Discourse Community Analysis Essay

There is a discourse community that I have always loved and always been a part of. This community is hard to be a part of unless you communicate, connect, and experience this community. The community in which I want to talk about is the soccer community. I will share how I became apart of this community, the knowledge I have of this community, and my credibility to be apart of this community. I will use logos, pathos, and ethos to help explain my experiences.

There are many different ways to be apart of this community. You can play the sport to be apart of it, whether it is a simple rec soccer team or professional soccer team. This gets you first hand very included and involved in the community. You can also be very involved through maybe kids or family members that play the sport. This allows you to be supportive and go to games and watch the people play. You could also be a coach for the sport and be involved through coaching a team whether it be a kids team or a professional adults team. You can be a part of the community by being a fan and going to watch your favorite team, either in person or on TV. You could even be apart of the community by even playing a video game such as Fifa.

For me personally the way I joined a soccer community was through making the high school soccer team. I have played soccer since I was about 5 years old. It has always been a part of my life! Having soccer as such a huge part of my life and being able to accomplish much in the community I feel I am credible to write on this topic. When I got older I really got into playing on city club teams as well as playing on the High School Varsity Soccer team. I wanted to right about my experience joining the high school soccer team. The good times and the bad times of the process. Play soccer my whole life leading up to my freshman year did not even prepare me for what it was going to take to be on the high school team. All these experiences I have had up to that point where great but they were not what was going to really helped me get to make it into the soccer community of the High School Team.

It wasn’t easy getting on to the High School Team, especially for me at the time as a freshman. It was hard to be a freshman coming in to try and make the team when there were many upperclassman who we looked up to as freshman and respected. Often the upperclassman looked down on the freshman and not many freshman made the team. I remember trying my best to impress the upperclassman and show them I had something none of the other freshman. This is when I was able to show ethos, because I felt that I did have something no other freshman did have. Years earlier I lived in Ireland for two years where I really learned how to play soccer and grew to love the game more than ever. I developed a lot of great skill and enthusiasm for the game. I felt that this made more credible to make the varsity soccer team than any other freshman. Throughout this whole process there were many emotional times as well. These were the times that pathos were shown. Tryouts was a very emotional time as the expectations for the team were high. The first part of tryouts we had to run a 6 minute mile, then go through the next hour of intense physical training and then on top of that at the end we then had to play soccer and show our skill to the coaches. I remember going through these couple days of tryouts thinking that this experience was crazy and it was not only physically draining but emotionally draining as well. Most of the emotion came from having to perform top notch and try and keep up with all the upperclassmen as a little freshman. At times I felt that I was not doing my best and there was no way the coaches were going to take me. The upperclassman just seemed way too good to compete against! It was intimidating to be competing against these juniors and seniors who were the names of the high school soccer team already. And then adding on the pressure from the coaches to meet the expectations. It pushed me out of my comfort zone for sure! Although going through all this was hard it was all worth it when I saw that I had made the Pleasant Grove High School Soccer Team as a freshman! All that hard work had payed of and I was apart of the team with all the upperclassman!

There was also a logos aspect of being apart of this community. After making team that was not the end of it. You had to continue to put in the work to stay on the team. On top of the expectation to continue to perform the best soccer we could during practices and games the coaches expected more from us. We were to have good grades and do well in school to stay on the team. If we got any C’s and D’s there were physical punishments to make up for those poor grades. If we failed any classes we were not allowed to play games till we got those F’s up and if they continued to get worse and worse there was a chance of being kicked of the team. We were also expected to eat well as top notch fit soccer players. If we ever got caught eating junk food there was a physical punishment for the entire team. You never wanted to be the player that got caught eating crap food, or else the whole team hated you. On top of those we were also expected to get along as a team and support each other and communicate well with each other on and off the field. We were expected to be a team player and not an individual player. So as you can see on top of all of the emotional parts of being on the team there was many things that included metal activity and staying part of the program in a logical way. It wasn’t easy but it was worth it.

In conclusion, I hope I have helped you experience the journey I had being part of the high school soccer team through ethos, pathos and logos. The soccer community of the high school soccer team was one of the best discourse communities in which I have ever been a part of. It was a community the required credibility, emotion, and logic to be apart of and involved in. It is where I learned to be a team maker and put priorities first. I learned to communicate and work together with others. Being on the high school soccer team was a special time of my life I will never forget and will always hold close to me for the experiences I had that were good and bad. Overall it was one of the best experiences of my life and I would do it all over again. This was a community in which I learned skills and life lessons I will use the rest of my life.