Orange is the New Black Analysis Response Paper - Essay Example

Dis Communities In episode one of Orange is the New Black season one, as directed by DDotOmen, there are various ways in which discourse communities are represented. To begin with, the prison itself forms part of a discourse community. Here, things are institutionalized and freedom is minimized. Communication is therefore kind of limited to certain terminologies. In this discourse community, there are other things like weird behaviors that come up such as lesbianism, gay relationships and other types of behaviors that does not need to meet the eyes of a free person.

When comparing this to John Ann’s book on Discourse Communities and Communities of Practice: Membership, Conflict, and Diversity, discourse communities have unique ways in which they operate and one needed not to join the community in order to participate in it. He talked about how conflict can arise from such a community and how authority can be used to solve such conflicts. Just like in jail people who join particular discourse communities are brought together by the fact that they have things in common such as language, basis of sharing things in common such as sharing participation, and sharing expectations.

As people who come to prisons are people from diverse culture, races and origin, these people belong to a discourse society which they find themselves in, hence, with time, adopts to the particular cultures, religion and behaviors of the new discourse society. In these discourse communities formed, just like a formed social website, there are new things that go viral very fast. News that gathered from one part of the community does not take long before it spreads to the whole community. As John puts it, discourse communities have ways of controlling their numbers around the globe.

First, they have the same language and way of communication. They have a way of obtaining membership, hence can easily control their numbers in the world. They therefore communicate very efficiently to one another. There are times that we find ourselves in certain communities without our influence. For instance, when I find myself born amidst people who are not my tribe mates, different races, different cultures and religion. I will have to cope up to the situation as I adapt to the new changes in life.

I will therefore consider that community as my discourse community. However, some discourse communities are by choice, such as that going to jail, joining a social website, etc.