Hapa, Justin Edward M.

Eng 13 – WFX2

2018 – 08853 Ma’am Anna Felicia Sanchez

BS Molecular Biology and Biotechnology Reflection Paper

On My Discourse Communities and Those I Wish to Explore

In light of Swales’ defining criteria on discourse communities, one such community I am

a current member of is the College of Science Student Council – an organization composed of

students from the College of Science. Its broadly agreed set of goals are: to serve the UP

community, especially the students of the College of Science, through projects and initiatives;

and to inform them on current social issues to arouse collective action. Although these goals are

not officially inscribed in the council constitution, everything the council does aligns or directly

stems from them. Our primary mechanism of intercommunication is Facebook; we utilize its

group features such as the Facebook Group and Messenger. We use these mainly to provide and

gather updates from each other. Our main participatory mechanism is the General Assembly,

where members gather once every two weeks to discuss the current status of the council and the

students, and to propose plans on how we should move forward. The different genres we utilize

include the minutes of the meeting where the discussion points of the General Assembly are

inscribed, the proposal letter where the council puts forward partnership proposals to other

organizations, and the publication materials where we communicate to the students through

social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Some specific lexis that our conventions have

created include the IGP (income-generating project), BMI (basic masses integration), orye

(orientation), ED (educational discussions), and GA (general assembly). The composition of the

council satisfies the last criterion of Swales: a mixture of experienced fourth-year student-

leaders, novice freshmen, and intermediates.

One discourse community (or the possibility thereof) I wish to explore is that of Badjaos

and/or other indigenous peoples begging for alms in jeepneys and streets. I want to know more

about their personal stories and try to shed light on their current situation as a people. The

motivation for this is that many people have speculated, reported, or insisted that these people

are hired by syndicates. Several local government authorities have treated these people as

problems that have to be taken care of, and not as decent human beings who are possible victims

of oppression. In this exploration, I wish to interview some of them and eventually prove or

disprove the belief that they are hired by private individuals. If I happen to discover that they are

indeed somewhat organized, I wish to investigate their discourse community further by asking

questions such as: what are their individual goals? Their goals as a group? Do they communicate

with each other? If yes, how and when? Does someone provide instructions to them? If yes, who

and why? What are the different genres they use to beg for alms? Do they have specific lexis?

Do they have “seniors” who instruct them on what to do, or have relevant experience on what

they do? Ultimately, I wish to deepen the exploration by investigating how commercialism has

played a role in their dilemma.

Another discourse community I wish to explore is the advocacy groups for indigenous

peoples, such as Save Our Schools Network. The primary motivation for this is to create

strategies on how such discourse community can further expand its membership, how it can

expand its mechanisms of intercommunication, how its lexis can develop to further its aims, and

what different genres it can utilize to reach a wider audience. Such exploration would entail

studying about their history, their goals, and the current state of their discourse community, for
the ultimate purpose of helping the Lumad people regain their right to self-determination and to

ancestral domains.