Discourse Community At St. Xavier High School

For my analysis of a discourse community that I am a part of, I will be focusing on St. Xavier High School and Jesuit education. St. Xavier is a great example of a discourse community and is backed up by the scholarly articles written by John Swales and Joseph Harris. Joseph Harris focuses his argument about what makes a community a community around writing. Harris proposes that “our aims and intentions in writing are thus not merely personal, idiosyncratic, but reflective of the communities to which we belong” (1989, 12). Harris firmly believes that the communities that we are a part of, shape who we become. We begin to think, speak, and act like the other members of our community. A discourse community must be made up of members with similar
Xavier and its members must share similar goals and values. Many of these goals and values are rooted in Jesuit teaching. As stated by the Jesuit Schools Network, one of the main goals of a Jesuit education is to “advocate a faith-justice commitment to the Catholic Church’s option for youth and the poor” (JSN, 1). Jesuits take pride in giving back to the community. St. Xavier embodies this characteristic through their extensive community service out reach. One of the biggest community service events that takes place at St. Xavier is the Annual Canned Food Drive. The St. Xavier website advertises that “The 2016 Canned Food Drive broke all school records this year collecting a grand total of 182,000 pounds of food and items for those in need. St. X helped more than 1,000 families adopted through more than 25 agencies across Greater Cincinnati” (Stxavier.org, 2). In order to collect that much food, it took significant effort from many students, all of which are putting to practice the Jesuit quality of community
Xavier twitter feed. This twitter feed provides an avenue for students to fully indulge in intercommunication with one another. This tweet is informing the student body of a charitable event going on in the Cincinnati area, and is filled with responses from students about further details. The twitter feed provides a quick and easy way for students to stay active in the communication within the discourse community. While it is important to keep students involved in the communication, it is also important to update alumni on what is going on at the school. Below is a picture of the St. Xavier Facebook feed that primarily keeps alumni updated on recent events. In this particular post it shares a video of one of the chorus groups singing the National Anthem before a Cincinnati Reds games at Great American Ball Park. Alumni are free to tag friends, as well as comment about St.