Whether An Individual Dances For Fun Or They Dance Competitively,

A discourse community is a social collective that shares ideas, goals, values, and themes. Discourse communities existed in all facets of life, and are important to each individual’s social life. We all belong to varies discourse communities. The people you hang out with, the social networks you belong to, and even your favorite sports teams are discourse communities. Today we will look at a specific one; we will look at the discourse community of Mixed Martial Arts.

Dance began as a form of communication and storytelling. Thousands of years ago dancing served as a way for people to tell a story and helped distract themselves of the hardships they faced. Furthermore, dance was a form of storytelling through communication, which then turned into using storytelling through dance as entertainment. According to the History World, many dancers during the BC time danced in front of only a few people to get a story across. That later turned into hundreds of thousands of people as dance was used by many. Today, dance is also a form of entertainment and storytelling, but in a modern sense. However, today perfection and technique are stressed more than they were in the past. Yet, the passion for dance has not changed. Many dancers who share this passion also have many of the same qualities. Among a discourse community of trained dancers, one expects to find individuals who are healthy and active athletes, expect perfection from themselves through competition, and religiously attend dance performances.

The first discourse community I belong to is Facebook. Facebook is a social media website in which I can communicate with relatives and friends. The first step to become a member of Facebook, one must create an account by entering his or her basic information such as name, date of birth, gender, and email address. After the account is created, one must verify his or her account by clicking on verification link in the email account provided during the sign up process. Then, one can start to add people on his or her friend’s list either through searching or syncing their phone contacts. Once this step is done, he or she can post pictures, statuses, share links, and comments on his or her walls or their friend’s wall page. Other things you can do on Facebook is, tagging friends on pictures,

John Swales defines the term discourse communities as "groups that have goals or purposes, and use communication to achieve these goals" (Swales). A discourse community is defined by the following six characteristics: The community has a broadly agreed set of common public goals, the community has mechanisms of intercommunication among their members, the community uses its participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information and feedback, the community utilizes and possesses one or more genres in the communicative furtherance of its aims, the community also owns genres and has some acquired lexis that are specific to the community in terms of jargon, and the community has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discourse expertise. In such communities, members often come as novices, and due to their high level of commitment to the community, they “leave by death or other less involuntary ways” (Swales, 27).

Discourse communities are everywhere. Everywhere we and go and almost everything we do relates or falls into a discourse community of some sort. Whether it’s a long, pointless conversation on the phone with a best friend or being part of a school croquet club, it’s part of a unique discourse community in some way. Every discourse has it’s own distinct qualities and almost all have a different way of communicating. These discourses are strong influences on all of our personalities. The way every human in the world acts and communicates is influenced by one or multiple discourse communities.

Purdue University’s own Boiler Bhangra dance team is one of the many distinct discourse communities on campus. The team was founded back in the spring of 2006, in an effort to share the unique culture and dance style of bhangra with the body of Purdue, as well as to compete on levels that range from local to national. The Boiler Bhangra team is a perfect example of Swales’ definition of a discourse community; that is, the team perfectly follows the requirements for a group to be considered a discourse community, as set by John Swales.

When I first started researching discourse communities I thought to myself. Why were there so many definitions of a discourse community and which one is right? To answer that question, discourse communities are “groups that have goals or purposes, and use communication to achieve these goals”(Borg 1). To put this into even simpler terms, every group that you have or ever will be apart of is a discourse community. The discourse communities that you are a part of shape the way you think, write and evaluate others. Every group that you are a part of influences you whether it be your friends, your family, or even your English class. For me, all of the discourse communities that I am apart of influence the way I think and write.

Ever wondered what it would be like to leap through life, twirl right through, as if the world has completely stopped around you? To be able to pause everything in a silence that allows you to hear your own heartbeat? The silence on stage as you perform is a sense of peace within your inner body that is being channeled through a movement of effortless motion. In European history, dance was considered to be a way of celebration for many cultures. Although it was said that dance did require physical agility, dancers were never considered athletes because the movement was not taken seriously. Dance did not become popular in a more skillful way until later on. The debate of dance as a sport is very

The notebook details out lessons allowing the instructors the ability to properly train their students. Because the teachers have already planned out the class, as soon as the students enter the room the class can begin, ensuring that there is no hesitation by the teachers. This piece of text is also essential for ensuring that the students are getting taught properly as they are checked by the owner herself. She is able to correct any plans the teachers have set and also tell the teachers if they need to challenge the students more or if are challenging them too much. This analysis is useful in determining how the face-to-face communication between teachers and students within the dance studio differs to that of the social media platforms which they use. Looking at my community as an activity system allows me to identify how the tools, like the notebooks and the Facebook page, are able to influence their motives. Kain and Wardle’s activity theory allows me to focus on how the different parts of the dance studio relate to one another and help the studio function. The notebook I collected is an essential tool and influences the communication that occurs in the class

The task of my paper is to determine if there is a relationship between ethnicity and self-perceived dance ability. My plan for accomplishing this is to create a survey and distribute to all of the students at Linden High School and use the data that I get to find my chi-square. I am investigating the relationship between ethnicity and self-perceived dance ability to achieve that I have determined the top four predominant of New Jersey by doing internet research. Here’s what I found, the top four predominant of New Jersey are African-American/ Black, Caucasian/ white, Hispanic Latino and Asian. In my survey, I offer mixed ethnicity as a choice because in Linden High School there are a lot of people of mix ethnicity. My teacher recommends 300

Dance is said to have existed prior to the invention of written languages, and was perhaps an essential aspect of storytelling for the passing of knowledge and information from generation to generation. And it has been, since time immemorial, a part of every culture and religion as a means of self and collective expression.

We use technology as the number one means of communication, and social media has made communicating with each other even easier. We have the ability to

Throughout the last decade, social media has drastically changed the way people interact with others. Websites like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram have taken the world by storm. It has never been easier to have a conversation with family members, friends, or even strangers who live millions of miles away. Due to the rise of social media, people have become more aware of social issues and have become aware of the world around them. They can easily read the news online or catch up on the latest celebrity drama. Social media improves the way humans communicate because it allows ideas to be spread quickly and efficiently to a global audience.

The world has never before been connected as much as it is today. One’s ability to communicate through various mediums is rapidly advancing, and this is much thanks to social media.

The label, “Social Media”, is due to its ability to encourage people to be more social and communicative through the internet. Yet, it is now known that the name might not live up to its expectation. With less face-to-face interaction, relationships and communication skills are being sacrificed. Although one may have one thousand