I am part of the military community and have been my whole life. Being a member of the military community has informed my values and goals, holding me fast into the discourse community. Discourse communities are “groups that have goals and purposes, and use communication to achieve their goals” (Swales 546). This is an idea developed by John Swales, a linguist and professor who created the term to describe the communities with common established goals that uniquely communicate amongst themselves to the end of achieving those goals. The military discourse community has brought me into contact with new communities every time I move to a new place. Each time I am confronted by new cultures with their distinct discourses, each of these communities have their own thresholds for entrance of members of the military discourse community based largely on the support systems offered by the community to military members and their families, integration based upon the values of the community, and the existing authority structure of the community.
When I move to a new community it can be hard to adjust to the community because of the different discourses, characterized by distinct ways of thinking and attitudes. What can make this transition to a new community easier are the support systems in place by the existing community, specifically those catered to the military community. When I moved to MCAS (Marine Corps Air Station) New River near Jacksonville, North Carolina, it was a very different existing community than the one I had come from in Oceanside, California. The people of North Carolina carried a much more laid-back outlook and had a lexicon to match. Living out in the woods and swamps of North Carolina there was not much in the way of urbanization, and as a result, my direct contact with the existing community was highly limited. This made integration hard. For school I was homeschooled which kept me separate from the community, the sports community offered few options to integrate except for the public-school system’s sports teams which were not available to me, the religious community was much more open, as years of proximity to the series of Marine bases had acquainted them with the military discourse community and equipped them with outreach programs and meal donations for newly arrived families and those of deployed service members. While we may not have been members of the local community, they were certainly hospitable and accommodating (Crouch). This aspect of outreach helped to integrate my family into the community of Jacksonville when few other systems of support offered integration opportunities. Though the religious community excepted us readily. It took much longer to integrate into the other aspects of the community. Conversely, my experience at Camp Humphreys in Pyeongtaek, South Korea, was one in which my family quickly integrated into the community. The family services department had support systems in place which allowed for integration in all aspects of the community, school, religious community, and integration with the outside community. The education department at Humphreys had large open houses and provided tours for new families, making it easy to become a member of the school community there. The religious communities of Camp Humphreys all provided outreach and gifts to prospective members and kept their doors open as often as they could, promoting quick and dedicated integration into the religious community. The non-military community and accompanying services of Pyeongtaek advertised themselves to the military community through easily translated interfaces, anything from menus to commercials, and friendly and understanding staff familiar with the military community. All of these different outreaches and systems in place allowed my family to integrate into the Camp Humphreys community in only a few months. As my father noted, “You [kids] have already made better friends here in only two months, than two years in Norfolk” (Crouch). A testament to the effectiveness of support structures.
Integration from a military community into the many different communities around the world that I have lived among can be difficult as the two different discourses have different goals and values. Part of what makes a discourse community is its set of goals and how those are achieved, these are created by their values and determine the entrance threshold for new members. Taking the example of the community of Jacksonville, North Carolina again, integration was made more difficult by the lack of support systems, however, the similarity of goals between the communities allowed a much better integration than my experience in Norfolk, Virginia. The people of rural North Carolina place a lot of value on individual hard work, religious reverence, and tight familial bonds, all of which inform their goals of providing for their extended families and pursuing honest work. These values and goals are complementary of the military community, as they mirror the values of individual hard work and unit cohesion. The goals of the military community are likewise similar to those of the Jacksonville community, the military community values duty and service toward and for the nation. Because of these similarities my family was able to integrate into the community in spite of greatly differing lexis, forms of communication, and the lack of support a system because the goals and driving values behind them allowed for my family to integrate into the community at the neighborhood level and beyond. I found it much more difficult to integrate into the community of Tidewater Virginia in Norfolk, however. Though Norfolk has also spent years next to a large military population it is not so similar as the Jacksonville community. This is in part due to urbanization, but more so than any other factor it is caused by the difference in goals and the values behind them. While the communities of the military and Jacksonville hold the values of individual hard work to the end providing for some larger unit, I found that the community in Norfolk was much more focused on achieving a revered status based upon education and wealth which they valued more than the ethics which are exemplified by the Marine Corps community.
Every community has an authority structure, no matter how casual, this structure plays a key part in the integration of new members. The community of Norfolk, Virginia was hard for me to integrate into not only because of its differing goals, but also because of its authority structure. Just as the goals of the community are informed by its values so are its authority structures. Because my family was coming in from a military community we were not very readily accepted, we did not fit the right idea of what they valued. The members of that community were all very well-educated people who had been to the right Virginia schools, such as UVA, William and Mary, and Virginia Tech. The members were also historically from the area and were quite well off. The authority structure was based off of where one was educated, their heritage, and wealth. My family is one of middle income which did not make us not candidates, my father is also very well educated, but not in a Virginia or Ivy League school, which precluded us a little. More important than both of the previously discussed aspects, my family struggled to integrate because we are not Virginians. In the eyes of their community we were not worthy of any kind of authority because we did not fit their expectations, making them feel arrogantly entitled (Crouch). On our end we felt entitled to more respect and resented the way many people looked down on us. An opposite example can be found in my family’s successful integration into the community of Oceanside, California, near Camp Pendleton. In Oceanside’s community the authority structure is built on personal merit and standing, paying little to no attention to heritage and where one acquired their degree. As a result my family became well integrated into the community in Oceanside, making lifelong friends and becoming respected members of the community.
My time in the military community has put me through many regions and forced me to try and assimilate to the existing discourse communities. This search for acceptance into a new community was not always welcomed with open arms and aides, but at each new place some part of me was influenced by the discourse there. Discourse communities are very different form community to community, but all of them carry thresholds for entrance based on the offered support systems, the goals and values of the community, and the existing authority structure of the community. Integrating into communities is contingent on these different aspects, though not necessarily all at once, as integration can be achieved through compromise in one area when the other threshold categories are met.
Works Cited
Swales, John. “title of selection”. Writing about Writing. 4th ed., edited by Elizabeth Wardle and Doug Downs. Bedford St. Martin’s, 2020, pp. 546.
Crouch, Matthew. Personal interview. 09 October 2021.