Writing 1

Depression Continued." MentalHelp.net. CenterSite LLC, 19 Sept. 2007. Web. 05 Nov

2014. <http://www.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=doc&id=12996&cn=5>.

Wyngarden, Milton. Personal interview. 1 November 2014.

DISCOURSE COMMUNITY 

   The most fundamental, commonplace, unavoidable but often overlooked part of our day-to-day lives are the communities to which we belong- from families to friends, schools and so on. Vital to this communities is communication. Even more fascinating is how it varies from each group to the other. And in some cases, it's a powerful identity of the community. The discourse in these communities are not just limited to spoken language- it could be the mode of speaking the language or in some cases, gestures. I remember speaking a made-up language of reversing each word with my friends when I was in Nigeria. We were so fluent that some strangers thought it was a real language! But that's for another day. Right now, I'm part of a discourse community that I find really fascinating.

     When I traveled to this country about nine years ago with my family, one of the most difficult part of my acclimatization was the lack of pick up soccer around me. It was hard to take. Playing soccer had been part of me since when I was a kid. Growing up, we didn't have amusement parks, movie theaters or the mall. For us, soccer was all those things- it still feels like it by the way. Anyway, about a year ago, I met a guy at the grocery store who told me about a mini soccer league few miles from my house. He invited me to check it out on a weekend. Two days later, I was there. I saw players that varied widely in age and sizes. They were playing with so much freedom and flair, it felt like.... Heaven! So I signed up to join them as much as could on the weekends.

     The following weekend, I joined them, ready to play. Ok, not exactly ready since I hadn't played for so long. But I wasn't in bad shape so I got along just fine. I was picked in a team but I was a little befuddled by the language and the slangs. Oh, I forgot to mention most of the players were Hispanic who mixed Spanish with the communication. I received the ball and the captain was shouting “Cinco, Cinco, Cinco"! I looked up, he was open and I passed him the ball. He was closed down pretty quickly and we lost the ball. He later told me he was asking me to pass it back to the central defense where the number "5" usually plays, which is what "cinco" means. 

    However, not all the slangs are in Spanish. Some are styles of play or celebration attributed to -and subsequently named after - a person or group of people. For example the "Paneka" is a style of playing penalty kicks whereby you wait for the goalkeeper to move before you calmly chip it through the middle of the goal. It's very risky but when it comes off, you feel like the best player in the world! 

    During the course of games, there are some non-verbal gestures we also use just to communicate within the team players, since most of our slangs are well understood by the players of the other team. If the captain or any member of the team raises two fingers up with an opposing attacker bearing down on goal, it means he has to be double-teamed. 

     Over the following weeks, I gradually came up to speed with the discourse community. One of the most amazing things about this community is that during regular discussions, languages and accent are sometimes a barrier to an effective communication—some speak Spanish and English, some just Spanish, and I speak English with an accent different from them all! But at game time, football is the language and it’s understood by us all.

     A typical soccer team has a coach and a captain. But we don’t. We only have a captain which can change with every game. The captain doubles as the on-field coach who reads the game and talks about tactical change, if and when necessary. We are not professionals, or even semiprofessionals, but we like to play and act like them when we play (only without the cars and the supermodels!). So the captain and most of us are well versed in tactical flexibilities of the game. The most conservative setup of players in a game is the “4-4-2”: a team of three layers of four defenders, four midfielders and two strikers. The defenders are in front of the goalkeeper for additional protection of the goal. The midfielders serve as the intermediary between defense and attack. But as players get fitter, pacier and more aware, the set up seem to have been found out. Bored yet? Please, don’t be. I’m trying to make a point!

     So that’s where flexibility and versatility comes handy. You have to recognize when to change tactics within or before a game and it helps if you can play more than one position. There are different hybrids of the set up. The most common being the “4-2-3-1”: two defensive midfielders in front of the defense and 3 attacking midfielders just behind the “1” striker. This formation helps to keep possession of the ball, maintain defensive solidity and tactical discipline. I play anywhere in the “3”. In most cases, you hear words like “split”, “go deep”, “switch” and so on. You have to recognize this at once or you can miss an open teammate, lose the ball or even get injured. Sometimes the captain can shout 4-6-0! That’s a really defensive setup. That happens when we are up by a slender margin and we need to protect our lead.

     As I got used to the team, we communicate more and more before and after games. Players are not always present or punctual, so we take the time to talk about food, cultures and politics and European soccer. Some of us still don't understand each other during these talks, so some act as the unofficial interpreters.

     It’s been a really fun experience for me to be part of this community. Not only am I learning new slangs of the group, I am also learning some Spanish! No matter where we are, there is an identity—however arbitrary it may be- that is firmly defined by the discourse.

Assignment 1 is worth 75 points. The Rubric will be distributed in class and posted in Blackboard.

Special thanks to Dr. C Hague