Lee 1 Gary T.

Lee ENG3080J Matthew Vetter June 29, 2013

Project #3: Pizza Hut as a Discourse Community In our everyday lives, we always have discourse communities that are unique in many ways. Discourse communities can be college departments, school clubs, corporations,

organizations, militaries and even restaurants. In my research paper, I would be talking about Pizza Hut where I work at. I would be talking about its culture, functions, people and the services they provide to its customers and members. In other words, I would talk about how Pizza Hut works as a discourse community of its own. In my research methodology, I am going to be interviewing members of Pizza Hut to research on the discourse community. One of the people I would be interviewing is my manager, Jason Long. He has worked for Pizza Hut for fifteen years (as of 2013). According to Long, Pizza Hut first begun in Texas, the first outlet opened near the Mississippi River. He also mentioned in our interview that the Pizza Hut in Richland Avenue was the first Pizza Hut restaurant in the State of Ohio (Long, 2013). I would also include writers that I have learned from the textbook in my research methodology specifically about the nature of discourse communities. When we think about discourse communities, we would think about it as academic in nature. But this is not necessarily the case. According to the article from Swales, a discourse community is identified by six characteristics. The first characteristic he makes is (1) A

discourse community has a broadly agreed set of common public goals. According to Swales,

Lee 2 these public goals may be formally inscribed in documents (as is often the case with associations and clubs). The second characteristic he makes is (2) A discourse community has mechanisms of intercommunication among its members. The intercommunication varies according to the community such as meetings, telecommunications, social media, correspondence, newsletters, conversations and others forms of communications. The third point is (3) A discourse

community uses its participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information and feedback. This characteristic allows it members to uptake information opportunities. The fourth

characteristic is (4) A discourse community utilizes and hence possess one or more genres in the communicative furtherance of its aims. This would allow the discourse community to further its aims in utilizing every genre of topics. The fifth characteristic is (5) A discourse community has acquired some specific lexis. That lexis involves using lexical items known to the wider speech communities in special and technical ways. The last and sixth characteristic is (6) A discourse community has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discoursal expertise. This means discourse communities have changing memberships and

individuals leave by many ways. However, it survivals depends on having a balanced ratio between novices and experts (Wardle & Downs, 2011). For the first characteristic, the public goals for Pizza Hut are to sell the best pizzas under one roof. For this reason, I have noticed that they make their goals public by putting up advertisements selling their pizzas and their latest product. As of now they are promoting Wing Street, which are chicken wings with a variety of flavors. These goals are obvious in the eyes of the public considering that Pizza Hut is aggressively promoting their products in order to compete with their competitors. For the second characteristic, it seems that Pizza Hut has its own unique jargon when communicating among its members. Among the jargon includes make

Lee 3 table for making pizzas, cut table to cut up the pizzas, prep table for preparing the pizza dough for the next day and most recently bump which is to transfer a computerized order to another computer screen. For the third characteristic, Pizza Hut always welcomes feedback from its customers in order to improve on their products and services. For the fourth characteristic, one of the genres that Pizza Hut possesses is fast-food. Another genre you can say it possesses is chicken wings since it promotes Wing Street. As for the fifth characteristic, Pizza Hut has certain types of lexis. One of the lexis includes is HTT referring to Hand Tossed dough, PAN referring to Pan Pizzas, CrAzY Cheesy Crust referring to the 16-pocket cheese crust and Thin N Crispy referring to pizzas with thin layer crust. According to the article from James Paul Gee, he talks about a discourse community with two points. (1) Defining a discourse community, (2) applying a discourse community with your own life experience and examples from your own life. Gee also mentions that about an identity kit in his article. What he probably means that we would have to dress, act, talk and often write so that we can have a role in which others will recognize and being recognized to be able to join a certain discourse community (Wardle & Downs, 2011). Pizza Hut by its own can be a discourse community by itself. Based on my experience working at Pizza Hut, there were certain ways we had to follow to show that you were a committed employee. One of them includes dressing up in your uniform by tucking in your shirt, which most of us are not used to doing so. Another way we had to follow was to follow a certain learned behavior as to how we appear before customers to show them that we care about them. This is to increase the chances of repeating customers. Even how we talk is also in a certain way. When we answer phone calls from customers, we follow a certain script on how we talk to customers. This seems to reflect on what was mentioned by Gee as an identity kit (Wardle & Downs, 2011).

Lee 4 Discourses are ways of being in the world; they are forms of life which integrate words, acts, values, beliefs, attitudes, and social identities as well as gestures, glances, body positions, and clothes. James Paul Gee

According to the article from Elizabeth Wardle, Wardle mentions about an employee in her department named Alan who was her departments computer technician who felt like he did not have a sense of purpose. And Wardle did mention that Alan did not behave how her department members behaved. This made Alan an outcast according to Wardle because Alan did not behave, talk and write a certain way (Wardle & Downs, 2011). The same way works at Pizza Hut. I have noticed there were some employees that were not given more responsibility and this made them feel as if they do not have much role playing in the operation of the store. This has led to some employees to resign earlier and work a shorter time period time than what was expected. I am guessing that these employees were reluctant to follow the ways of how Pizza Hut operated. Also, some employees were feeling too frustrated about following the rigid protocol of how things should be when preparing pizza dough, baking pizzas, cutting pizzas, washing dishes and cleaning up. If they could see what their purpose was and take a positive attitude towards working at Pizza Hut, perhaps they might have stayed on. In the article written by Ann M. Johns, Johns talks about the diversity, conflict and membership of a discourse community. According to Johns, every discourse community would have conflicts and diversity. One of the conflicts of a discourse community includes the cost of affiliation. According to Johns, being affiliated with a certain discourse community requires considerable sacrifices. In order for them to become active academic participants, they were required to make trade-offs that has caused them to create a distance between their discourse

Lee 5 communities and families. Another conflict mentioned by Johns is issue with authority. Johns mentions based on her experience about teaching English in the Peoples Republic of China, where students had a problem with authority how English was taught. They were taught that every English word had a single meaning and therefore students had a conflict with it. Conventions and anti-conventionalism is also another form of conflict. She mentions in her article that in order to be successful in a certain discourse community; members were required to follow certain conventions on how to succeed, making it rigid and structured. If any of the members deviated from the conventions, they were likely labeled as failing to follow the discourse community principles. This creates conflicts among members who are flexible.

Another conflict mentioned by Johns is dialogue and critique. In a community that is thriving, dialogue and critique would be commonplace. However, we would have community members with different opinions which would create conflict among its members (Wardle & Downs, 2011). Many of Johns points also reflect at my job at Pizza Hut. I work at Pizza Hut for long hours very often and this would require me to sacrifice my time away from family, studies, games, sleep and more. But working those long hours pay off because this has allowed me to keep my job and think about it, I am fortunate that I am employed by Pizza Hut unlike some people who are struggling to search for a job. Although I do not have much issue with authority, but there would be times that I would have conflicts with authority in the way Pizza Hut wants things to be done. But nonetheless, I go along with it. When working at Pizza Hut, I have to follow a certain conventions about how to work in a certain way. Example, my manager would want us to put cheese on a pizza a certain way and I cannot follow my way of putting cheese on my pizza. This somewhat does create some conflict in me between managers and colleagues

Lee 6 who work in a certain way. Because every one of us has different opinions about how things should work, this somewhat creates a conflict among ourselves but not in a hostile manner. According to the article from Tony Mirabelli, Mirabelli mentions about how members of a discourse community can read people and situations not just only text and books. In general, Mirabellis article talks about restaurant workers and how they would express their frustration towards their upper management and their customers. He highlighted a website called

www.bitterwaitresses.com which allows disillusioned, frustrated or disgruntled employees of restaurants to express the way they feel. In a sense, the website also serves as a discourse community by itself where certain jargon and language exists in the website. But what Mirabelli is mentioning is that restaurants like Pizza Hut are discourse communities by itself (Wardle & Downs, 2011). Mirabellis article reminds me that there are some workers at Pizza Hut who would be disgruntled, disillusioned or frustrated by their job. I recall how a colleague of mine who was promoted and later suffered a nervous breakdown. And he expressed his frustration to close friends even myself. In conclusion, many of Pizza Huts characteristics relate towards many of the article written form Swales, Gee, Johns, Wardle and even Mirabelli. The bottom line that I am getting to is that Pizza Hut is a discourse community by itself. It has a unique culture of itself in the way we serve customers, how we engage in personal hygiene, procedures of working at Pizza Hut, and jargon used by its employees. It is also noted that Pizza Hut also follows the six

characteristics of a discourse community by Swales. Pizza Hut also follows a certain identity kit mentioned by Gee from the way we dress, act and behave. Pizza Hut also has the four conflicts mentioned by Johns. These conflicts are probably the most common conflicts in a discourse community. And finally, Mirabellis argument mentioned that discourse communities

Lee 7 can include gossip forums, social media sites, and even restaurants. From understanding

Mirabellis argument, Pizza Hut seems to fit the criteria of a discourse community.

References: Long, J. (2013, June 20). Interview by Gary Lee []. My interview with Jason long. Wardle, E., & Downs, D. (2011). Writing about writing. (1st ed., pp. 466-480). Boston: Bedford / St.Martin's. Wardle, E., & Downs, D. (2011). Writing about writing. (1st ed., pp. 481-497). Boston: Bedford / St.Martin's. Wardle, E., & Downs, D. (2011). Writing about writing. (1st ed., pp. 498-519). Boston: Bedford / St.Martin's. Wardle, E., & Downs, D. (2011). Writing about writing. (1st ed., pp. 520-537). Boston: Bedford / St.Martin's.