Post 11

A discourse community I am familiar with is the running community, or a little more narrowly, the OU cross country team.  The broadly agreed set of goals for the team is to work hard and have its results show in meets.  Placing high, or hopefully first, is the goal of the team.  They also have the goal of becoming a "family."  They count on each other as friends and as teammates.  The team has information exchange through facebook and emails.  They participate through workouts and practice, and they also participate in meets and races.  There are also a lot of magazines the team and other runners pay attention to.  Runner's World is very popular and so are athletic gear magazines.   Its hard to define a genre of a group.  I think the genre of this group varies from informal to serious.  It depends on which activities are being participated in at the moment.  Pep talks are common to get fired up before a race.  This might be considered a genre.  Specialized terminology is very prevalent in this community.  The team has certain runs they go on.  If someone is not on the team, they would not know what Flat Dudes and Bart's means.  These are particular routes only OU cross country runners would know.  These names have been around for a couple decades and have become part of the XC community here on campus.  Most of the runners are recruited and persuaded to come run here.  Only a handful walk on to the team.  Generally with age, runners improve over the years.  The upperclassmen become the fastest and the underclassmen are learning the ropes of the team.  Once the NCAA eligibility is used for a member, they are done with the team, but the friendship still continues.  They are then veterans of the team and are always welcomed back for a visit.