A Night At The Perk

A discourse community comprises of a group of people sharing a common and distinct mode of communication or discourse, especially within a particular domain of intellectual or social activity (Oxforddictionaries, 2017). Some of the discourse communities I consider to be a part of, include an Indian joint family, my peer group, high school education in India, the Apple community and education at Pace university.

A discourse community is a social collective that shares ideas, goals, values, and themes. Discourse communities existed in all facets of life, and are important to each individual’s social life. We all belong to varies discourse communities. The people you hang out with, the social networks you belong to, and even your favorite sports teams are discourse communities. Today we will look at a specific one; we will look at the discourse community of Mixed Martial Arts.

James T Porter describes a discourse community as a group who “Shares assumptions and what objects are appropriate for examination and discussion”, in other words; a group of people who are in some way or form connected. So, take engineers for example where every member pays the same price for entry, an engineering degree. This would mean that from day one every member is indoctrinated with the same way of thinking and share a common knowledge at the core of their education. The shared goals of the community are to design, develop and create new feats of engineering in their respective fields. In order for engineers to accomplish their goals, they need to work together and communicate. But, how exactly does an engineer communicate if they are

In his article “The Concept of Discourse Community,” Professor John Swales defines what a discourse community is, following with a list of six different points that a group must align with in order to qualify as a discourse community. These parameters are as follows: “a broadly agreed set of common public goals,” “mechanisms of intercommunication among its members,” the use of “participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information and feedback”, use or possession of “one or more genres in the communicative furtherance of its aims”, “some specific lexis”, and “a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discoursal expertise” (471-473).

A discourse community is defined as groups that have goals or purposes, and use communication to achieve these goals. John Swales is a professor in linguistics and received his Ph. D. from Cambridge University. John Swales’s Six Criteria is a perfect setup for a discourse community, and some of the steps are setting a common goal, mechanisms of intercommunication; provide information and feedback, genres, lexis, and threshold level of members. James Lee is a professor who taught linguistics at Stanford and Northwestern University. Gee’s idea of a discourse community is a secondary dominant or non-dominant which applies to their life outside of work. I thought police officers would make a great example of a discourse community because of the

An example of a discourse community I choose to talk about in this paper is the JPS Nail Salon located near Elvis Presley Boulevard. I recently became a part of this particular discourse community group by volunteering to help out on the weekends. I thought it would be interesting to dig a little deeper as to how discourse community works out as a whole.

I am a part of many different discourse communities. I am a college student, a millennial, a nanny, a family member, a friend, and a full time employee. In each aspect of my life, I participate in discourse communities with those around me; with goals, genre, and lexis. Of my discourse community memberships, the one which fit Swales’ definition most accurately would be in my place of work (HisWay).

A discourse community is defined as a group of individuals who share a common purpose and use different forms of communication to pursue these goals (John Swales). In order for a discourse community to be considered as such it must have certain characteristics including communication, goals, lexis, etc. A community that I have been analyzing is the nursing career field. To analyze this community I interviewed a nurse named Deborah Henderson and some may recognize her as an academic advisor for the college of education and health professions and I was able to obtain an example of a literature this discourse reads. Using research that I have conducted and using the characteristics of a discourse community we can determine if nursing can be considered as a discourse community.

​A discourse community is a group of individuals who share objectives, customs, and experiences. Arguably, an individual may have several discourse communities. For example, the said person could belong to a running community, food’s enthusiast community, a family, and a student community, which is also a discourse community. In some cases, these discourse communities may overlap as they share commonalities. More specifically, is the English class as the discourse community where students share perceptions of the course workload and how these perceptions influence their grades.

The idea of groups has been going on for as long as there have been humans. So it isn’t beyond the imagination to find that there are specific terms for different groups. But today, this essay will be focusing on a single term for a group. This term is called a discourse community. What is a discourse community? A discourse community is a group of people involved in and communicating about a particular topic, issue, or in a particular field (Instructure, 2013). And to go into even more depth about what this essay is about, it has to do with a class that I am in. This class is called comp 1900, and it is an introduction to computer science course. And the reason why I have chosen to see this class as a discourse community is because I believe it fits into the six Swales rules for deciding if a community is a discourse community. The rules go as follows from the “Writing about Writing” book by Elizabeth Wardle and Doug Downs:

A discourse community is a group of people who share the same beliefs, who conversate, or have a discussion over a topic of the groups choice. Football teams, school clubs, and activist movements are examples of different types of discourse communities. Religion is a very interesting discourse community. Judaism, Amish, being Catholic are just a few out of the many types of religions. All religions believe in God(s), which makes them a discourse community; which also is one of the requirements that they share a belief.

Many examples of discourse community can be seen when you consider music. Every artist has two sets of fan bases; the first are the “band wagon” fans, these are people who only like the artist when they are what society considers main stream. The second type of fans are the loyal fans, most who have listened to the artist since they have started singing/rapping. These loyal fans are the groups who make up discourse communities. These communities are important because they are the structure of an artist career, without these loyal fans, artist aren’t able to grow.

As part of daily life, we communicate and connect ourselves with certain communities. School, jobs, families, sports, extracurricular activities, and many other communities are just a few we come into contact with. Although these may seem to appear the same, there are specific types of communities such as a discourse community. A discourse community is a group of people involved in and communicating about a particular topic, issue, or in a particular field (Webcourses, N.d, Website) that has a share a common set of goals and attempt to achieve these goals (Swales, 1990). According to researcher and educator, John Swales, there are six characteristics that define whether or not a community is considered a discourse community. Following the criteria Swales states is necessary to be a discourse community, I did an in depth research on the American Sign Language community. Through my study, I was able to meet all six characteristics.

For the purposes of this paper, I will be using the criteria that were outlined by John Swales for what classifies as a Discourse Community. Swales said that for a community of individuals to be considered a Discourse Community if must meet six basic requirements. These requirements are that "there are common goals, participatory mechanisms, information exchange, community specific genres, a highly specialized terminology and a high general level of expertise" (Swales 224). We will explore these requirements further as we look into whether Reddit fits them or

Business Studies is an important course that prepares students to face the real practice of commerce. Engaging theory and practice is instrumental in ensuring that students learn the underlying factors that determine the practice of every business practice. Carroll and Buchholtz (2011) suggest that business forms the backbone of the current economic activities as every activity of human life must involve some loss and gain together. Additionally, he notes that entrepreneurship is taking deep roots in the society, a condition which mandates everybody to possess some knowledge in business. Drawing reference from the aforementioned statements, it is important for the society to have individuals who possess not only