Discourse Community As A Discourse Community

Discourse communities are all around us—we all belong to a discourse community. A discourse community is a body of persons who share common and unique modes of communication or discourse (“Discourse Community”). In order for a community to identify as a discourse community, the community must possess six defining qualities that categorize it as a discourse community. As defined by John Swales, a researcher and professor of linguistics, discourse communities “have a broadly set of common public goals, mechanisms of intercommunication among its members, participatory mechanisms to provide information and feedback, one or more genres in the communicative furtherance of its aims, an acquired lexis, and a threshold level of members with a

Accomplishing goals through intercommunication among members of a community is one characteristic that makes up a discourse community. A discourse community has six characteristics such as having a broadly agreed set of goals, a participatory mechanism to provide information or feedback, acquiring a specific level of language, and members with a suitable degree of relevant content. The community that is a community discourse is India. India occupies the greater part of South Asia and consists of twenty-nine states. India is most known for festivals, food, and jewelry. The constitution of India does not give any language the status of national language. So, communication among the people is not easy with twenty-two languages in one country. India consists of diverse ethnic races and groups who strictly follow specific customs. The cultural diversity of the country is what makes up the discourse customs within the community.

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.

To be a part of a discourse community, one must be credible, possess factual knowledge and draw on the values of its members to be accepted into the community. At the same time, a person must learn typical ways people in that community communicate and argue. They share a certain genre—type of writing. Members of discourse communities provide information and feedback that are imperative in order for that discourse community to grow. In the following paper, I will discuss three discourse communities and a genre that they typically use: people who read Nutritional Facts religiously, college students, and industrial organizational psychologists.

After identifying and describing the six points of criteria for qualification, Swales writes that even if just one attribute is missing, it may still be enough to prevent the formation of a discourse community (469). Keeping this in mind, it is important to identify all six points when trying to prove the existence of a discourse community. Due to the presence of all six attributes, I am a part of a discourse community myself. During the summer months, I work as a lifeguard at Avalon Summer Sports Club, a local

A discourse community is a group of people involved in and communicating about a particular topic, issue, or in a particular field. According to the criteria conveyed in “The Concept of Discourse Community” by John Swales, Christianity can be considered as a discourse community because of its common goals, medium of communication, participatory mechanisms, specific genres, and its threshold level of members.

Understand the ways that reader and writer wrote in and beyond the university. On way is writing essays about certain discourse communities like the “Persuasive” essay, where I had to write about a discourse community I was part of and how it used writing. It was a challenging essay on the part where I had to explain and give examples since my discourse community was my criminal justice study group. It was hard to describe how writing took place and make it persuasive showing why writing is important to my discourse community.Second is reading different articles that were connected to different discourse communities from each other. And writing a response to the article was great because it makes me think little and look deeper instead of

Life is like a massive highway that have infinite routes anyone can choose take to reach some type of designated goal. Those various routes lead to distinct exits, where one can discover a group or groups that share similarities dealing with viewpoints, beliefs, or understanding towards a particular goal. These groups can be identified as discourse communities. According to, “The Concept of Discourse Community,” in the textbook, Writing About Writing, John Swales stressed that in order to be classified as a discourse community the group has to have all six defining characteristics. Swales emphasized, “A discourse community has a broadly agreed set of common public goals, mechanisms of intercommunication among its members, uses its participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information and feedback, utilities and hence processes one or more genres in the communicative furtherance of its aims, acquires specific lexis, and has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discourse expertise” (Swales, 221-222). Keeping this key detail in mind, there is numerous type of discourse out there.

A discourse community is defined as a group of people involved in and communicating about a particular topic, issue, or in a particular field. We all belong to multiple discourse communities.To earn a position of a discourse community one must possess accurate knowledge, establish reliability of members to be accepted and learn to persuade other members of the community. The discourse community that I identify with personally and the profession I plan to pursue is the world of film production. However, there are many jobs that need to be done on a film set leading to there being multiple discourse communities within the film industry, what I want to focus on specifically is the DP, otherwise known as the “director of photography”. According to “The Concept of Discourse Community,” by educator and researcher John Swales, a discourse community is defined by six characteristics.

According to Swales a discourse community is created with six defining characteristics that are “made up of individuals who share a broadly agreed upon set of common public goals; further, it has mechanisms of intercommunication among its members, uses it participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information and feedback, [that] has or uses one or more genres that help group achieve its shared goal, has acquired some specific lexis and has a reasonable ratio of novices and experts” (Swales, 795). To explain Swales’ concept, I have chosen to apply his six characteristics, necessary and sufficient for identifying groups as a discourse community, to analyze my united states history one class, taught by Mrs. Medley, along with some feedback I retrieved from both a fellow student and my professor.

This assignment was quite easy for me to complete considering it was a topic that I was very passionate about. When initially given the assignment, I was once again confused on what the theme actually was but then after figuring out what a discourse community was and how it related to me, it made the writing process a lot simpler. I did not know originally what discourse community I wanted to write about, whether it was my Dominican or the black community but after doing some research, I felt, due to the amount of tension, that the black community would be the easiest to talk about. Since I had taken classes before and writing papers about racism particularly race relations between blacks and whites, I was able to bring out this prior knowledge

A discourse community is a group of people or communicators who share the same common goals or interests and use different forms of communication to achieve these goals. Some of these forms of communication may range from reading, writing, the use of technology such as blogging and emailing, and even visual art such as painting and drawing. As an English major focusing on the aspect of creative writing, the discourse community I so happened to be associated with is of the English subject. The discourse community of the English literature is made up of many people, genres of literature, and even terms. The discourse community of English literature can be traced back to as early as the year C.658 with the development of Anglo-Saxon literature. Some influential eras of English literature include : Romanticism, Victorian literature, Medieval Theater, Poetry, and the Elizabethan Period. Of course with every discourse community there are a vast number of people who help to make it up. In the discourse community of English some of these people include author and playwright William Shakespeare, author Mark Twain, author and poet Jane Austen , and a slew of famous African-American authors some including Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Lorraine Hansberry, and poet Maya Angelou.

A discourse community is a group of people who share a set of discourses, understood as basic values and assumptions, and ways of communicating about those goals. John Swales defines a discourse community as "groups that have goals or purposes, and use communication to achieve these goals." The community I choose to identify with is special education. Special education teachers, or aids, really dedicate themselves and their time to others who need special assistance or treatment. The California Department of Education supports high quality educational programs for California’s big student population. According to the ideas from the federal government, the variety of the education working environment is one of the fastest growing areas of the American economy. The importance in understanding this career includes emotional, and physical growth of each student. Working with students who have disabilities can be very rewarding, but it is sometimes emotionally demanding and physically draining. Before stepping into the job of becoming a special education teacher, it is important to understand the patience that is needed in order to work with special children.

Discourse communities are all around us, which can include a sports team, academics, and many others. However today I am focusing on a discourse community that relates to my major, criminal justice. In order for me to understand swales six characteristics I interviewed a homicide detective relating to criminal justice. A discourse community is a group of people involved in and communicating about a particular topic, issue, or in a particular field. A discourse community is defined by six characteristics. The six defining characteristics of a discourse community require a set of common goals, there must also be mechanisms of communications within the community as well as feedback among members. Genre, the fourth characteristic, describing the various methods of output. The last two are terminology, and expertise. In order to really understand that criminal justice is a discourse community, I had to do research, and interview an expert in the field. To be a part of a discourse community, one must be credible, possess factual knowledge and draw on the values of its members to be accepted into the community. At the same time a person must learn typical ways people in that community communicate and argue. They share a certain genre which is a type of writing. Members of discourse communities provide information and feedback that are imperative in order for that discourse community to grow. My interviewee, Carol Mims, is a child homicide detective. She is an alumni here at

Since the dawn of time that humans have reigned around the world, they have formed groups or communities that share common goals or interest. John Swales (1990), a respectable professor of linguistics at the University of Michigan, developed a list of characteristics to determine communities or, as he calls it, a discourse community. He identifies these characteristics as all the discourse communities has agreed upon common goals, mechanisms of intercommunication among its members, provide information and feedback, possess one or more genres of communication, distinguish vocabulary or lexis, and requirement for memberships (Swales, 1990, p. 1-5). The International Game Developers Association (IGDA), falls into the category as a discourse community. Founded in 1994, IGDA is a non-profit professional association that collaborates with projects that encompasses members from all fields of game development. They bring together developers to improve their lives and prepare the next generation of developers. The IGDA is a professional discourse community that defines all of Swales characteristic to be considered as a discourse community.