Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Post: 11 Discourse Community Ethnography
“When a group of people shares goals or purposes and uses communication to achieve them, we can call that group a discourse community” (460). This rings very true in the Ohio wrestling community. Ohio wrestling is one of the best wrestling states in the nation. Ohio wrestling strives to be the best year after year in both high school and in college. Smaller clubs and organizations are put in place to ensure that our youth and current wrestlers improve their skills. Several wrestling clubs are established through the state of Ohio. These discourse communities have there own form of communicating amongst the group, and all share the common goal of improving wrestling as a whole by getting more kids involved and improving the skills of the members already involved.
For my ethnography I’d like to focus on the Ohio University Wrestling Club. I had been in several other wrestling clubs throughout my high school years, but my current club is here at Ohio University. I have been a participating member for the past 3 years and plan to continue all through my college career. Swales 6 characteristics of a discourse community can all be applied to the Ohio University wrestling club. The discourse community has a broadly agreed set of common public goals. Our goals are to win duals, improve our individual skills, gain more members, and represent our school. These goals are the norm for any wrestling club in the state of Ohio. A discourse community has mechanisms of intercommunication among its members. We have a facebook page where we can communicate, and post relevant information about the sport and our club. Several internet forums are centered around Ohio wrestling, and information about the clubs are posted there. These forums also have general discussions on wrestling, results, tournaments, and rankings. There are also websites online that contain picture and video coverage of live matches in both college and high school wrestling in all divisions. A discourse community uses it participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information and feedback. During club practice we communicate verbally to help others with their technique. Moves are shown by a member and the wrestlers drill the move over and over again to improve. The common goal being to win duals and represent our club. A discourse community utilizes and hence possesses one or more genres in the communicative furtherance of its aims. To an outsider the way in which a wrestling team communicates may sound very foreign. The coach yelling at his wrestler during a match, the concept of drilling, cutting weight, the rules, a bracket sheet at a tournament, the weight classes. Someone not of the discourse will be very confused by all this.. In addition to owning genres, a discourse community has acquired some specific lexis. The terminology used in wrestling pertains to the specific discourse. A term as simple as weight ins may sound very confusing to someone not familiar with the wrestling discourse. A discourse community has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discoursal expertise. A coach was once a new member to the discourse. Over time he gained experience and reached the highest degree of status.
I have always been apart of some wrestling community and feel this would make a great ethnography. I can research and analyze the many website and forums pertaining to my discourse community. I can interview the club president and the treasure for the project. Overall I feel this discourse works for the project, if not I have other ideas that may work
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Hi Karic,
ReplyDeleteYes, I think this is a good idea for the ethnography as well. One particular reading from the book that you'll want to pay close attention to is "Coaches Can Read, Too: An Ethnographic Study of a Football Coaching Discourse Community" (WAW 557). The author of this article argues that we can come to a new understanding of different types of athletic literacies by closely examining the communication practices of football team. Interpersonal communication, "reading" players and teams, strategies, etc. His overall argument is that these types of literacies are much more complex and rhetorical than the average person assumes and that we can gain something from studying them.
You could do something similar to this in your own study (or not) but you also need to develop a specific conceptual focus: authority, conflict, identity, enculturation, etc from the reading. I think it would be fascinating to look at how identity is constructed through different textual practices on websites and forums. What does it mean to be a wrestler? How does it change/influence your identity? What kind of person do you need to be to succeed in wrestling and how do you become that person through language and communication?
You could look back at the Wardle, and think about how she uses identity theory to show how Alan doesn't fit in. You would be taking a somewhat different approach by figuring out what kind of identity does fit in.
This is going to be great. I like how much you've already done with this. Good work.