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
As a sports team, we obviously have goals; our main reason being to win against our opponents. The entire reason a team is put together and participating in practice almost every day is going towards our goal as a team to win games. Aside from our goal of winning our games, my volleyball team also worked our way to going to districts—where the top teams go to play against each other for the title of district champions. Then, if we were to make it past districts, we would participate in trying to win states—another tournament that multiple winners of different districts come together to compete against each other. Joining the volleyball team for me was for my personal enjoyment and to get involved in my high school community. These two reasons are what the majority of people join the team for. In other words the motives behind joining this
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We have three different levels of teams—freshman, junior varsity, and varsity. We accept new members each year and train them, so within the next couple of years they become the experienced members of the team. With each team we have a coach—these coaches also shared the duty of being a coach for the other teams too in my case, but were dedicated to us when it was our time to play on the court. The typical case is mainly trying out and then starting as a player on the freshman team and making your way up till you are experienced enough to make the top level varsity team. That way as experienced members leave, they are replaced by the newer members who have been gaining experience to replace