In “Literacy, Discourse, and Linguistics” James Paul Gee tells of “tests” that occur in discourse communities. These tests are used to identify whether or not a specific individual is part of a discourse community or rather a poser of that discourse community. For example, in a military discourse community the people within that community have been schooled on words, phrases, and symbols that are specific to that community. If another person claims to be apart of that discourse community these test will be able to clearly separate those that are truthfully within that community and those that aren’t.
The most common example that I have notice has to be the separation of those growing up with technology and those without it. For the most part when receiving an email or text from members of my family that are of 50 years or older I can immediately notice a difference in there language compared to someone perhaps my age. Sentence structure and punctuation decreases rapidly when those of my generation write a casual email or text. Those of the older generation continue writing in standard and grammatically correct English no matter what the situation is. This difference can be picked up and identified quickly by the “testing” of outsiders to a discourse community as stated by Gee in his article.
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