Discourse Community: Definition and Examples
A discourse community is a group of people that share common goals, values and have a specific language amongst. The aim of discourse community essay examples is to show the last one. One of those discourse communities could be fans of a musical band. For instance, fans of the band Why Don’t We otherwise known as Limelights. The name of this discourse community comes from a lyric from the band’s first song ever released.
Firstly, the Limelights’ most important common goal is to support the band. Some ways that can be done is by attending concerts, buying the band’s merchandise, creating social media accounts dedicated to the band, creating fan art. Most limelights tend to show their support through social media posts, buying the music, listening to it, and somewhat promoting it as well as creating beautiful fan art, like drawings and edits which take a lot of days to make. Limelights are a very dedicated fan base. Another goal of the limelights is to spread positivity. This fandom is built on the spread of positivity within and the feeling of a family that would do anything for each other, even if one does not know the other person. Some fans even tend to share credit card information with another fan to buy a ticket to a concert. The limelights as a fandom are very trustworthy and their main goal is to support the band as well as each other.
Moreover, the fans tend to communicate mostly through social media apps, like Instagram and Twitter. The fanbase communicates with each other and with the band through social media. Sometimes the people in this discourse community even make group chats to talk with each other. A lot of the time friendships within this community are made through an online app and then the two fans meet each other at a concert of the band. Occasionally limelights end up giving each other phone numbers to text and even facetime. As said before, social media like Twitter is the platform through which not only the fans communicate with each other but also through which the band communicates with their fans. Social media helps Why Don’t We to reach all of their fans who are all over the world with different time zones and whom they would not get to communicate with in person if those fans do not come to a show.
Furthermore, there is a specific, special language, terms, and inside jokes that this discourse community has as well as a handshake that is only known to the people who are a part of the community. Some terms that are only known to the community are “cupcakes” as in the fans that are young and that patronize the band’s actions to the maximum and “limelight” as in a ticket of the highest importance of a Why Don’t We show with which a fan gets to talk to the band for fifteen minutes before and after the show. As well as some inside jokes like, “chicken thigh kick”, “chev”, “but the cookies”, and many more. For people who are not a part of this community these phrases mean nothing but actually behind every one of these, there is a story. “Chicken thigh kick” is about a little part in a song’s beat that was made by slapping a chicken thigh on a plate, “chev” is about a live the band did on Instagram where there was a question about changing names and what those names would be, “but the cookies” is referencing to a phrase said at the end of the band’s first Christmas song. These little things are only known to the people who are a part of this discourse community and an outsider would not understand any of it when coming across.
Lastly, the “old-timers” of the fanbase are the fans who have been a part of it since 2016-2017 when the band was created and when the band was associated with vlogger Logan Paul. The newcomers are the fans that came into the fandom after the “8 letters” era, otherwise known as the era after the band’s first album was released aka after late August of 2018 and years onward. The old-timers are the fans with the expertise and the knowledge; however, the newcomers can easily catch up on the said knowledge and expertise by watching old interviews, old music videos, memes, and by talking to the old-timers. It is fairly easy for the newcomers to catch up as most of the inside jokes, terms and even the handshake can be found on the internet.
All things considered, the discourse community that is fans of a musical band is a fascinating, unique community that people who are not a part of it would not understand at all unless those people would become a part of it.
