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The Impact of Writing During My Life

Bryan Avitia
University of Texas at El Paso

Writing is a very common technique that is used as a way of communication all over our
society. As it is often used to inform about a specific topic. Many people use this tool to create
great pieces of textbooks that people often find it very interesting to read. In order for the writer
to catch somebodys attention, reading is also very crucial to accomplish. Therefore learning how
to write is a demanding task, but it helps to get your point of view across and for people to
understand where you are coming from.
One of the discourse communities that I am part of is my family. To become a member of
this discourse community you can either be born into it or get married with a family member. In
our family discourse community we always try to keep our surroundings calm, in order for us not
to keep having that stress from work or school with in the family. We always try to keep a trouble
free zone and just to have fun while we are together. Our family is composed of my parents and
my sister and we are a very small Mexican traditional family. Language within my family is also
a reflection of our culture, for example when referring to my sister I call her, Kather instead of
her full name, Katherine. Another way of communicating with my family is through writing.
Our purpose to write within our community is just to keep in touch. For example, while I was in
the Marine Corps boot camp the only media allowed were letters. My family wrote to me about
all kinds of topics like, what events happened during that week, all the training I did, and just to
display that affection to me by saying, Mijo te queremos y extraamos. Also, when we direct
ourselves with one of our family members, we use informal language but at the same time being
respectful. For example, if I text my mom or my sister, I would text the same thing, hey
mom/sister ill be there at five to grab a bite, where you at? or hey mom what happened with
the Cowboys team, did they just lose? and that is perfectly fine, we keep it informal but with

respect. Basically those are our rules, along with helping each other in case help is needed, and
just to love and support each other to keep the family stable.
Another discourse community I am part of is the U.S. Marines and has a language of his
own. One of the hardest challenges I ever had throughout my life is become a United States
Marine. This professional discourse community is like no other, we have our own way of doing
things. In order to become a member, one must enroll in service, and pass all the required tests.
The audiences of my professional discourse community are the Shift Manager, Section Manager,
Department Director, Deputy Director, and the Division Head.
The main media used by this community is the telephone and the email, also
correspondence letters, endorsement letters. Because 65% of the time we fix issues outside the
state we are station in or even outside the Continental United States (CONUS). As an agency, we
have multiple purposes for example, create correspondence letters requesting to fix a members
personal issues all the way to professional issues. Also, our main topics written in our
community, is everything concerning about all the Marines in our agency from personal things
such as counseling to professional issues such as deployments or awards. There are several rules
to be followed in our discourse community, but in the Armed Forces in general we need to follow
our own justice system called: Uniformed Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), which is very strict
and it demands a lot from service members.
Since we are a department of the Navy we used military and naval language. It is more of
a tradition, but at the same time it is dated back to WWII when words where created in order for
the enemy not to understand the conversations. For example, ink stick means a pen, or head
means the restroom, Halt in order to stop marching or walking. When we had our time of lunch
we say, go and get some chow or, go to the chow hall. We also use our own alphabet just to

name a few, the letter A stand for Alpha B for, Bravo and C for, Charlie in cases such as
the spelling of a casualty during a combat mission, for example mine was, Hotel, Alpha, Five,
Two, Two, Niner that stand for, HA5229 in this order you understand the first letter of the
company the Marine was with, the first letter of his Last Name , and the last four of his SSN.
I am part also part of the miner academic community. You have to go through a series of
steps to get into the University of Texas at El Paso. Very often those step get you very stressed
for some reason. In my case, I had to take different action, because I am a Texas veteran. The
first step like everyone else is to apply online, send all my college and military transcripts, go to
orientation, get advised, and enroll in my classes. Everything without taking the accuplacer test, I
got exempted from doing that, because of my military background. The main audience members
involve in this discourse community are the professors and students. The voice and tone we use
most of the time is in the professional manner, academic language and writing. We try not to use
profanity at all and to conduct ourselves as professionals. For example, Sir, I do not understand
this assignment, do you mind if we can go over it again. Every professor has different
guidelines and we must follow it in order to be successful. The media use in this discourse
community are the emails, blackboard, telephone, or in paper. Our main purpose of writing is to
type a research paper or any kind of assignment being task to you and finalize it without errors.
Of course, the topics differentiate depending on the class being taken.
Finally, I am part of a discourse community of sport called, Jaguars Club. Its members
are all the players of the football team, the head coach, and the assistant coaches. The only two
purposes of writing in this community are to inform of future events and to learn the playbook of
the team. Our main mean of communication is talking since we spend a lot of time training, we
also used the telephone. The topics written in our community are important advices for the

season, the schedule of the games, and the playbook. Our community also depended upon plays
designed by the coach. We used names like, Sam to move in various directions, or 3-3 to
signify a defensive play. The only rules we have in our community is to be respectful to each
other, to be responsible with the team, as far as going to the training every day, and to learn as
much as we can so we can be number one in the season since that is our only goal. There are two
types of language used in our community. Between the teammates is informal language, for
example, whats up man? in order to ask how are they. But with the coaches it is a respectful
tone and language, for example, Good afternoon coach, how are you? for the same scenario. In
order to become a member of our community you need to show up to the training sessions. There
is no fee to join the team, just show that you really want to be part of the team.
All these discourse communities represent a part of me and writing is very helpful for us
to become more involved in those communities. Learning an effective mode of writing helps us
better understand each other. It takes practice and numerous failures, but it is the only way that
we as humans learn how to be successful in life. Even though no one is perfect at writing, we can
at least become more knowledgeable at doing so and help others become good writers.