I was at a dinner party a couple of nights ago and my friends started asking me about my courses. As theatre people, they could not understand how I had a class that taught the discourses of theatre. I began explaining how some students may not know what it means to be backstage, or to be in a theatre of the round, or part of the audience. As I was explaining the bricks and mortar of my subject, my friends became even more confused. In return, I tried to think of another way to explain it.
One of my friends at this party does not have facebook. She has never had much exposure to the site either. Thus I started talking about the discourse of facebook. For someone who has never been on facebook they would have a hard time understanding a conversation where people click on a button to like something, can poke someone virtually, and where writing on their wall has nothing to do with graffiti. Almost everything we do has its own discourse but explaining that language to outsiders can be difficult. It was hard for my friends to understand that some people have never been exposed to theatre language. However, when I put it in the context of Facebook they were able to see how difficult it could be.