Writing in the Disciplines

I observed the NROTC unit here at North Carolina State University. This was most definitely a discourse because of their unique way of doing things. One thing that stuck out as different was how they communicate with each other. There is a clear hierarchy in the battalion and they must address the members at the top as sir or ma’am. Also the language they use differs from civilians. NROTC uses abbreviation way more than civilians, uses military time, and has many words only used in a military setting. My observations did not show anything about their style of writing, but as a member of NROTC I know more about it. They use military formatting for papers and that’s it. However, there aren’t many writing assignments in this community. Also their main way of communication is email, where they do not have to use military format, but informal paragraphs or sentences.

Online environments play a huge part in the communication. There are constant emails sent out followed by excel worksheets we need to fill out. Excel worksheets are used constantly as an easy way to gather lots of information from everyone in the battalion. However, even though we use email and excel just about daily, the use of the internet does not go much farther than that, besides for the occasional paper.