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Gissel Carmen Contreras

Shuv Raj Rana Bhat

ENGL 10803-005

September 21, 2023

Discourse Community Map And Analysis

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

pursuing a degree in fashion merchandising at TCU.

I am currently in my second year at TCU and in my second year in the fashion

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

a part of so many discourse communities. My main discourse community being my fashion

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,

common goals, mechanisms of intercommunication, lexis, different levels of members,

information and feedback, and genres.

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

of communication between members to function efficiently. Some of these mechanisms of

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

are mechanisms of intercommunication used primarily between professor and student or

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

able to communicate effectively with other people in the fashion industry.

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

fashion merchandising program running smoothly.

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

going on around our campus.

In short, the TCU fashion merchandising program is a functional discourse community.

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

with one another.