High Fidelity Response
Music influences people in different ways and on different levels. The range of influence music has on people ranges from people who are not influenced at all to people who couldn’t live without it. Three prime examples of people who couldn’t live without music in their lives are the characters in the movie High Fidelity: Rob, Barry and Dick. These three guys work in a record store where they have developed their own discourse community based on knowledge of music and a language where sarcasm and insults are widely accepted. The references they make ard their way of showing superiority within the group all stem from music. Pretty much everybody outside of their little circle looking in on one of their conversations would become confused about what’s happening or what they’re even talking about. This is the reason I have deemed the staff inside of Rob’s record store its own discourse community.
Rob, Barry and Dick are all extremely educated in music but lack in social skills. Their verbal communication often consists of random facts about music or references to songs making it hard for the average person to hold a conversation with them. When the three of them come together though, they could talk to each other for hours with the amount of knowledge they have. One could go as far as to say their verbal communication is a form of lexis since they use a specific vocabulary consisting of musical terms and references that most people wouldn’t fully understand. This lexis makes enculturation difficult because of the sheer amount of material outsiders would have to learn in order to keep up. It may also contribute to the reason why their community only consists of three people. Even though not everyone possesses the same passion for music as the three store employees I think there is another factor in their language that sets them apart as a discourse community. Their way of talking to each other consists of a lot of sarcasm and sometimes insults to show their knowledge and superiority over the other two. This naturally forms a hierarchy within the group where the different levels are based on how clever your insults are. Of course the insults and sarcasm are usually based on knowledge of music that the others don’t know, so that again highlights the importance of music in this community.
Now that we see what makes the staff inside the record store its own discourse community let’s analyze the role music plays. Music is the glue that holds this community together because it is a common interest of everyone in the group and is the reason the three met. If Rob hadn’t opened the record store and Barry and Dick didn’t have a passion for music to make them want to work there then this community would have never begun. Since the community did form though, a specific language and hierarchy formed with it. The language is pretty simple, the three reference music whenever they can and it is usually at the center of all conversations. Next is how music formed a social hierarchy between the three. The hierarchy is solely based on knowledge of music and how they can show that they know more than the other two guys which usually includes some sort of sarcasm or insult. To sum it up, music is essential to this discourse community and its importance can only be described as paramount because without music this community would seize to exist.