Reflective Essay: What Is A Discourse Community?

What exactly is a discourse community? A discourse community consists of a group of people that share basic interests and achieve goals through the art of communication. To successfully communicate with members of a discourse community, a person must understand how to support claims by appealing to logical reasoning, emotional capacity, and credibility. Why is it important to support claims? Rhetoric, also known as persuasive communication, exists all around us. Everyone uses rhetoric whether they realize it or not; argument would simply fail without it. Moreover, a strong foundation in rhetoric is the key to successfully joining any community. For example, I joined my high school’s engineering club during my junior year. I didn’t really know anyone in the club besides a few friends and the club sponsor who happens to be my engineering teacher. I knew I had to go above and beyond to become an inner member, so I …show more content…
I needed to demonstrate a deep understanding of math and science, prove that I could manage conflicts within the club, and build trust and credibility to successfully join my discourse community.
First, a strong foundation of math and science is optimal if you are joining an engineering club. Our engineering club had weekly study sessions that you could go to if you needed help with a specific subject or would like to tutor someone and receive volunteering hours. I went to most of the sessions to help others with high school in general and difficult courses that I have also taken. I quickly started making friends within the club and the number only grew as the year progressed. We have two main projects that engineering club participates in during the school year. The first project is building a VEX robot that can manipulate objects in a competition field to bring them to a particular section of the field. We compete with other high schools in the area, state, and nation