Dygowski 1

Ethnography The game of pickup basketball. Basketball for decades now has brought people from all ends of the earth together on one court as one in sync community. People of different languages can play together. The discourse of pickup basketball is its own language and it unifies people who can verbally understand each other as a unit of five on the court. The seemingly magical way basketball can bring such a diverse selection of people together is quite unique and something definitely trying to explain and understand. The pickup basketball discourse community I focused on was specifically the one at the Morison YMCA in the Ballantine area in Charlotte. Pickup basketball at the Morison has been moving one general direction since it opened in late 2009 and that direction is up. To get more information on this discourse community I dove straight in and despite a few minor setbacks (such as almost getting beat downIll explain later) I gathered enough information to begin to understand why the pickup basketball court unifies all kinds of people. In order to gather this information I made three separate trips to my discourse community and talked to as many of its members as possible. In addition I also conducted an official interview with one of its highly regarded members Mr. Justas Narusas. Pickup basketball unifies people from all over the world. The first time I went to observe my discourse community I talked to individuals from all over the united states from places like Newark, Miami, Orlando, Virginia Beach, San Diego, Fayetteville, and of course Charlotte. In addition to this widely diverse group of people from the within the United States there was one player from Lithuania, one Serbian, and a native of South

Dygowski 2

Africa.