How Does TITLE Fit Into a Discourse Community?
To put it simply, a discourse community can be described as a group of people who have similar interests, goals, and values coming together through a means of communication.
Defining Criteria
Goals
a discourse community must have a common set of shared goals by all group members.
Intercommunication
a discourse community must have a way of communicating directly and exclusively with group members.
Feedback
a discourse community must have a way to provide feedback and information to its members.
Genres
a discourse community must have a few different genres that help reach the goal of the group.
Specific Lexis
a discourse community must have a specific language that only its members understand.
Expert Members
a discourse community must have a variety of members ranging in experience levels so everyone can benefit.
So, how does TITLE fit in?
when looking at the defining criteria of a discourse community, we can see how TITLE incorporates all of these elements into their community.
Intercommunication & Specific Lexis
to the left you can see examples I took from Slack, the platform TITLE uses to communicate.
in the picture to the left, you can see all the different channels I am currently a part of. there are about 25 more channels that Staff can be a part of depending on the teams they are on.
this is an example of the announcements channel. in this space important updates are sent out to all Staff.
you can also see how TITLE has a specific lexis represented here. when talking about "goals and roles"and "f*uck withs or the recipe cards".
this is an example taken from the social-media-strategy team channel.
you can see the specific lexis being used here as well. when talking about copywriting and the decks (slide decks where our collaborative information is stored).
finally, here is an example taken from the Golden Years channel, which is a project I am a part of for the 006 issue of the zine coming out this winter.
this is a great example of showing how we all communicate together and collaborate on ideas. here we were talking about potential leads for our project concept, which shows the specific lexis of TITLE as well.
Goals & Genres
TITLE's goal is simple really, it's to make cool sh*t with our friends. Of course with this comes our responsibilities to be inclusive of everyone and encouraging collaboration between Staff and the public through the artistic curation of the zine. To be considered a discourse community, there must be a common goal that is supported and upheld by all members. Here we can see that being brought to life as all TITLE staff is working together to create the next issue of the zine.
TITLE contains many different genres. Since it is a creative magazine based community there are many different areas of expertise needed to curate this production. Some examples of these teams, like discussed earlier, are photographers, writers, layout designers, stylists, models, social media strategists, and many more. These teams can be considered genres here because they are all needed to make the community run smoothly.
Feedback & Expert Members
to the left is our executive team
We have discussed many ways TITLE communicates and how the community is ran. Through Slack, Zoom meetings, and in person gatherings feedback is distributed in a multitude of varieties. Everything in TITLE is done in collaboration with other individuals, so constructive criticism is always prevalent.
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In each team and project, there are levels of expertise seen throughout. Each project has a lead that oversees the entire production and then within that there are primary and secondary positions in each respective area. As you can see there is a threshold of expert members that influence and teach the less experienced members.