A Discourse Community jail inmates and those who visit them Essay

A Discourse Community jail inmates and those who visit them - Essay ExampleAs John Wideman coiffure it in his seminal book, a person visiting a prison is forced to become an inmate . . . subject to the same sorts of humiliation and depersonalization . . . do to feel powerless, intimidated by the power of the terra firma (p.52). Yet this process of making visitors feel like prisoners paradoxically brings about a sense of friendship between visitor and inmate that might not otherwise exist.I visited my mothers boyfriend in prison for three years. He had been wrongly convicted and was in a state jail that seemed to attempt to make it very difficult for people to visit the prisoners in comfort. First of all, the criminal background of the person visiting needed to be checked before you could be put on the prisoners visitor list. In an ironic reversal from the normal of role of prisons, to enter on e as a visitor one could not have a criminal record. Yet at the same time, once you had been passed as non-criminal (or at least neer having been convicted of a criminal offense) you were then searched quite extensively before being allowed in.The visitors were forced to wait for more than an hour in a quite depressing and dirty waiting-room. The discourse that they took part in was one of silence at this point.