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Michael Duquesnel
Professor Lindsey
College Writing
24 October 2019

Discourse Ethnography

Public Goals

The Northville High School Drama Club is a discourse community within the public high

school of the city of Northville, Michigan. This club, focusing on aspects and disciplines of

theatre, has a missions statement that states:

“Northville High School Drama Club is a place for students to explore their interests in

theatre through many different aspects (cast, crew, tech, costuming, props, business, etc)

and have a good time exploring these disciplines. The end goal is to produce four

performances a year, that being a haunted house in October, a Fall show, a Student-run

show in the winter, and a Spring musical.”

This is the statement that the current president of the club, Jack Fulton gave to me when

interviewing him. He also talked about how they try to be a welcoming community to any and

everyone, regardless of who your friends are and what your background is. Throughout the

interview, Jack gave me loads of information about the different aspects of this community.

Intercommunication

In terms of intercommunication between members of the club, they focus on three main

methods of communication: digital, paper, and word of mouth. In terms of digital, they mostly

focus on communication through the social media platform, Facebook. There they have a private

group in which only an admin can allow new members to join (to avoid people joining in who

should not be participating). This Facebook group is posted on almost daily by officers of the
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club with announcements concerning what is coming up, where help is needed, and, every once

in a while, encouragement to boost morale. Members of the club are also allowed to post for

similar reasons but may be taken down if the post is inappropriate in any fashion.

Communication is also accomplished by a texting service called Remind in which the President

may send out a quick text to members of a quick reminder.

Communication is also carried out by paper. Posters for auditions, callbacks, and

upcoming shows are incredibly common to get the word out to not only members of the club, but

those who may be interested in joining the community. Finally, word of mouth is the last form of

primary communication for the community. Members are encouraged to share with their friends

about joining the community and sharing with anyone they know about the shows that they

produce. Discussions about how the club is running happen at a monthly officers meeting in

which the elected officers discuss the present and future of the club and plan accordingly.

The reason for their different methods of communication is to keep everyone caught up

with current happenings within the club. Not every high schooler has a Facebook account that

they have access to. This means that communication through word of mouth would be more

effective for those individuals. They specialize in all of these forms of communication so no

person remains uninformed. This reinforces the fact that they want any student at Northville

High to be able to participate if they so desire.

Participatory Mechanisms & Specific Lexis

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The process in which a person enters into this discourse community is fairly simple

according to Jack. There are very few but also restrictive conditions in which a person may join

the community. The first requirement is to be a student at Northville High School. This

restriction is to keep the community from expanding beyond its limits and make sure that

members already have easy access to the club because of school.

The other main requirement to join the club is to be willing and able to participate in club

activities. Because there are an incredible amount of disciplines within the club, a member does

not have to be tied down to one specific discipline. They just need to be willing and able to try

out different roles in order to firmly grasp what area of interest suits them best. Jack prides

himself on being able to do this effectively. As the president, he oversees that everyone has equal

opportunities to try new disciplines so members may find their right fit.

Members of the club also may choose to pick up terms in order to understand the

discourse better. Below is a list of terms that are thrown around casually during everyday

conversations between members of the club.

The Shop Workshop in which most of the set is constructed. A popular place for
socialization.

The Booth A place where the auditorium’s light and soundboards are located.

Call time The time in which you are supposed to report to your specific area.

Cast The actors and actresses involved in the show.

Crew Those who help run the show from behind the scenes.

Production Staff Those who create distinct aspects of the show.

Genre

Within the entirety of the club, there is one specific genre of text that is focused upon

with every discipline of theater; this being the script. The script is the direction in which months
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of preparation go into. Without a script, there is no direction. Within the drama club, there is the

director who reads and interprets the script in a way that guides the rest of the club for that

period of time. The director’s ideas flow into the cast which performs the art, the lighting and

sound designers who create audio and visual cues to bring the performance to life, and the set

designers who bring ideas to life. Without the script, there is chaos as the director has nothing to

work off of. Each script also contains different genres such as tragedy, comedy, historical, etc.

and each need to be interpreted according to that genre.

Novices and Experts

The Drama Club is filled with novices and experts alike. Because of the spread of grades

and length of membership within the club, there seems to be a fairly even spread of skill levels.

With the club’s overall goal in mind, they do try to make every member more knowledgable and

skilled than when they first initially joined. Over time, this allows novices to become experts

depending on the amount of time and effort they put into their own improvement. This also

makes the community more inviting as there are positions for any skill level.

Reflection

Throughout this entire process, I felt as if I was on a nostalgia trip. While speaking with

Jack about his experience as the drama club president and what the club is like, it felt like a walk

down memory lane. I was once the president of the drama club back in the 2017-18 school year,

so hearing about his experiences made me smile.

There were a lot of similarities with the club as when I was originally there. The fact that

they still use a Facebook group astonishes me. When I was there, I felt as if Facebook was
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outdated but did not say anything in retaliation. It sounds as if no one else has shared that same

thought. Posters and fliers are also as important as they were when I was there. During my

sophomore year of high school, they started this event called the poster blitz in which everyone

drove all around the community putting up posters. When I asked Jack about it, he told me that

they have continued in that event and it is still going strong. Hearing that makes me joyful.

There seemed to be very little change in terms of the club as a whole. Their

communication methods, lexis, and overall style of running the club seemed to have remained

the same. I guess if it is not broke then do not fix it. The only thing that has seemed to change is

the people, and that is to be expected as people come and go in high school.

Discussing what the club was in terms of a discourse community made the concept easily

accessible to me, as I was dealing with a community that I was already familiar with. Defining

the terms within the community made the terms also seem more real. They never felt hard to

grasp and I knew exactly what each term meant as I related it to a real-life example. In the future,

I would possibly suggest this to future students to do in the future, that being, have them research

a community that is more familiar to them than unknown.