Alpha Phi Thesis

Behind Alpha Phi

Among all of the discourses at Purdue University, Alpha Phi is one within itself. There are 18 sororities here at Purdue, and Alpha Phi is the discourse that I am in. Alpha Phi was founded in 1872 and continues to honor the sisterhood that was formed back then. There are ten founders who founded Alpha Phi at Syracuse University. Alpha Phi has a mission statement, and that is "Alpha Phi is a sisterhood of outstanding women supporting one another in lifelong achievement." According to Swales, "'discourse community' testifies to the increasingly common assumption that discourse operates within conventions defined by communities, be they academic disciplines or social groups," Alpha Phi sisters are able to support each other

Some of the items she mentioned were our initiation. She said that initiation is the most important event and they use a specific text to read off during the ceremony. Every sorority is different, and it is kept kind of a secret within our discourse community of Alpha Phi. I have not been initiated yet, so I don't really know what to expect and that is kind of special because they like to keep it within the sorority and only the girls who are Alpha Phi's know what it is about. In Swale's that relates to the discourse community utilizing and hence possessing one or more genres in the communicative furtherance of its aim. Swales' stated that, "One of the purposes of this criterion is to question discourse community status for new or newly-emergent groupings" (Swales). I believe that this relates to Alpha Phi, because the older girls who are already initiated do question if we are fit to be their sisters and they keep everything kind of a secret until initiation because we are so new and they want to see who we are as a person and what we will do to pass on our legacy after we

It is a really complicated process and she explained that, "It depends on the Panhellenic which is the community that runs all of the sororities on campus. They determine campus totals, so when we recruit all of our new members we can only recruit a certain amount and that is based on how many people go through recruitment" (Vanyo). I thought that was really interesting because Swales' also stated in his one of his six characteristics that a discourse community has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discoursal expertise. So basically they choose new members who would fit the house best, and it's really cool to know that they wanted me as much as I wanted to join their sorority. Swales' also stated that "survival of the community depends on a reasonable ratio between novices and experts"