Ryan Schlipf ENGL 106 10/21/2013 Aria Halliday

Authors Note I had a rather interesting time with this project. Once I had clarified what kind of discourse community I could effectively observe, I couldnt find one. Because I needed a community soon, I decided to choose the group of people who often visit our apartment. I decided on this group because I was a part of this group, and it would be easily observable. Unfortunately, I decided upon my topic on a Tuesday, and just about all of the rest of the week, with the exception of Wednesday, had events scheduled. This meant that I did not have very many opportunities to observe the discourse community, and I had to pull some information from memory. Even in the next week, there was a lot going on. In hindsight, if I were to do this project again, I would either observe the community for a longer period of time to gain a more substantial amount of information, or I would choose a different discourse community. Even so, it was rather interesting to actually observe everyone that visited our apartment. It made me consciously realize many things that I hadnt noticed before. Some things I suppose I knew, but I never made the connections until this project. Over all, I think it is a good project, but difficult to effectively complete for a college student.

Ryan Schlipf ENGL 106 10/21/2013 Aria Halliday

Apartmental Observations
In recent weeks, I noticed that my apartment seemed to have become quite a social hotspot. The apartment building that I reside in is mostly inhabited by people from my youth group, so visiting is not an uncommon occurrence. However, I became interested in why our apartment was so popular, and what made people congregate there. The best way to understand the actions of the people is to understand the people, so that you can know why and how they do what they do. I began making observations of anyone who came to visit. I noticed that the most activity occurred in the evening, so most of my observations and information are from that time. Since eight of the twelve apartments in the building are rented by members of my youth group, we all know each other quite well. It is common to go to others apartments to ask for help on homework, discuss something, or just to hang out. The ratio of girls and guys is proportional, with varying histories and origins. Most of the group came from somewhere in Indiana, with only a couple exceptions. We are all reasonably sociable, but obviously we have different interests to a point. Many of us enjoy playing casual or intermural sports, such as Ping-Pong or racquet-ball, while others would rather just hang out and talk, or go shopping or out to eat together. In short, we are all slightly different, but we still enjoy spending time together. Because visitors are quite common in our apartment, I decided that to observe them I would simply become part of the conversation when they were there. I tried to respect others privacy and not be too intruding, and it seemed to work quite well. If someone would come over and start a conversation with my roommates, I would go to wherever they were talking and join in. In this way I was

Ryan Schlipf 3 ENGL 106 10/21/2013 Aria Halliday able to make accurate observations without them really knowing that they were being observed. I did tell everyone that I would be observing them and their conversation when they were at our apartment. However, since I was just a member of the conversation, then the subjects did not change their behavior because they were being observed. I was not able to join in all conversations obviously, as some were private, and many happened while I was not at the apartment or I had to do homework. I tried to minimize these times so I could obverse as many conversations as possible. When I began recording observations, the timing was such that several evening events were scheduled for a few consecutive days, so I was not able to gather as consistent of results as I would have liked. However, I did make a few significant observations about the people I was observing. Firstly, I realized that there is a certain group of people who were the most reoccurring visitors. Of this group, the percentage of girls was higher than of boys. I also noticed that if it was a girl who came over, it was most often just for the purpose of socializing. There was a portion of the visits that were for academic purposes, but even if that was the main purpose, socialization was part of the incentive to be there. If it was a male who came over, there was more often a distinct reason for the visit. Once the information was obtained or the purpose was achieved, then the person normally left shortly thereafter. As usual, there were a few cases where this was not the case, and he just came over to hang out or socialize, but it was not nearly as common as it was with the females. That this also played a large role in my observation that the females normally stayed for longer than the males did. Looking at the previous information, this would be expected as a social visit is likely to last longer than a visit for which the purpose was to gain information, like asking when an event started, or if we could lend them a tool. The differences in purpose also mattered largely in the differences in communication in the group. This also would be expected, as the communication methods used in social events are quite different in formality, content, and word choice. When the visit is socially based, the environment is

Ryan Schlipf 4 ENGL 106 10/21/2013 Aria Halliday more relaxed, and everyone seems to use their own slang and jargon. There is not really any distinctive words or phrases that are used, but everyone has their own style of communicating. There are those who use long, complex sentences to communicate, while others use simpler sentence structure. Often it is the females who use the more complicated methods, and the males seem to just get their ideas out, without extra information. This probably is based in the differences between genders, and the persons purpose. When the conversation is more of an academic style, almost everyone observed seemed to use more professional, academic language. The specific content of the communication varied greatly on the subject at hand, but in general the word choice and formatting of the sentences seemed quite similar. In conclusion, I cant say that Im very surprised by my results. There seemed to be two common themes of styles of communication. There was academic, and then there was social. Each had its own differences and jargon, but they were also closely related to the gender of the person communicating. If he was a male, then the conversation was likely academic, which meant that it was reasonably focused, and did not last as long as the social visits. These social visits were made more often by females than by males, which also adds to the style and vernacular used. Females normally would stay longer and used more relaxed language, which makes sense considering their purpose. These two different situations were not always the same, nor were they always perfect, but they were the most common. In the end I concluded that the type of communication utilized depended mainly on the gender of the subjects.