Cost of Affiliation

Navigating between the way I'm expected to be at home with my family, at work, and at school can be exhausting. Each of the three seem to have pretty different discourse communities.

When I'm at home, my siblings and I are expected to be warm and loving towards each other and our parents. We use simple language to communicate whatever we're feeling or anything that's going through our minds. We've always been encouraged to talk about our problems and find ways to help each other.

At work, I'm expected to be quick and efficient with everything I do. Working in a gym environment makes almost everything be goal oriented. If I'm helping a client sign up for membership, I have to explain everything he or she will be will be able to use. The trickiest part is convincing potential clients they will reach their goals. Some are just interested in general health, some are interested in bulking up, and others are interested in losing weight. Whatever their goal is, I need to know and use regular gym terms such as the names of the machines they can use or the name of exercises they will need to perform.

At school, I have to switch my mindset yet again. I'm expected to be part of an academic discourse community. Being an undergraduate student in the science department requires writing research papers for my classes. I have to follow delicate guidelines for my papers to be graded. The language I use has to be academic which is far too different from the type of language I have to use at home or work.

In "Discourse Communities and Communities of Practice," professor Ann M Johns discusses how students are pushed into joining an academic discourse community. I agree with this. I think being required to take a certain amount of writing classes in order to graduate, regardless of a student's major, is an example of how we're pushed into this discourse community. I don't see it as a bad thing, I just see it as a way of scholars telling students "you need to write this way if you want to be a part of us."

On a daily basis, I have to navigate between these three discourse communities. Sometimes it's complicated to adjust. I have to really let go of two to really focus on one, but that's just the cost of affiliation.