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Veterinary Office Discourse

Decent Essays

Let’s begin by asking ourselves: What is a discourse community? Well, according to a paper by Dan Melzer, a discourse community is used to “describe a community of people who share the same goals, the same methods of communication, the same genres, and the same lexis” (Melzer). A discourse community has some criteria that need to be met. There are a total of six different requirements. The first criterion is that it should have a “broadly agreed set of common public goals” (Melzer). Secondly, it needs “mechanisms of intercommunication among its members” (Melzer). Thirdly, “it uses its participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information and feedback” (Melzer). The fourth one is that it needs to “utilize and hence possess one or more genres …show more content…

In this essay, I am going to analyze how a veterinary office is a community discourse. A veterinary office is a building that is used for the medical treatment of animals. Throughout this office, there are many different types of jobs. According to Highland Vet Clinic, the different positions in a vet's office are veterinarian, vet tech, vet assistant, receptionist/CSR, animal care attendant, groomer, practice manager, and laboratory technician. With all of those different jobs in one building, there are going to be a lot of different sources of communication, a lot of people working towards doing the same thing for the same cause, and so on. Throughout this essay, I will be providing different ways a vet's office is a discourse community. I am going to cover three different criteria: mechanisms of intercommunication among its members, how they use participatory mechanisms to provide information and feedback, and then finally the threshold level of members and provide evidence on how each of them is used in a vets office. The first point that I want to cover is the “specific lexis” (Melzer). Typically, in vet offices, you will hear the different terms or lingos that are used around the

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