Social Science

Social Science

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Introduction

The gym or fitness is a better term to use as an umbrella to cover the different disciplines of fitness as they are seen through by most of the lenses. By this, I mean that individuals have emotions towards the fitness discipline. Some of the individuals see it as a chore, which drags their feet to put on their athletic wear simply. On the other hand, others are passionate about going to the gym and thus do nothing but dream about stepping their feet into the gym each day and the consecutive ones. For some of the people, it is their responsibility to be under the same roof where weights and sweat get dropped. For those that attend the gym, either by self-will or through the doctor’s recommendation, they all tend to share a common goal that gets accomplished through the genres, that is the aim of the research is to illustrate how the firmness industry is a form of a discourse community.

According to John Swales, a discourse community has a broadly agreed set of common public goals (Swales, 2014), that are shared to help develop the community as they tend to assist the individuals to exchange information with each other through the different genres. In Zotmann’s research, materiality and genre in the study of the discourse communities, he writes that whether we are studying academics, professional or public communities, the genres are considered as material entities that enable us to enrich the ideas of a discourse community through the provision of discipline and focus to the study of unities of a language and the society (Zotzmann, 2007). The most interesting thing about physical training is that the different members of fitness have a different perspective to the discourse community and thus it can either be professional or casual. However, through the genres it allows the members to get connected locally, nationally or even internationally. The genres help create fluidity in communication within the community. It thus becomes a domino effect where the genres tend to allow for the communication to develop allowing for the sharing of goals as well as their accomplishment.

We have to get the understanding that fitness is not merely defined by bodybuilding, this is because one discipline of fitness and the other one that is probably noticed is the one for the gym (Andrews, Sudwell & Sparkes, 2005). Fitness as well covers sporting activities, strong man that is one of the styles of training and the martial arts to provide one with an idea of how fitness is found in the different fields. There have been significant developments in the fitness industry since the year 1890s at a time when bodybuilding began to develop, and it is with this growth that it brought in the varying types of training and the development of new branches of fitness.

It is apparent that in the article, Fit and Flexible: the fitness industry, the personal trainers and emotional service labor, where the author Jennifer Smith Maguire states that since the early 1970s, the pursuit of fitness has continued to develop into a multibillion-dollar industry in the US, spanning the health food, exercise equipment’s, health club industries and the instructional video (Maguire, 2001). We see how fitness is not working out; fitness has branched out where the genres and the forms of communication became important and needed for the growth of the community to occur. The cross fit was founded in the year 2000 and is amongst the newest disciplines of fitness. The first ever CrossFit games conducted in the year 2007 and since then they have grown from only a few competitors to many both nationally and internationally.

Personally, I will be focusing on the traditional outlook of the working out, and by this, I mean the researching of the goals that bodybuilding and the common people like me and you have in common. I have participated in the majority of the sports and to this in have dedicated a couple of my years in the gym. I am one of the individuals that belong to the motivated group of the people that are enthusiastic of exerting a certain amount of force to get an object moved. Being part of this discourse community, I hope that I will be able to demonstrate the goals as well as the genres that assist in its classification as a discourse community.

Methods

In my research, I happened to interview two of the owners of the same gym where one of the owners was a professional competitor as a bodybuilder, and the other one happened to be a personal trainer that has incorporated fitness into his routine for a long duration of almost ten years of his life. Here we shall refer to the bodybuilder as subject X while his colleague a personal trainer as subject Y. I proposed and asked the same questions to both of the subjects to see if there would be a large difference on the answers keeping in mind that they work in the same environment. However, I didn’t interview them at the same time so that both of the subjects could provide a unique answer rather than agreeing with one another if they happened to get interviewed at the same time. I asked them both what was a common reasons as to why the clients become members of their gym or the reason as to why members started working out. I also happened to ask as to how they communicated with their clients, among each other and to the rest of the gym owners. When it came to genres, they completely seemed to be lost and I had to explain by providing more examples of what I meant by the genres on order for them to understand.

Results

The answers that were provided by both of the subjects were unique in their ways, but to some extent, they were connected by some characteristics. When I asked the bodybuilder (subject X) the common reasons as to why their clients happened to join the fitness community, his response was due to that they wanted to look good and possess a similar physique of a bodybuilder like him. The response from the subject Y (personal trainer) was more but a little different as he mentioned that most of his clients would tell him that they wanted and were in search of improving their lives and becoming healthier. The two answers from the respondents might not seem to be related but all along they happen to demonstrate a common goal or target, and that is their clients have the attention of improving some of the aspects of their lives through indulgence to fitness.

The two questions about how they happened to communicate and the type of genres that they used were merged together and once they were comfortable with the idea of what I meant by the genre they said that they used about the same types of genres. Both subjects X and Y create workout programs and the type of nutrition programs for their potential clients. Keeping in mind that it is a business, the reports and programs to which they create have to be professional and indeed formal. However, both of the subjects said that when using social media to promote their business through videos and pictures they happen to be less formal. They have found out that a more relaxed approach has consequently assisted them to attract more clients. Both of the subjects happened to mention that through workout programs and the posts on the social media, clients communicate with the other clients and this shows how the common goal and the lexis happen to get shared amongst the fitness community. When elaborating on the type of communication, I happened to discover that Subject X was more technical with his terminologies than subject Y, having for example in the description of the exercise, he happened to mention the biological name of the muscle to which was being activated. On the other side Subject Y also knew the perfect terminology and he talked in a manner that was more general and to which the clients would understand in the lay man’s language.

Analysis

The genres happen to play a significant role in the discourse communities in which they assist in creating the feeling of the community. According to Bhatia, all the genres are designed specifically to bring the specialists and the non-specialists in a community together (Bhatia, 2004). The genres assist in the illustration of a discourse community to people that are more interested or that do not belong in it yet in that community. For example, in the gym, there are posters with fitness models to which they demonstrate how to perform an exercise or the other posters with the instructions on how to use a certain machine properly and more of it safely. Someone that attends the gym more often would be better suited with the essential vocabulary to understand the posters than an individual that steps his foot at the door for the first time in the fitness place.

The genres in the gym also happen to include the use of social media to post the pictures as well as share some of the valuable information with the rest of the community in trying to persuade them to be part of the community. According to Aplevich, In addition to the owning genres, a discourse community has acquired specific lexis (Aplevich, 2011). The language in these genres may vary from slang to strict, and usually, someone can find informal language in the social media that incorporates the use of hashtags and abbreviations under the pictures. At the other genres, you may find a very well-articulated post on the Facebook page that regards to the discovery of a new training method or emergence of a new type of food that magically assist one to lose weight with the blink of an eye. The most important thing to grasp from the illustration is that the degree of strictness might appeal differently to certain people. To the older folks, the formality might attract them more compared to the younger individuals to whom are up to date with the terminology in the application.

Conclusion

From the results obtained from the research that I conducted, there are various interesting things that I found some of them that I had not thought of before. I hadn’t realized that the fitness community covered such an extensive environment to which the exchange of goals and targets along with the genres frequently occurred. Swales states that a community discourse is defined through the sharing of the common targets that have been agreed upon by the involved bodies and that the goals can be shared only via communication and also through the different genres that allow for the information to be transferred from one party to the other.

The goals are clear although they happen to be varied and despite the disparity, the communication channels for the goals do exist therefore painting a real picture of nature of human in today. It is evident that majority of the people who do not engage or take part in the discourse community have continuously been introduced to the community, both willingly and unwillingly. The people who are willing would want to keep fit maintaining their shape or mending the current unwanted shapes.

Furthermore, the other group may be referred to the fitness club by a doctor and contributing to the group that involuntarily find themselves in the gym to keep fit. However despite these differences in reasons all the individuals in the discourse community continue and will continue to share a similar goal, the goal of improving the health status. For the fitness clubs to achieve a healthy community, a continuous advertisement along the social media platforms such as the Facebook will continue to appear wooing more people to join the community. Finally, it is not a must that one gets forced to the gym to keep fit, but its one’s responsibility to maintain a healthier life.

References

Andrews, G. J., Sudwell, M. I., & Sparkes, A. C. (2005). Towards a geography of fitness: an ethnographic case study of the gym in British bodybuilding culture. Social science & medicine, 60(4), 877-891.

Aplevich, N. (2011). Discourse Communities and Communicative Genres. Stephan Habscheid (Hg.): Textsorten, Handlungsmuster, Oberflächen. Linguistische Typologien der Kommunikation. Berlin: de Gruyter (De Gruyter Lexikon), 98-122.

Bhatia, V. (2004). Worlds of written discourse: A genre-based view. A&C Black.

Maguire, J. S. (2001). Fit and flexible: The fitness industry, personal trainers and emotional service labor. Sociology of Sport Journal, 18(4), 379-402.

Swales, J. (2014). The concept of discourse community. Wardle and Downs, 215-28.

Zotzmann, K. (2007). Educating for the future: a critical discourse analysis of the academic field of intercultural business communication (Doctoral dissertation).