Essay Sample on Army Veterans: Discourse Community Analysis

Introduction

The army veterans are acting as a discourse community of its own. It is a community which has its own distinct characteristics, hence enabling it's distinguishing from other communities. In this case, the army veterans discourse community is composed of the trained army with special skills not possessed by the common citizens of a country. They have been exposed to particular kinds of hardships which have enabled them to toughen up, hence with the ability to handle any situations that threaten to adversely affect their lives as well as those of the common citizens of a country. They have their own defined goals which underlie and determines the courses of actions that they undertake each day, alongside their preparations for such tasks. They also have specialized ways of communicating with each other, laced with specific characteristics genres, lexicons, and symbols which communicate a lot to the members in their inner circles, and which the ordinary civilians cannot easily identify with nor interpret their meanings (Kang, 24). Therefore, it can be seen that the army discourse community is specialized to some extent, with characteristic features which command academic scrutiny in establishing its nature, now and into posterity.

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Additionally, the army community has the specified levels of personnel inside it. It is mainly because of the varying range of expertise possessed by the constituent individuals in it. It can be observed that there are those who have worked in the military for quite a long time, hence have had their inception training done a long time ago, with adequate time to exercise their skills I a wide range of duties in serving the nation. They thus form strongly veteran members of the community, which commands respect and submission from their counterparts the lower ranks. They have special clothing with symbols which help them to identify the ranks in which the wearer falls under. They have been trained to readily interpret them as they come across them daily. They can, from the look of symbols in one's clothing, be able to decipher the ranks in which one falls under, hence having the opportunity to deal with them accordingly. For the case of the veterans in the higher ranks, they are given due respect an attended as spelled in their courses of actions. It can be the performance of a salute or a specified action intended to show respect. On the other hand, those veterans in the lower ranks are attended accordingly, which can include the dissemination of orders to them or offering any relevant services as required. They are as further brought out in the subsequent paragraphs.

Goals of the Community

There are specific goals which are being projected at by the army veterans discourse community. They are the ones which to a larger percentage dictate the actions and activities they perform daily. One of them involves the attendance of member problems which are unique to them. Based on the types of actions they undertake in maintaining peace, safeguarding the interests of the nation, fighting the insurgents, as well as bringing about law and order, they come across the challenges in their lives which serve to test their strength about handling had situations, unlike the civilian society. They are thus prone to stressful conditions, coma, absent-mindedness, and depressions which can escalate to Post Traumatic Stress Disorders (PTSD). Such is quite detrimental to their health and wellbeing thus calling for immediate causes of action. They, in most cases, happen following a tragic incident such as a fight with deadly insurgents where they were involved and managed to survive by a whisker. They thus require professional services form specialized articular groups such as life couches and mentors. Hence, the community serves to optimally identify the best mechanism that can be utilized to bring the stress disorders that they frequently come across into control, thus facilitating their henceforth happy existence. It is because the existence of such disorders in the lives of army veterans can act as the chief impediments to their wellbeing, thus bringing about disorderly life which can be characterized by depressions, lack of concentrations, suicidal thoughts, and even suicidal attempts.

Additionally, the community exists with the common goal of demonstrating their solidarity of purpose. It is because the community is tasked with military responsibilities of safeguarding the national interest including safety across the country's borders (Mazur, 32). In this case, the community exists to establish and promote their presence about service to the nation. Their presence as a wholeness serves to act as a family where their needs are gathered, such as a show of unity and love, the source of encouragement, a platform to learn more from one another, and finally the assurance of cooperation which aids in the effective handling of the duties ahead of them.

Finally, the community exists to honor the heroes in their lines who died long ago in their service to the county. It takes parts in security services which serve to act as a continuation of their heroic moves to defend national interest, which unfortunately lead to their deaths in service to humanity.

Communication Mechanism of the Members

The members of the army discourse community have special communication mechanisms unique to them. In this case, they can pass across messages amongst themselves without the outsiders getting to understand them, thus an indication of the established nature of their communication language. There are thus varied ways of communication ways utilized by the army veteran community. They include the use of alphabet lexicon, the symbols, signs, as well as gestures; all meant to pass across specific messages as per their specifications, thought during training activities.

First, there is the use of alphabet lexicon which is unique to them (White, 28). An example is saying alpha to represent letter a and bravo to represent letter b. In this regard, the words are not just meant to stand for the alphabets, but to mean and thus command specific courses of actions from the intended individuals. Also, the short words used to communicate quantitatively are meant to save time. They hence compose the jargons specifically for the army veterans, which the civilian can hardly get any gist concerning the communications.

Additionally, the army veterans make use of symbols, gestures, and signs as a form of communicating with one another. They are meant to shorten the verbose nature of the common forms of communication used by the civilians, which also saves time in the veteran community in the long run. Some symbols have been encrypted and displayed on the uniforms of the army veterans. They pass specific messages to the beholders, such as the military ranks of the people at hand. They will then have understood the reactions required and behavioral mechanisms to display in such settings. Finally, there is the use of gestures amongst the members of the army veteran community. They have been held since training and are meant to pass across specific communications to the members once put into use. Such characterizes the communication mechanism of the members of the army veteran community.

Purposes of Different Modes and Methods of Communication

There are the specific purposes of the methods of communication, constituting communication mechanism, in the army veteran community. One of them is to save time. It can be seen that the use of signs and gestures by the members consumes shorter time frames to pass the messages compared to the use of many words. Additionally, they help in keeping the secrets of the community, where lexicons are applied (Costa, 18). In this case, the lexicons and jargons are understood by the members of the community alone, locking out the civilians who have not been trained to understand the language from getting to know its meaning. Finally, the use of signs serves to pass across the messages without the need to make noise when words are used, especially where silence is required.

Experts and Novices

In the army veteran community, the expert refers to the members who have had a lot of experiences in the field, having been trained and undertook practical field activities for quite a while. On the other hand, the novice consists of the newly incorporated members of the community who have not yet grasped all the activities of the community. They get to transition to become experts through getting involved in vigorous training and field practices to gain the required experiences.

Bibliography

Costa, Dora L., and Matthew E. Kahn. "Health, wartime stress, and unit cohesion: Evidence from Union Army veterans." Demography 47.1 (2010): 45-66.

Kang, Han K., et al. "Suicide risk among 1.3 million veterans who were on active duty during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars." Annals of epidemiology 25.2 (2015): 96-100.

Mazur, Allan, and Alan Booth. "Testosterone is related to deviance in male army veterans, but relationships are not moderated by cortisol." Biological psychology 96 (2014): 72-76.

White, James, et al. "Interarm differences in systolic blood pressure and mortality among US army veterans: aetiological associations and risk prediction in the Vietnam experience study." European journal of preventive cardiology 21.11 (2014): 1394-1400.