What Is A Discourse Community?

“Its gotta be the shoes!” (Mars Blackmon) There are many groups/discourse communities I belong to. A discourse community is a group of people who have a common interest. They also have their own way of speaking, writing, behaviors and values. My favorite one is the sneaker head community. What is a sneaker head? A sneaker head is a person who buys shoes to wear and collect. It has become a culture, and has made this sneaker loving community have its own way of speaking, writing, behaving, and showing what we value. We have certain slang in the sneaker head community. It’s been in the culture for so long that the words we use in this community is considered normal. For example, kicks, heat, and clean are some words we use. Kicks are our way
of saying shoes. We use statements such as “those kicks are cool man,” or “nice kicks dude.” As for the word heat, it does not mean hot or warm, but it means an exclusive shoe, that not everyone has. “Dude that guys kicks are heat, man.” This statement means that the person’s pair of shoes was a limited edition one. Lastly, clean is to say man those shoes look nice. When we sneaker heads see someone with a nice shoe, we say “man those kicks are clean.” This language in our sneaker head community makes it fun and unique. An addition to our language is naming our shoes. Each shoe that releases has a nick name in the sneaker head community. It is very fun and also a quick way to remember which shoes is which. An example is the Jordan shoe brand. There is a pair of kicks called the Jordan 6 Olympics. This shoe is composed mainly of all white leather, and has a navy blue tumble leather under the shoe, with a red trademark Jumpman symbol in the back heel. This shoe is very popular among the sneaker heads. Another example is the Jordan 8 shoes. This shoe is composed of white smooth leather, and has hints of gray, and red. These shoes are called the bug’s bunny 8s, because it has a resemblance to the cartoon character’s color scheme. We nick name shoes because it makes it easier and more enjoyable. I can go up to a fellow sneaker head and say “what do you think about the Olympic 6’s? Or the bugs bunny 8’s?” He/she would know what shoe I am talking about and give his/her opinion. Having nicknames for shoes has always been part of the language and that is what makes this discourse community special. Furthermore, when we resell our shoes we have a certain way of posting/writing it up online.
On a Facebook group such as SOS, which stands for sneaker head of Sacramento, we post up our shoes and sell/trade them. First a person must write the shoe’s name and the condition the kicks are in and rate it from one through ten. Furthermore, the person who is selling must also include his/her shoe size. Then, we write how much we want for them, by writing BIN for this amount of dollars or put S/O. BIN means to buy it now and S/O means the start off amount. For S/O it is like bidding on an item, the highest bidder wins. In addition, the seller must write if he/she is trading or just looking for cash, too clarify what he/she is looking for. If a person writes DS, and has proof that it is, then the price may go up. DS stands for dead stock. Dead stock is a shoe that has not been worn. Sometimes an individual likes a shoe so much he buys two pairs, and the extra pair is considered dead stock. Continuing on, a person must also show pictures of the shoe, so buyers know how the product looks like. A sneaker head who poorly writes in detail about his shoe, is more likely to be ignored. If I sold one pair of shoes, I would write Jordan 8 bugs bunny, size 9, condition is 9 out of 10, flaws are little creasing on the sides, BIN 140, just cash no trades, and then I would provide a picture. Properly writing about the shoes is what will help an individual sell his/her
kicks. One behavior we sneaker heads have is showing off our shoes.
We do not show off our shoes to say that we are better, but we show off the shoe because we believe the kicks on our feet are clean. When people turn and look at our shoes, we call that breaking necks. This means that people notice how clean our shoe is or how they pop out. Every sneaker head loves shoes and want others to see them wear it. It can differ for all sneaker heads, but most of them enjoy “breaking necks.” I personally just enjoy shoes in general, but from time to time I also would like to be “breaking necks.” For example, I remember in high school, I had my air Jordan 3 true blues shoes on. Everywhere in the hall way I saw kids looking at my kicks. That day I was breaking a lot of necks. We sneaker heads also like to flex our shoes. Flex means to show off our shoes to others sneaker heads. For example, on the day I was wearing my true blue 3’s, my friend was flexing his black cement 3’s. These black cement 3’s were composed of all black tumble leather with gray cement elephant prints. My shoe, the true blue 3’s is composed of white tumble leather with hits of red and blue. It was like a fun competition, just to see who has the more hyped up sneaker. It felt good showing off my pair of shoes and it is very fun flexing shoes to fellow sneaker heads. It is all for
enjoyment.

Furthermore, there is many aspects we value and do not value. We sneaker heads value trust. Again, going back to the SOS group on Facebook, we are a community and in a community there must be trust. When we sell shoes or trade shoes, it must be a legit shoe, and people must commit to buy when they say they will buy. People who say they were going to buy from a seller, but never showed up to buy the shoes is called a flake. Flakes are no good in the group, it wastes the seller’s time. Also, when a person does not sell a legit shoe and sells a fake, they are banned and exposed to the entire community. Fakes are sneakers that are knock offs of the authentic shoes. It doesn’t bother us when someone wears a fake, but it bothers the community when someone is selling fakes for the authentic retail price. I remember a guy who got cheated on the group, he end up buying fakes from this seller. He loss $100 that could have gone to an authentic shoe. The guy who sold the fakes was banned and exposed to the SOS community. Trust is very important in this group. We also, had an incident where there was a person who was robbed at gun point for his kicks. This was supposed to be a trade between two sneaker heads, however, one of them robbed the other. Incidents like these are what makes the sneaker head community value trust so much. To sum up, trust is the number one thing we value in the group. The sneaker head community is an amusing community. If a person would like to start his/her collection then take the information I have given in this essay. We sneaker heads have our own language in the community. In addition, we have nick names for shoes, which makes it easier and enjoyable. Also, the way we write affects how we sneaker head can effectively advertise our shoes. Then, there is our fun behaviors such as breaking necks and flexing, which, are pleasant activities. Lastly the sneaker heads values trust in the entire community, because with trust it is more enjoyable and safe. I love this hobby, and the community that comes with it.