Band Kid

In "Discourse Communities and Communities of Practice: Membership, Conflict, and Diversity" by Ann Johns, she defines a discourse community as being, "an idea of language [and genres] as a basis for sharing and holding in common: shared expectations, shared participation, commonly (or communicably) held ways of expressing." We are all apart of many different discourse communities, however there is always one that we are apart of that defines us more than any of the others. I believe that this is none more true than during high school. Whether you were a jock, a nerd, a mean girl, a theater kid, or something in between, nearly everyone in high school had their group they associated with. For many, your discourse community becomes your identity while in high school, whether you were aware of it or not. This happened to me. I did marching band all four years of high school and of course I knew everyone thought of me as being a band kid. However it wasn't until my senior year in high school that I found out how pivotal a part of my identity it was. My girlfriend was not in in marching band, and did not hang out with the marching band either, and  she told me that when she would talk to her friends and tell them who she was dating, many of them responded with, "oh the kid in band". Some of them were people I knew and had classes with throughout high school, and some I had known throughout middle school and even elementary school. Yet, all they really seemed to know, or at least remember about me, was that I was in band. Being in band had come to define who I was to many of my peers. As I realized how much marching band had become apart of my identity, I realized how much I too had identified my classmates, especially the ones I interacted with least, by their discourse communities. I think that the reason for this is, that in high school everyone is looking for two major things emotionally. The first is acceptance and the second is figuring out who you are and who you want to be (which I don't think anyone has ever really figured that out in high school). The easiest way to find acceptance is to find a discourse community, so the easiest identity to take on ends up being that of your discourse community. Then because we are all so focused on gaining the acceptance of our community, we embody the discourse more and more. And the more you identify yourself by who your community is, the more likely you are to identify everyone else by there community. While your discourse community is definitely a part of your identity it should never become your entire identity, and you should not view others as only their discourse community. Each of our identities are complex, and it takes much more than some high school clique to define who you are.