“Gender,” “feminist,” “personification,” “prose,” “Gay,” “love.” What do all of these words have in common? They can all be linked together in some ways; such as a prose story starring a gay man who is studying the enigma of feminism and gender while using personification as the basis of his investigation and is beside himself with love for the topic. But that is not likely.

These words are however, linked into my life and the language that I use in my various discourse communities. Linked may not even be the right term; interwoven is probably more accurate because these words are part of my everyday interactions with roommates, family, friends, technology and teachers. These words represent aspects in my life that are inseparable from me.

Gender and feminist are words that I use in many of my discourses. I use them in my women’s studies classes, and in my everyday speech to friends and family. Gender is officially, a socially constructed classification of humans into two basic categories, men and women. Gender as a word is not exclusive to members of a women’s studies or feminist discourse, but an understanding of this word is necessary in order to participate effectively in either. A member of a feminist discourse community would use gender to describe how women are seen as inferior to men simply because of certain prescribed gender characteristics such as women are seen as nurturing, quiet, ladylike, whereas men are supposed to be strong, loud, and rugged. As a feminist myself I would use these gender characteristics to say how limited that view of women and men is and also how inaccurate. As I said before I am a feminist. I use this word to define myself as a member of the widespread feminist community.

Personification and prose are words that represent another community that I define myself by; my English teaching community. I am going to be an English teacher and these words represent both the jargon of this community and the content of what English teachers teach. Personification is attributing human aspects to inanimate objects and is vital when teaching poetry. Prose is all other writing that is not poetry, at least that’s how I view it. Both of these words appear in an English teacher’s classroom continuously and are important aspects when students are learning how to write their own works.

Finally gay and love are part of the discourse language I use with my friends and family. Gay means being attracted to, and loving, the same sex. Many of my friends are gay as well as my brother and so this word is meaningful to me. Again this word is not exclusive to the GLBTQA community but it is used by its members constantly. A member of this community uses gay as a means of identification, or in my case as an ally, I use it to respect someone who identifies as gay. And love is impossible to define but it is a word that is always used in my family community. We never part without saying “I love you.” And we use it simply to express our feelings and appreciation for one another.

As I have said before, all of these words are used in various discourse communities in my life, and they are all incredibly important not only in my language use within these discourses, but also in identifying me as a person.