Project 3 proposal

Discourse Community Ethnography Proposal

I am going to write about airplane pilots as a Discourse Community. This is a community that I am working towards being in, as I am currently in flight school. I feel that this community meets all 6 of the requirements written by John Swales.They have a common set of goals, which is to transport cargo and passengers safely from one place to another.They have a method of communication, whether it be by radio communication to air traffic controllers,or in-person discussions with fellow pilots.They have participatory mechanisms that are put into place. As pilots, they are monitored by the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration). Pilots need to have mandatory routine physicals, to ensure that they are able to do their job safely.Pilots also have many genres that they put to use.For example  monitoring instruments during flight and filing flight plans.They use a certain language or lexis so to speak that unless you were a pilot you would not know the meaning of the terms. For instance "down wind" and "base" are terms used when landing an airplane. Lastly they have a threshold level of members. The minimum age to be a private pilot  is 16. You have to retire at age 65 as a pilot. In order to obtain your private pilots license you need 65 hours of flight time and to be a commercial pilot you need 1500 hours to work for the airlines. I feel that in doing research on pilots as a Discourse Community, it will give me a chance to to talk with other pilots and get a better understanding of what it means to be a pilot.