Description – Discourse communities are everywhere throughout the world. VMI has a distinct discourse community of the Bravo company rats. The essay reviews the criteria that makes it qualified to be a discourse community and points from John Swales to support the findings.
Essay 3- Family of Rats
Virginia Military Institute is one of the nation’s senior military colleges. The institute functions as a real military unit would, in order to prepare the cadets for their careers in either the military or a job in the civilian sector. VMI is well known for having a “Rat Line”, which is a six month period where the incoming freshmen learn what it truly means to be a cadet. The period is used to train the Rats in drill, physical fitness, and the standards of the institute, while still emphasizing the importance of academics. The Rats are trained by their cadre, who are upperclassmen that were chosen because of their leadership abilities. They discipline, teach and mentor only the Rats their perspective company. This tradition has been carried from round the 1850’s (“The Ratline”) and is a way to separate the freshmen from the rest of the corps in order to train them to the standard that VMI upholds. The connection between the Rats and the rest of the company is the first aspect that makes Bravo a discourse community.
Along with there being a split between the Rats and the upperclassmen, there is also another distinct difference that separates the corps. The cadets are divided into two battalions and between both battalions there are ten companies. Each company is separated according to height with Alpha/India being the tallest and Echo/Delta being the shortest. Since there is already a physical divide between the companies, that gives each of them a chance to be unique in their teaching methods, traditions, and customs within that company. Over the years, the companies have upheld their traditions and that is why each company is distinctly known for their individualism. The companies individualism is what ultimately creates the characteristics of the discourse community. There are six qualifications that John Swales uses in order to classify a discourse community. They are the community has to have a set of common goals, intercommunication between one another, a way to provide information and feedback, have more than one genre, have a specific lexis, and the individuals within hae to have a level of experience (Swales 220-222).
Another discourse community within the corps is the rat mass. Until the freshmen have proven themselves to the senior class, then they will continue to be Rats. They have to prove that they have come together to form a class and that they have given every ounce of themselves to the institute in order to display that the Rats care enough to be pushed to their limits and still continue to do all that they possibly can. Once the Rat mass has done that, and sometimes more, then they will be put to one final test called break out. Break out is a twelve hour culminating event that involves strenuous physical fitness and rigorous activities which ends the rat line. After break out, the Rats are no longer referred to as Rats, they are then fourth classmen and members of the corps.
Between these two communities, one community is formed between the Bravo company Rats. In a survey that was done among the Rats in Bravo company, 29/34 Rats agree that they feel as if Bravo company is a close knit “community” or “family” (Dost). This allows for the Rats to come together more easily and be more willing to learn what the cadre have to teach because the Rats have respect for their instructors. One of the first thing a Rat has to memorize is the Inscription on the Parapet said by Colonel John Thomas Lewis Preston, which states,
“the healthful and pleasant abode of a crowd of honorable youths pressing up the hill of science with noble emulation, a gratifying spectacle an honor to our country and our state, objects of honest pride to their instructors and fair specimens of citizen soldiers, attached to their native state, proud of her fame and ready in every time of deepest peril to vindicate her honor or defend her rights” (QTD, Farwell 87).
The phrase “objects of honest pride to their instructors” is where the aspect of a family and respect comes into play. If the Rats are respectful of what their cadre have to say then they will be more inclined to learn from them, which creates an overall better atmosphere within the company. This goes along with one of John Swales’ six points about discourse communities. In his essay he says, “a discourse community has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discoursal expertise” (Swales 222). Every cadre member has been a Rat so they know the rat line and they know the essential things that will help their Rats get through the Rat Line. This gives the cadre a degree of discourse expertise and a level of credibility for the position that they have.
In order to disseminate the information that they have, the cadre use the VMI emailing system. Through the emails they send, they can communicate, quickly and effectively, the details that are pertinent to the day or upcoming events. This is much more effective than word of mouth, but sometimes, word of mouth is the only option. After breakfast or dinner formation cadre will give out information because everyone is together at one place and they will all get the exact same information. Between Rats, however, email is easiest because the Rats are not allowed to talk outside of their rooms. Out of 34 Rats who answered the survey (Dost), all answered that the most common method of communication is indeed either email or in person. This correlates with Swales’ point about, “a discourse community has mechanisms of intercommunication among its members” (Swales 221). Communication creates a better flow within the community and conveys all information that the Rats in Bravo company need in a concise way.
Another important aspect of a discourse community is the lexis that the community creates. A lexis is a list of common terms or vocabulary that is specific to the community. Between the Bravo Rats, they said that the top three most common words that they hear everyday “freak”, “strain”, “boned” (Dost). Freak, or freak show for a group of Rats, is how the cadre refer to a Rat that is messing up or who did something wrong. Straining is what the Rats do when they walk around barracks. Boned is a punishment that could result in demerits, confinement, and/or having to march penalty tours. These words are a key part to the Rat Line because it makes the community more unique and defined.
There’s also an important aspect of Bravo company that no other company does and that is that Bravo has a common set of goals. When Swales listed the six qualifications of a discourse community, he stated, “a discourse community has a broadly agreed set of common public goals” (220). The top three goals in Bravo company seem to be winning competitions, team work, and organization. When the Rats had a competition, Bravo cadre had a tryout, while other companies just had a first come/first serve basis to make the team. The Bravo Rats have had the fastest obstacle course time for the last five years and that is due to the try outs and extensive training done at the obstacle course during free time. The cadre emphasize the importance of winning because, “it pays to be a winner” as they commonly say. The next important thing is team work. The cadre tell us that you can’t win as an individual and you have to work together as a team in order to accomplish the mission. The third most important aspect is organization. In order to win you have to have good organization and have a plan that the entire knows about. All three of these aspects come together and are the reasons why Bravo has such high standards and is the reason that we are successful.
Out of all six of Swales’ criteria that define a discourse community, the Bravo company Rats have the most important four. The only two pieces of criteria that are missing are that Bravo doesn’t have “a discourse community uses its participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information and feedback” (Swales 221) and they also don’t “utilizes and hence possesses one or more genres in the communicative furtherance of its aims” (Swales 221). Even though the community of the Bravo company Rats lack these two aspects, it still qualifies to be a discourse community because it possesses the most important qualifications.
Dost, Lauren. “Bravo Rat Survey.” Survey. SurveyMonkey. 15 Nov. 2016. Web. 4 Dec. 2016.
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Swales, John. “The Concept of Discourse Community.” Writing About Writing: A College
Reader. Ed. Elizabeth Wardle and Doug Downs. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2011. 215-227
“The Ratline.” The Ratline – First Year Experience – Virginia Military Institute. N.p., n.d. Web.01 Dec. 2016.