This essay consisted of a cultural study of a VMI discourse community. Swales defines a discourse community, in his work “The Concept of Discourse Community,” as, “a group of people who share certain language-using practices,” (Swales 224). This essay was a combination of research and analysis, which could be derived from Swales’ six characteristics of a discourse community.

I chose a community that I was interested in, which is the Cadet Investment Group (CIG).Research was a necessity and it only makes sense to interview a current or former member of the CIG to get a real sense of this community. I interviewed my brother, Greg (class of 2015), who was a 2-year member of the group. The questions I asked for data collection were from Writing About Writing (p. 314). I use Swales’ six characteristics and Gee’s idea of language application to analyze this data that I collected. Swales’ characteristics shows that is a very efficient discourse community and Gee’s idea of language application shows that it is a very successful one.

essay 3 – VMI discourse community