There are many paths in life that each person takes to achieve their ambitions. As they progress through life, these people discover groups called speech communities. According to John Swales, he defines the discourse community as "a broadly agreed upon set of common public goals, mechanisms for intercommunication among its members, which uses its participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information and comment, public services and, therefore, treats one or more genres in the communicative framework. the pursuit of its objectives, acquires a specific lexicon and has a threshold of members with an appropriate degree of relevant content and discourse expertise”. In short, a speech community is a group of people who share similar ideas, goals, and ways of communicating. Group members typically assume named or held levels of discursive authority. This essay will expand on the topic of the discourse community of the freight and receiving team at Home Depot, how newcomers become enculturated and gain authority in the discourse community, and their personal experiences with authority within the community. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an Original Essay To begin, one discourse community that I am a part of is the Home Depot Freight and Receiving Team. The group exists to maintain Home Depot's business. I was on the night shift and the community's common goal is to come into work on the days we are assigned to work and complete the daily task. Our job is to restock and/or stock each item that comes off the delivery truck during overnight hours and prior to departure time. We also need to ensure, before the store opens to customers, that our assigned department is cleaned of any messes caused overnight and ensure that all fenders, side caps and tips were presentable. Without the group, Home Depot would have nothing in stock to sell, and if they had nothing in stock to sell, they would not be able to generate revenue and would eventually have to close their business. The freight and receiving community communicates in different ways and uses terms that would only be understood by members of the group. Community members communicate either face to face, in meetings, over the intercom, or by calling each other through the FIRST phones each of us has. We communicate primarily through meetings at the start of the shift so we know what the night's task is and who is working in which department that night. Throughout the night we communicate to see who needs help, who is almost finished or already finished, to find out if there is anything else the boss wants us to finish too, or just to see what is happening. Types of work are primarily informal notes, writing reports or lists, or whiteboard messages. Discourse communities come in all sizes, and each community has different sets of genres and different ways of communicating. Additionally, for many newcomers, it's a bit difficult for them to adjust to their new speech community and it often takes them a while to get the feel for it. as if they belonged. This is no different as a new member of the freight and receiving discourse community. Newcomers to the community acquire knowledge, language and genres.