There are hundreds of thousands of discourse communities in the world. As explained by a researcher and an educator, John Swales, “A discourse community is a group of people involved in, and communicating about a particular topic, issue, or in a particular field.” With this definition of a discourse community, I belong in multiple discourse communities. One of them is called “Hooked On Bass” fishing league. I have been a member for six years now and my dad has been a member for sixteen.
Our fishing league gets together every Thursday during the summer months, and every week we choose a new lake to fish. We all fish together at the same time from 6:00 pm to 9:00 pm, and at the end of the night we tally up all the fish caught. Each fish is worth a different amount of points, and there are limits on how many you can keep. There are 9 different boats and 2 people per boat. Each boat competes for the duration of the year to see who can come up with the most points at the end of the year, and the winner gets $250.
Together, this fishing league loves to fish. We all share great experiences every year with each other going out to lakes and catching monster fish. There are not too many well organized fishing leagues out there that has the same size, and have been around for twenty plus years. Fishing is a great pastime and many people can relate to it whether thats open water fishing, fly fishing, or even ice fishing. To help visualize and understand more about what the league is about, I got ahold of my fishing partner and did an interview. My fishing partner who is also my dad explains how much the league means to him. He likes to say how it’s a great group of guys that get together to catch some fish. He then goes on to comment how it’s just a great way to get out of the house and be able to have some fun. He looks forward to it every Thursday night and extremely enjoys every minute of it, even when it is cold and rainy.
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This fishing league has been around for more than 20 years. It is filled with great guys that all share a common interest in going out and catching fish. Within this league we have different positions like a president, a vice president, and a secretary/treasurer. The president is in charge of getting everyone together at the beginning of the year to hold the meeting on rule changes, what lakes we are going to fish, and other things like collecting money from each boat. Each boat has to pay a minimum fee each year to get in to the fishing league. Anyone is welcome to come to the meetings and
join the league. The vice president is in charge of writing down the rule changes and coming up with a sheet that has all the rules on it to be handed out to all the members. The vice president also gets to call the night off due to bad weather. Lastly, the secretary or also known as the treasurer holds on to all the money which he receives from the president. This person also totals up all the fish caught each week and keeps track of everyone’s points from week to week.
On Fridays, the secretary sends out an email to all the members about who caught the most fish, a summary of the night, and where we are fishing next week. Another great way we all communicate is through text messages. We have a mass group chat that we communicate with each other on, whether its asking how everyone is doing or going over what the weather is doing that night. We have our own set of words and phrases we all like to use. We use terms like “I caught a bucket mouth” which means someone caught a big Large Mouth Bass. They call it that because of the way the bass mouth is so big, it looks like a bucket. Another word we like to say is a “snot rocket.” This simply means a Northern Pike. We call it this because of how slimy they are and how they are shaped more like a rocket so they are water dynamic.
By having this communication with each other, we help each other become better fisherman. We all go over what worked good and what didn’t to help each other get better at the sport. This league isn’t very competitive, it’s mostly just a bunch of guys having fun. It’s a fun way to get out of the house every week and spend time with people you enjoy. Over the years we all have progressed amazingly into better fisherman. I also interviewed another member of the league named John Chan. He claims he has been in the league for nine years now and enjoys every minute of it: “This fishing league has been a huge part of my life lately and has shown me a lot. And its awesome to meet up with everyone at the meetings.” As John said, a very big way we communicate is at the meetings. This includes a big get together at a restaurant to go over important ideas in the organization.
We hold our meetings at the beginning of the year and at the end of the year at the same place. It’s a little restaurant in my home town called The Friendly Buffalo. We all decide to go there because it’s fast, easy, and cheap. Its mostly located in the middle of everyone so we aren’t driving across the country just to go to our fishing meeting. At the end of the year meeting, we hand out prizes, trophies and play other games to win money. It’s just a fun way to get together and talk about how the year went for everyone. It’s the president’s job to hand out all the prizes at the end of the year and plan for next year’s beginning of the year gathering.
To get back to my dad, he has held a big part in this community. He was the secretary for 9 years before just recently passing it to someone else. The secretary is a very important position, due to the fact that they need to
All-in-all, this is one discourse community that I am very involved in. Over the past years I have learned so much about the sport and also gained some well needed leadership skills. Hooked On Bass is a very good example of a discourse community because it covers all six of Swales’s characteristics which include a public set of goals which is to catch fish, communication between members through email, or face to face, we give each other good feed back on how to become better fisherman, we have different genres which I consider fish, we have a set of lexis which includes a laminated schedule, along with other rules that gets handed out at the beginning of the year, lastly, our league is filled with very knowledgeable members that give everyone else helpful tips. And that is why I’m passionate about my dealings with this discourse community.
