Professional Documents
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Discourse Community-Finaldraft
Discourse Community-Finaldraft
ENGL 10803-005
Growing up with a brother and sister who were only one year older than me meant we all
had to go to the same school. Although this wasn’t a problem when deciding our elementary
and middle school, since we never questioned going anywhere other than the schools we
attended. However, problems started to arise when discussing high school. We all knew we
wanted to go to Trimble Tech High School; the only issue with this option was the uncertainty of
getting accepted through their Gold Seal Program, which ranged from cosmetology, to welding.
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Fortunately for my siblings, they knew what program they wanted to join and soon got accepted.
On the other hand, I had no idea what program I wanted to join, so I just decided to join Tech’s
fashion design program as I knew that the fashion design program was less competitive to get
into. Joining Tech’s fashion design program has had to have been my best decision. I loved
learning about the fashion industry so much that I decided to pursue my education in fashion by
merchandising program. This year I was introduced to John Swales, The Concept of DIscourse
Community. After reading this article I began reflecting, and ended up realizing that I am already
merchandising program, as it will be the main thing I will be focusing on for the next four
years.TCU fashion merchandising meets all the elements that John Swales talks about from,
I and other TCU fashion merchandising students have multiple shared goals. These
goals range from long-term goals to short-term goals. The fashion merchandising department at
TCU has a specific roadmap for students. This roadmap consists of four years' worth of
major-focused classes, minor-focused classes, core classes, and electives. The purpose of this
roadmap is to prepare us and set us up to finish our main goal: graduate from TCU with a
degree in fashion merchandising, which is one of our long term goals. Another long-term goal
fashion merchandising students share is to obtain an internship in the fashion industry during
the summer after our junior year so that we can have relevant work experience to put on our
resumes before we graduate, along with the skills and experience we will or have gained
through our classes. As for short-term goals, we fashion merchandising students hope to pass
every single minor-focused class and major-focused class with a C+ or higher to prevent us
from having to retake courses. All these goals are shared within all of our members and are
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made to help us focus on completing the TCU fashion merchandising program successfully
while also preparing us to face the fashion industry as soon as we get out of college.
The TCU fashion department is an educational discourse community that requires a lot
intercommunication are lectures, E-mail, office hours, and depending on which member we are
interacting with, we can even communicate through text message. Lectures are a mechanism of
intercommunication between professors and students where the professor introduces students
to concepts, vocabulary, and new technology needed to pass the class. Office hours and E-mail
student and student to discuss any problems or questions. Text messages can also be a
mechanism of intercommunication between students and professors, for the same purpose as
E-mail and office hours, but are typically more used between students to discuss coursework.
With new classes comes new vocabulary. Since TCU fashion merchandising is a degree
program with four years worth of new courses, we as a discourse community, start to learn our
own lexis, and will continue to use these lexis from the classes we learned them from to our last
classes we take before we graduate. The lexis our program is learning are those unfamiliar
words we will begin to hear in the fashion industry, which makes it all the more important to
learn. Some lexis that I have been introduced to are industry terms, textiles, and apparel
construction terms. During my first year, I took a fashion industry class that introduced me to all
the terms and concepts that are a “must-know” in the fashion industry, such as tech packs,
market centers, distribution centers, fashion calendars, etc. I also took another class called
Textiles; Textiles introduced me to multiple names of fibers, fabrics, and yarns that will surely be
brought up again throughout the four-year program. I would say textile lexis is the most
important to know as we have to know all the textiles to be able to know what would be an
appropriate textile for specific garments. One last class that has provided me with new lexis is
apparel construction. Apparel construction provided new lexis such as narrow rolled hem, bound
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seams, tailors knot, etc. All these terms are vital to know so that I and other fashion
merchandising students are able to understand concepts in our program and so that we are
In our discourse community, there are around six levels of members. First and most
importantly, the professors. The professors are the experts in our fashion merchandising
program and they provide students with knowledgeable fashion content through the courses
they teach. Then there are the teacher assistants; these students are very knowledgeable in the
content taught to them a semester prior, so the professor asks them to help them out in a future
semester. The last four levels of members are seniors, juniors, sophomores, and freshmen. The
four levels of members are separated through grade levels as certain courses are only available
to certain grade levels meaning freshmen have been introduced to the lower level and simplest
courses while the seniors have gone through most of the courses, and are now finishing their
last courses, which are generally more complex. All of the members are vital in keeping the
Some information and feedback that is interchanged throughout the four-year program
ranges from due dates, advice, clarifications, and critiques on work. Other than the lectures
given in the FAB building, there are many times when students leave with questions, this is why
some students reach out to get advice on how to better grasp a concept or to verify when
assignments are due. Professors can also reach out to students who are struggling to discuss
what they need to improve next time as well as how to do an assignment through
demonstrations. During exam weeks professors typically go over the information they taught
over the past weeks to clarify what to study for the exams so that students are as prepared as
possible.
For TCU fashion merchandising discourse communities to fully function we need genres.
Our most used genre is the FAB building which is where all of our major-focused lectures take
place. The FAB building is also used to house events for fashion merchandising majors such as
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guest speakers, study abroad info sessions, etc. Although the FAB is where we commonly
meet, we also hear about events and learn more about our program through the TCU website,
Instagram (@tcu_fashion), and through E-mails sent from our director of academic resources.
The point of all these genres is to keep members in the loop with one another and with what is
My discourse community has goals that each of its members share, we also have different
levels of members that contribute in teaching each other the vital information we need to
complete such goals. We have our own lexis, these lexis help us understand one another as
well as the concepts we learn in class. Our members also give out information and feedback to
one another so that we better comprehend our assignments and concepts. We lastly have both
genres and mechanisms of intercommunication which helps us meet with one another and talk