Conclusion
Coming into this ethnography assignment I chose first year engineering students because being one myself and seeing first hand how much time and how many similar experiences students shared with each other I thought that a unique discourse community was sure to form naturally. However, after conducting first hand research and observations and comparing them to the definitions and requirements for discourse communities I found that my first assumptions were incorrect and that in reality first year engineering students did not display enough unique characteristics to categorize them as their own discourse. Seeing how my entire ideology concerning first year engineers and discourse communities changed after my first hand observation it gave me a new appreciation for self conducted research and showed me the value of investigating things for yourself beyond just looking up research already conducted by others though it can act as a helpful guide.
I also learned a lot about discourse through this ethnography. Discourse communities seem like a very straight forward and clear cut concept but I learned through trying to determine a discourse community for myself that this is not the case. There are a lot of different aspects that go into making a discourse community and even beyond that each aspect must contain a characteristic that makes it distinctive and set apart from other communities or the general population.
While first year engineering students have proven to not be their own discourse community I believe they still remain an individual part of a larger discourse community consisting of NC State engineering students. Freshman have not yet had as much time or experience as upper classmen and are still developing the common vocabulary and unspoken gestures that make a discourse community so distinctive and freshman students will continue to hone these skills as time goes on.
