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Discourse Community Examples

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A Discourse Community in Mean Girls What is a discourse community? According to “The Concept of Discourse Community,” it’s a “discourse operates within conversations defined by communities, be they academic disciplines or social groups.” In other words, it is a group that has goals or a purpose and use communication to achieve that goal. In the movie Mean Girls there are many examples of discourse communities but I’m going to focus specifically on The Plastics. The movie Mean Girls is about a sixteen year old girl, Cady Heron, who has recently moved from Africa to the United States, and is attending public school for the first time. Her first day of school was not the best, but on her second day of school she meets Janis Ian and Damian Leigh who start to guide Cady into high school by telling her about different groups (cliques/discourse communities) in the school, including the Plastics, which is made up of Karen Smith, Gretchen Wieners, and Regina George. The Plastics soon take interest in Cady ask her to sit with them at lunch. Thanks to that we learn all about the discourse community of The Plastics. According to John Swales, there are six characteristics of a discourse community which I will discuss and use The Plastics as an example. The first characteristic of a discourse community according to Swales is that they have a broadly agreed set …show more content…

Regina uses, “shut up” with Cady which has Cady confused at first because she was quiet when Regina started saying that. Gretchen Wieners uses “so fetch,” which is some sort of “slang from England” according to her, but the rest of the group doesn’t really know what she means by that. Regina also uses different words such as “skeez.” Usually when Regina doesn’t like something on someone, she’ll say to them, “I love your ___,” when in reality she thinks it’s ugly and the rest of The Plastics know when she does

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Community in the dictionary means a group of people living in the same place or having a particular characteristic in common. Everyone belongs to a community or considers themselves a part of one, however communities tends to take away individualism. Anna Quindlen, author of “Commencement Speech at Mount Holyoke College”, spoke to the graduating class and delivered a speech on the effects of society on individuals. The purpose of this was to lead and guide the graduates into a happier life. Being true to self can only bring happiness, conforming to mold never designed to fit will only cause discomfort and unhappiness.

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For me, the logos, pathos and ethos perspective of joining a discourse community I had been part of, taught me a lesson about interpersonal skills, organizational systems and professionalism. My aim of this paper is to share my experience of joining Chitwan Pharmacy Student Association (CPSA) via use of rhetorical skills that we have discussed in class of English 1301.

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309 Words | 2 Pages

In the movie “Mean Girls”, the main character Cady Heron (Lindsay Lohan) falls victim to a high school social clique (The Plastics) and loses her identity in the process. The Plastics is a group of three teenage girls, one queen bee and two loyal subjects. This group is an example of social dominance theory (SDT) within the movie. The queen bee rules over the group and her subjects maintain control of the social justices within and around them. Cady all her life has been homeschooled and has recently transferred to a public school where she falls for Aaron Samuels, the ex-boyfriend of the leader of The Plastics, Regina George.

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843 Words | 4 Pages

Instead of dressing conservative and like a prude like she originally did, she begins to change the way she dress she begins to become more flashy and inappropriate. She starts new romantic interests in boys, specifically Aaron, who Caty did not know is Regina’s ex-boyfriend but still kind of boyfriend. One of the plastics, Gretchen, explains that Caty can not like or even entertain Aaron because he is Regina’s ex-boyfriend, and Caty disappointingly agrees. However, Caty begins changing more after the news, even more away from the plastics to secretly please and capture Aaron’s attention. She even goes against her character and true self to fail math just so she can seem more “cool” to Aaron, which he does not find as

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950 Words | 4 Pages

“The plastics” were the leading group of the school, consisting of three popular, attractive girls, Regina, the leader of the group and two other girls, Karen, and Gretchen. “The Plastics” then scouted Cady since she had been attractive, and got the attention of popular boys, in which Janis and Damien originally supported in order to manipulate and plan to destroy “the plastics” through Cady. Cady’s exploration with social psychology is shown through her being unaware of everything at her new high school; social psychology concepts that are shown throughout this storyline are implicit personality theory, norms and group schemas, gender roles. Implicit personality theory is the inference of co-occurrence of personality traits based on another personality trait. This can be shown by the halo effect, where one infers that someone is generally good based on a few RUNNING

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996 Words | 4 Pages

The movie Mean Girls is a perfect example of many social-psychological principles. Three of the major principles that are seen in the film include: conformity, in-groups and out-groups and prejudice. Cady Herron, a naïve sixteen-year-old who has been homeschooled her entire life, is forced to start as a junior at North Shore High School because of her family’s job relocation. Throughout the movie, you see Cady struggling to maintain acceptance in the school’s in-group known as The Plastics. The Plastics, who represent popularity, high economic status and the acclaimed standard of beauty, are one of the meanest cliques at North Shore.

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665 Words | 3 Pages

In this day and time, very few people have yet to hear about the infamous Plastics from Mean Girls, but many from this generation have not heard of the Heathers from Heathers. The Plastics and the Heathers have few things in common though. For one, they are each a clique of mean girls in highly popular movies from their decades. They each have a dictating leader that belittles others in the group, as well as, others in their schools. Each group has accepted an outsider into the group that will lead to the destruction of the group itself.

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In the Brave New World, a book written by Aldous Huxley,, he writes about a utopian future where humans are genetically created and pharmaceutically anthesized. Huxley introduces three ideals which become the world's state motto. The motto that is driven into their dystopian society is “Community, Identity and Stability.” These are qualities that are set to structure the Brave New World. Yet, happen to contradict themselves throughout the story.

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Grant-Davie opens his writing with numerous definitions of a rhetorical situation. He then says that these definitions do not grasp the complexity of rhetorical situations. To fully understand a rhetorical situation, he suggests an analysis of the exigence, recognizing that rhetors and audience are both a part of a rhetorical situation, and that there may be multiple rhetors or audience. Grant-Davie then stated the four constituents in rhetorical situations that are exigence, rhetors, audiences, and constraints.

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The two compiled a map of North Shore High and how Cady will survive it. A big part of the map was the cafeteria and where all the different cliques sat. Cady was warned about a certain clique called “the Plastics”, she was told they are the worst people she would ever meet. The Plastics are the popular clique at Cady’s new

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983 Words | 4 Pages

The first theory, symbolic interactionism theory is very clear in the movie. It is shown from the nice car that Regina drives to the house that she lives in and they all appear to show a status symbol. An example of this would be when they are all sitting at the lunch table and Gretchen says “On Wednesdays, we wear pink.” (Mean Girls, 2004) this symbolizes that they are together and they are one almost like a unity and they wanted to make it known to the rest of the school that they are The Plastics.

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697 Words | 3 Pages

We communicate in many ways, either by email, telephone, text, face to face, social media or letters and the language we use allows us to get things done, nonetheless the language and communication method in which we chose to use can vary depending on the discourse community. Much like John Swales suggests a discourse community involves a group of people who share the same common public goals, such as shared interests, rules, structure, and vocabulary. When thinking about the several discourse communities I am evolved in, which include family, coaching football, college student, and a few friends. These discourse communities have influenced me, given me insight of where I come from and tell who I am as a person. I also believe much like Swales,

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1554 Words | 7 Pages

It is also important to keep in mind that these authors published each of their articles within a 3-year period. That is important because Swales was the first of the three to publish his paper, everyone who wrote about discourse communities after him, already

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1651 Words | 7 Pages

An important discourse community that was a part of my life was my volleyball team during my four years of high school. I started playing my first year going into high school and continued until I graduated. Until now I wasn’t even aware that would even be considered a discourse community, but it fits all of the qualifications of Swales’ definition of a discourse community. Goals

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1250 Words | 5 Pages

There is no doubt that the film Mean Girls is full of conflict. Director Mark Waters did an excellent job at presenting how conflict can transpire and spread between females. The conflict that occurs in Mean Girls can easily be seen through the main characters Cady and Regina, however, conflict does not only takes place between the two of them but the entire school as well. Conflicts that arise throughout this film can be explained through power and power currencies, conflict styles and tactics, assumptions and triggering events, and forgiveness and reconciliation. Each conflict allows there to be understanding as to why the conflict took place and how it got as destructive as it did.

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