Running head: The Discourse Community of Golf 1

The Discourse Community of Golf

Savannah Hausler

North Central Michigan College

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Why I chose golf:

The Discourse community that I choose is golf. I relate to Ann Johns (2017) when she

said “people are born, or taken involuntarily by their families and cultures, into some

communities of practice.” in Discourse Communities and Communities of Practice because I’ve been

forced to play golf and have been surrounded by it from my family since I can remember. I’ve

only played one season competitively but I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought. 2021 was the

first year that my school has had a girls golf team. I’ve been interested in playing golf since

around sophomore year and would have been practicing with the guys team but unfortunately

covid hit and we went all online, everyone was quarantined, sports were canceled, including golf.

My junior year I looked into getting on the guys' team again But I regretfully chickened out

because I would have been the only girl on the team and I did not feel confident enough in my

game to even be practicing with them based on the fact that most of them had been playing since

before freshman year and had a huge leg up on me. Like Sean Branick (2017) said in Coaches

Can Read Too “a goal is a starting point of many things”. My goal was to not chicken out going

into my first official season.

Swales rule #1 and #2

Golf actually fits well into the Discourse community traits. Starting off with the first rule,

does this community have a common goal? The answer to this would be yes, like any sport the

goal is to win. For golf, you win by getting the lowest score out of everyone. The second rule is

what are the methods of communication among members? When I was doing my prewrite for

this essay it took me a second to get something down for this rule. Golf is typically a quiet and

kept to yourself sport, not much communication. But the more I started thinking, the more I
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came up with. There are lots of ways that golfers communicate. For example, yelling “Fore” if

your ball goes near another player so that they don't get hit. For the most part, golf is about body

language and respecting rules. Respect rules are things like marking your ball when you’re

putting, not stepping in someone's line, or being quiet on the course or when someones hitting.

Swales rule #3

The next rule is number 3: what are the participatory communication methods? This

question feels a lot like rule #2. However, they are different. Rule #2 is how people communicate

while #3 is how the people get feedback. This could be through social media posts, coaching,

announcers, and so on. When I was competing instead of scorecards we used an app called

MHSAA (Michigan High School Athletic Association). It was really helpful because it had all of

the rules or you could call a rules officiator and keep track of everyone's score and also who’s in

the lead. The only downside of having to use the app was that it didn't have an overview of the

course so if you didn't look at the par sign sometimes you were shooting blind.

Swales rule #4, #5, and #6

I didn't have much for rule #4 besides the MHSAA app because you could look up rules

and regulations and also maybe youtube videos explaining terms or tutorials on how to play. On

the other hand rules #5 and #6 came pretty easy. Rule 5 is lexis’ that goes with your community.

There are a lot of strange terms that go along with this game. For example, hybrid (a type of

club), woods (another type of club), wedge (another type of club), and then birdie, eagle, and

boogy which are all ways of saying how far off of par you were. Some lexis terms are more self

explanatory. Like greens/course, driver (drives the ball the farthest/ used to tee off), hazards

(things like ponds or woods), and the putter (used to putt).

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Conclusion

Overall, golf is a good example of a Discourse community because it, with some

exceptions, easily checks all of the boxes as far as John Swales is concerned in his list of

Discourse community 6 key traits. Golf has been a part of my life since I can remember but I had

never really gotten into it like I did the past couple of years and I’m grateful for the opportunity I

had to play on the girls golf team this year and have such amazing coaches to push me along

with it. Like any other sport golf is a great example of a Discourse community.
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References

Branick, S. "Coaches Can Read Too", (Eds.) Writing About Writing (Third ed., pp. 383-394).

Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martins , 2017.

Johns, A. "Discourse Communities and Communities of Practice ", (Eds.) Writing About

Writing (Third ed., pp. 319-333). Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martins , 2017.

Swales, J. "Reflections on the Concept of Discourse Community", (Eds.) Writing About Writing

(Fourth ed., pp. 544-559). Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martins , 2020.