as professional communities and similar groups are. I will use my family as an example of a family in its function as a discourse community.

Review of the Definition of a Discourse Community

     Before I discuss my family as a discourse community, I believe it would be useful to review the concept of a discourse community. According to Dr. John Swales (1990), a discourse community is a group of people with the following characteristics: 1) It has a broadly agreed set of common public goals; 2) it has mechanisms of intercommunication among its members; 3) it uses its participatory mechanisms to provide information and feedback; 4) it utilizes and hence possesses one or more genres for use in the furtherance of its goals; 5) it has acquired some specific lexis; and 6) it has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discoursal expertise (Swales, 1990, pp. 220-222). It is with these characteristics in mind that I will describe my family as a discourse community. Families are not commonly thought of as discourse communities because membership in families is determined by birth, adoption, and marriage. In addition, most families do not typically utilize various written forms of communication (genres), which is a characteristic required by Dr. Swales to qualify as a discourse community.

My Family as a Discourse Community

     For this paper, I interviewed my mother, Stacie Martin. Given the description of a discourse community I gave in the previous section, the results of my research into family discourse, and the information she provided in the interview, I will now analyze my family as a discourse community. First, in fulfillment of Dr. Swales’ first characteristic, my family has a set of common public goals: 1) We encourage each other to better himself or herself to the best of that person’s ability; 2) we help each other during times of difficulty; 3) we learn and practice the skills necessary for life in the wider world; 4) we act as each other’s primary and most important community (S. Martin, personal communication, April 6, 2023).

     Second, in fulfillment of Dr. Swales’ second characteristic, we have mechanisms of intercommunication. Our mechanisms of intercommunication include phone calls, texts, chats on Facebook Messenger, face-to-face conversations, and family gatherings (S. Martin, personal communication, April 6, 2023). Third, in fulfillment of Dr. Swales’ third characteristic, we use those mechanisms of intercommunication to provide information and feedback to each other. We use the mechanisms of intercommunication to encourage each other, help each other, give each other advice, exchange life lessons, and simply provide each other with a sympathetic ear (S. Martin, personal communication, April 6, 2023).

     Fourth, in fulfillment of Dr. Swales’ fourth characteristic, we utilize and hence possess one or more genres for use in the furtherance of our goals. The primary genres we utilize in our everyday life are Facebook Messenger, Facebook notifications, and the Facebook newsfeed (S. Martin, personal communication, April 6, 2023). Fifth, in fulfillment of Dr. Swales’ fifth characteristic, we have a special lexis we use among ourselves. Our lexis includes such words and phrases as “techie,” to describe a person who is expert in using computer technology, “mini-tablet,” to describe a smartphone used only for Internet access, “comeuppance,” to describe consequences for a person who does something bad or makes an unwise decision, “It’ll all come out in the wash,” to describe the concept that things will work out for the best, and “TLM,” to name the Liturgy for the Mass favored by our family (S. Martin, personal communication, April 6, 2023). These words and phrases aren’t exactly unique to my family, but many of them provide us with a somewhat humorous way to describe concepts, people, and ideas we work with every day. In addition to the named parts of our lexis, there are other words and phrases we use in our everyday lives to help us achieve the goals I named above. Others provide us with additional humorous means of expressing frustration or disgust with something. Finally, in fulfillment of Dr. Swales’ sixth characteristic, we have a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discoursal expertise. The members of our family who are considered the best experts are my grandmothers, with the rest of us being considered both experts and novices in various areas (S. Martin, personal communication, April 6, 2023).

The Primary Genre of Our Community

     The concept of a genre is an important one in the study of discourse communities. Dr. Mirabelli in his essay “Learning to Serve” discussed the importance of the menu as a genre in the discourse community of the waiting staff of Lou’s Restaurant (Mirabelli, 2004, within Wardle & Downs, 2020, pp. 530-540). As mentioned above, the primary platform my family uses to help achieve its goals is Facebook. The three primary genres within Facebook that we use are the newsfeed, which we use to view posts made by friends and family members; the notifications section, where we receive notifications of new posts made by friends and family, comments made on our posts, and replies to comments we make; and Messenger, which we use almost every day to communicate with each other.

     The functions of Facebook in our family include the following: 1) It provides us with a quick way to communicate with each other if we don’t have time for a phone call; 2) it helps us keep track of each other’s day-to-day lives; 3) it provides us with a way to schedule a phone call or a video chat if either of those methods are preferable for the conversation at hand; and 4) it gives members of our family who live some distance from each other a means to communicate with each other.

The Genre of the Facebook Newsfeed

Fig. 1

     The above figure shows a portion of my Facebook newsfeed. A list of my contacts is found on the right side of the figure. Most of them are members of my family. Most of the posts in my newsfeed are from family members who are on Facebook. Utilizing my Facebook newsfeed, I’m able to keep track of events in their lives, even though I live some distance from most of them.

The Genre of Facebook Messenger

Fig. 2

     The above figure shows an example of a conversation I had with a family member on Facebook Messenger. The messages in blue are mine. The conversation in this figure had to do with the IU campus I was planning to attend. I changed my mind after this conversation, deciding to enroll with IU East. This conversation serves as an example of how we use Facebook Messenger as a way to help achieve the first goal of our family that I mentioned in the section on our family as a discourse community. We use it to help achieve the other goals as well.

     According to my mother, Facebook Messenger serves an important role in how our family communicates (S. Martin, personal communication, April 6, 2023). It, alongside texting, is the primary genre our family uses to communicate with each other. When I asked my mother who taught her how to use Messenger, she replied, “I learned to text and use Messenger from my older children, mostly Matt [my older brother] along with Bryan [my oldest brother]” (S. Martin, personal communication, April 6, 2023). This shows that we teach each other skills that are important in today’s world, thus serving as an example of how we achieve the first and third goals of our family.

Authorities and Traditions in Our Family

     Before I discuss the authorities in our family, I would first like to mention that we are a more traditional family. Each member of our extended family has an immediate family to which that member is primarily accountable, and also the extended family which provides a wider support system for that member. Each of us has parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, siblings, and cousins, all of whom are part of the discourse community of each member of the whole family.

     The primary authorities in our family, at least for me, are my parents and grandmothers (S. Martin, personal communication, April 6, 2023). However, according to my mother, the most important authorities in the extended family are my grandmothers. In response to my question “Who would you consider experts in our family’s discourse, and who would you consider the novices?”, she replied, “Both grandmas are experts because of their experience; for the rest of us, it depends on the context of our interaction” (S. Martin, personal communication, April 6, 2023). This is corroborated by a finding of researchers in Kazakhstan that the parents and other older members of a person’s extended family, especially grandparents, provide almost all of the advice that person needs to solve a problem that may arise (Koilybayeva et al., 2023, p. 84).

     Another thing that is important in our family is our family gatherings, which usually occur at Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, along with other times as we decide (S. Martin, personal communication). During these gatherings, we eat, swap stories, catch up on each other’s lives, sometimes give advice, play games, give and receive gifts (at Christmas), and just enjoy each other’s company. These gatherings provide us with a way to be with each other physically at least a few times a year, even though most of us live some distance from each other. This is also corroborated by the same study in Kazakhstan mentioned above. The study was conducted by a group of researchers analyzing the results of an online survey involving one hundred sixty-seven Kazakhs who answered questions concerning their attitude toward various family values (Koilybayeva et al., 2023, p. 76). According to the researchers, Every second interviewed person chose the gathering of all family members at the dinner table in the evening [as the most important family tradition practiced] …Almost every fifth interviewed person chose holiday traditions and a joint discussion of family problems and traditions related to achievement (the 1st step of a child, 1st word, admission to kindergarten, etc.) as the second main tradition in their family (Koilybayeva et al., 2023, pp. 84-85).

Fig. 3

     The above figure is borrowed from the article detailing the study I have referenced above. It details the respective importance of certain types of family traditions in Kazakh society.

The Relative Importance of Various Family Values (Koilybayeva et al., 2023, p. 83)

Fig. 4

     The above figure is also borrowed from that article. It shows the relative importance of specific family values in Kazakh society. It is also a good representation of family values of an earlier era in Western history, the values of which are preserved in many families, mine included. Notice that the most important family value in the figure is support between family members and mutual understanding among family members. This brings us back to the fourth goal of our family, which I mentioned in the section on my family as a discourse community. It shows that families, especially traditional ones, can and do function as discourse communities, the first and probably the most important one that a person can ever be a part of.

Conclusion

     There are some things I did not focus on in my essay that are also important in our family’s discourse, such as a more detailed study of our specific lexis and a deeper investigation into the goals of our family’s discourse community. However, omission of these additional studies should not take away from the fact that my family is a discourse community. I hope that I have done a good job of showing that families are discourse communities on the same level as professional, hobby, and other communities.

References

Martin, S., personal communication, April 6, 2023

Mirabelli, T. (2004). Learning to serve: The language and literacy of food service workers. Within Wardle, E., and Downs, D., (Eds.). (2020). Writing about writing: A college reader (Indiana University East customized 4th ed.). Bedford.

Swales, J. (1990). The concept of discourse community. In Swales, J., Genre analysis: English in academic and research settings, (pp. 21-32). Cambridge UP.

Koilybayeva, R., Zhunis, M., Kusmanova, K., Mirov, M., & Missyachenko, S. (2023). Patterns of interaction in family discourse: A resilience theory perspective. International journal of society, culture, & language, 11(1), 76-90.  https://doi.org/10.22034/ijscl.2022.1975742.2850