Discourse Community Analysis - Essay Example

Communication among the subjects of this paper is not very different from what is generally observed but is expressed through the most recent means brought about by technology like twitter, facebook and text messaging in addition to speaking and non-verbal methods of communicating. Having an account in the aforementioned social networking sites is now common not only to teenagers but to children and adults as well but this study limits itself among the teenagers alone. Updates, friendly chats, class discussions and other important matters are now easily accessed with the wide availability of the internet to every teenager in 16th street, Downtown so that most of them are updated with the latest local news and other interesting matters there could be discussed over the internet.

The growing number of internet users now places teenagers without facebook or twitter accounts among the lower class who are not able to afford personal computers or internet connections or are rather poor enough not to be able to go to school and become aware of such high technology developments. Other thoughts prevalent among teenagers about those who have no such accounts are considered to be old people who are not keen enough to learn how to manipulate the computer. In the exchange of ideas whether through face to face communication or through the internet and with the abundance of sites teenagers could visit but are not allowed by their parents, slang languages have been developed among the teenagers for them to hide things they do not like their parents to know.

For instance, pornographic sites or images are referred to as ‘pron’ instead of the widely known term ‘porn’. This is to trick parents that what they are talking about or referring to are not offensive and also to let them stay away from them and their friends when they are discussing such matters. When they mention skittles, they are not talking about the candy bar rather the topic is about a type of drug commonly available to teenagers. No parent would ever suspect anything fearful with this attempt of the young people to hide their discussions from their parents so that even if they are hearing them say these things, the parents are just left clueless.

Another common term used among teenagers in 16th street is the word ‘trannie’ or ‘tranzie’ which refers to trans-genders and come quite derogatory to those they refer to because they are usually singled out from their groups. Some slang terms are not just used to hide things from parents but from fellow teenagers as well in an attempt not to hurt their feelings like the formerly mentioned example which could be referred to a friend who is trans-sexual, accepted in a group yet is not far from being talked about.

On the other groups’ point of view however, the words mentioned earlier place those who use them as rude or even members of some gang. Although the words usually hide the real topics from the untrained ears of older groups like parents, such talks also come with non-verbal communication that would express arrogance, haughtiness and some air of dislike to them so that they begin the