Read the Room! Navigating Social Contexts and Written Texts

     I always get excited when things like TikTok are looked at in an academic setting. Often, I find academic writing can be a bit pretentious when it comes to 'normal' things. I really like that this article took TikTok seriously. I had never heard of a "discourse community" before reading this article, and I found that concept very interesting. From what I gathered, as long as a community fits the set of criteria, a discourse community can be about anything. It made me think about what discourse communities I might be a part of. I thought it was interesting that they looked at if TikTok as a whole could be considered a discourse community. To me, it seems like TikTok is more of a home for different discourse communities, rather than a community itself. You often hear people talk about what "side" of TikTok they're on. I think each of these "sides" is their own TikTok discourse community. 

    One sentence that really stuck with me was Kelly talked about her internship, and how she felt she was infiltrating the company rather than joining the team. I had a similar experience at my summer internship. I worked for the Dallas County District Attorney, and often felt like I was more in the way than helpful. I missed the first week of training because I was in London, and never felt like I knew what I was doing. They kept saying they were going to train me, but never did. Before doing the internship, it was my dream job, but after, I couldn't wait for it to end. I now wonder what I could have done more to become an "integrated member of the community." My internship was also significantly shorter than hers, six weeks compared to two years, so maybe with time mine would have gotten better.

    The main point I took from this article was to know your audience. In order to fit into a community, you need to use their language, learn their interests, and add value to the group. I think these principles can apply to pretty much any community, but I enjoyed hearing about the internship stories of the two students.