THE CONCEPT OF DISCOURSE

COMMUNITY
Vanessa Avelar

SEPTEMBER 24, 2017

RWS 1301
Professor Hernandez
 The Concept of Discourse Community 1

Introduction
Hate List follows the life of Valarie Leftman after a tragic incident that occurred at

school. Valerie was a normal girl who felt love, sadness, happiness, and most significantly hate.

Often bullied by people at school she writes her frustrations on paper; all the things and people

she hates. A way to vent her frustrations she allows her friend and her later boyfriend Nick see

and add to the list. Its seen as way for them to bond and release their frustrations without hurting

people around them, at least thats what is supposed to happen. After months of being bullied

and witnessing Valerie get bullied and humiliated, Nick snaps. The story takes place after Nick

uses the Hate List as a deadpool for all the people that hurt him, and after he semi completes his

list he continues to take his own life leaving Valerie in his wake. Blamed by many, praised as a

hero by others, and seen as a disgrace by her family Valarie tries to learn how to integrate back

into society after everything that has happened.

Characters

Valarie Leftman- A young, bullied, confused girl who was guided by her love for her boyfriend

and her distrust for her peers. She saved the girl who made her life unbearable on the daily basis,

but is treated as an accomplice to her boyfriends crime.

Nick Level- Valaries boyfriend, he killed and injured people on the hate list, before turning the

gun and killing himself.

Jessica Cambell- Originally a girl who had bullied Valarie the most and was known for calling

her Sister Death. She is detrimental to the story line in the sense that has the potential to change

every persons views of Valerie.

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Mrs.Leftman- Valaries mom, she feels guilty for not paying more attention to her daughter and

also feels the need to protect everyone else from Valarie.

Mr.Leftman- Valaries father, hes a lawyer who blames Valarie for the shooting and has strong

feelings of disappointment for his daughter. He is constantly angry and is seeing his secretary

behind his wifes back.

Frankie- Valaries younger brother, he often feels neglected by his parents since they are

consumed with Valaries problems.

Dr. Heiler- Valaries therapist who always gives Valarie the opportunity to see the world for

what it is.

Stacey- Valaries best friend since kindergarten. She blames Valarie for the shooting and ditches

Valarie once she returns back to school.

Christy Bruter- One of Valaries many bullies. Christy was Nicks first victim and is saved by

Valarie.

Ginny Baker- One of Nicks many victims she has a hard time being in the same room as Valarie

and struggles with a form of depression.

Bea- An art teacher who believes Valarie is innocent and has an odd perspective on life.

Discourse communities are prevalent in our everyday life; whether it be in movies,

books, school, or even churches. After researching, rereading, and viewing many types of

sources that contain examples of discourse communities Hate List was the only one that I

couldnt stop thinking about. Instead of having just one discourse community like many of the
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examples I had viewed, Hate List contained two discourse communities; the adults and the teens.

The adults main purpose as a community is to try to protect the kids from each other and help

prevent the future events like the shooting from occurring. Whereas the main purpose for the

teens is learning how to survive after tragedy. In this paper I will be discussing similarities and

differences within the two discourse communities, why it creates issues between the two

communities, and most importantly why Valarie Leftman doesnt fit into either community.

The first defining characteristic of a discourse community is a broadly agreed common

goal. (John Swales Page 217) For the adults in the community it would be trying to create a safer

environment for the teens. Sadly the way most of the adults go about this is by out casting

Valarie Leftman who in a sense is the biggest victim from the schools tragedy. In fact the

principle even condones a sort of bullying of Valarie and makes her seem like a villain. He has

numerous occasions where he blames Valarie for the tragedy; however this isnt only done by

the principle its done by the parents of some victims and Valaries parents. Very few adults see

the need to protect Valarie like they feel that the other students need to be protected. Now for

the teens they dont feel that they need to be protected, but they feel that they need to learn how

to survive with all the trauma. Ginny Baker for example cant even sit in the same room as

Valarie without having a full blown melt down. This is actually seen throughout the novel how

Valarie is socially out casted by her peers due to the fact they believe she had a major part of the

shooting. The majority of the students believe the way to survive and move on is to find

somebody tangible to blame and shun for the killings. This is actually a very backwards way of

healing due to the fact blaming and shunning is what caused the issue to begin with.

The second characteristic of a discourse community is intercommunication. Though there

were many forms of intercommunication within Hate List the most prominent version of
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intercommunication was the use of the newspaper. In every chapter of the book it starts with a

small article from the newspaper talking about either the victims of the shooting or how the

students are moving on from the shooting. The newspaper blinds the adults from really seeing

what is going on with the teens and how they are just repeating everything they did before the

school shooting and not positively progressing.(Hate List pg 211) All of the teens communicate

with one another through instant messaging and phone calls. However the students mostly use

student council meetings in order to communicate and discuss things going on within the student

body.

In the story the primary mechanism for providing feedback is the graduation ceremony of

their class.(Hate List pg 397) Both the adults and teens get to see what their student body

represents and how the tragedy has affected Valarie and every other teen in the community.

Valarie and Jessica were able to speak to both communities and truly voice the problems within

it, and show that their class is more than the tragedy that people try to define them as. This

specific scene was a turning point in the book and shows that Valarie was more than just

somebody who felt nothing but hate.

The next characteristic of a discourse community is the ability to communicate their

goals in different ways. (Swales pg 220-222) For example the adults use anti-gun posters, posters

talking about depression, and mental health posters to further spread the awareness of possibility

of school shootings. This was seen as a joke to the students because it felt like they were trying

to put a Band-Aid on a bullet wound. The students took a different approach of showing their

common goal, which was the creation of a memorial. The teens created a time capsule where

they would place something that represented each individual student inside. This shows how the

teens want to find a way to move on from the tragedy that plagued their lives. However not every
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teen in the book showed the potential of healing. Ginny Baker one of the surviving victims of

Nick choose not to place anything in the capsule showing that she wasnt ready to move on from

the injury that she sustained in the crossfire. (Hate List pg 401-402)

The fifth characteristic of a discourse community is the lexis used by the communities.

The adults specific lexis isnt even really talking about what happened but the hushed whispers

and the avoidance of words like bullying or shooting. This was because of the shame and the

general ill-feelings that were brought on by the shooting. The teens specific lexis is always in

reference to Valarie; before and after the shooting. Before the shooting it was the coined name

sister death (Hate List pg 91) and after the shooting its not even calling Valarie by her name

instead just referring to her as she or her. This shows the disrespect and dislike held for Valarie

before and after the shooting.

The final characteristic of a discourse community is the hierarchy of its members.(Swales

pg 222) In the teens community it is only two tiers; the student body and the student council. The

student council is ranked higher than the student body because its members have the ability of

separating what happened from who was the cause of the incident. In the adult community there

is four tiers of understanding. The first tier is comprised of the actual parents of the students they

dont hold a lot of understanding of how their children are coping.The next tier of understanding

is the administration of the school. The administration believes the best way for the students to

cope is by forgetting and pushing the students to interact with one another more. Dr.Hieler

represents the second highest tier of understanding he knows the situations and understands that

the way to heal is to stop putting blame people who are still around. However the highest level of

understanding goes to Bea she shows that there is more to the initial picture than what everyone

else sees. When Valarie is in the art studio painting what she sees herself as Bea tells her it is a
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picture of the monster that Valarie sees in the society around her and how Valarie sees herself.

But what separates Bea from all other adults is the fact that Bea tells Valarie that she shouldnt

see herself in that way.

I found it was really important that I showed both the discourse community in the adults

and teens because it shows the lack of communication between the two communities, and more

importantly why Valarie had so many issues adapting back into society. Valaries goal was to

protect others and learn how to cope with the loss of her best friend/boyfriend. She never saw

Nick as an aggressive killer that the newspaper showed him as. Valarie wants to be able to show

her peers and family that she didnt know what Nick planned and she never meant to hurt anyone

with the Hate list she just wanted to vent her feelings. When Valarie finally starts to really see

the world she comes to understand that neither community is really healing they are just looking

for somebody alive to blame. Even her parents refuse to see her as a victim instead they treat her

as if she held the gun herself. (Hate List pg 301)Valaries journey is a bit selfish, because while

everyone is trying to protect the world from her shes trying to heal herself by learning to live

again.

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References

Brown, J., & Brown, J. (2017). Hate list. New York: Little, Brown.

Swales,John. The Concept of Discourse Community. Genre Analysis: English in

Academic and Research Settings. Boston:Cambridge UP, 1990.21-32.Print