Discourse Community Essay

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

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.

This community has great potentials that are part of the discourse community. For instance, people from the hotel industry have common goals, they work for the purpose to improve their selves, their knowledge and be able to provide a better information about the hotel to the customer. They are require to learn and know more about their company , its history and chain if any; these common goals lead the employee to perform and develop a better job to acquire a higher level position. As a linguistic John Swales says, “Discourse community will lead us to be more knowable about our career and to have a better perspective of our desire goals”. By saying so we can be more informed about our career and we can determine if that is want we want or if we can follow a different career or goal.

Have you ever been among people who are very much like you? That it does not matter what differences you have you all have a lot more in common. A member of 4-H constitutes a discourse community because of an agreed set of common public goals, level of membership, and something that provides information and feedback.

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.

In ENGL 1301, these past two weeks have given me a better understanding of ethos, logos and pathos appeals. Being in a discourse community has made me put these appeals into perspective. Understanding that being in that community made me a stronger woman. This will give me a chance to show you, my professor and classmates that softball is indeed a sport. I will prove why I attended this discourse community in softball at a young age to now by explaining the mental state of understanding the rules, the physical mechanisms, and the emotional connection it has on my authority, team and myself.

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

Effective writing allows for both the participation and addition of knowledge in discourse communities. A discourse community is a group of people that develop and share a sense of identity primarily through the sharing and exchanging of information on a specific subject or field. The two main form of communication in discourse communities are through reading and writing. Through reading one becomes familiar and starts to understand a community, and writing is when one participates in it. Each discourse community develops its own unique technical language, often referred to as lexis. The lexis allows communication between the community to be precise and to the point [6].

A discourse community is said to be resistant to internal criticism and self-scrutiny because all ideas that severely contrast the values and beliefs within the community are defined as being on the outside, as demonstrated in the texts. “The Discourse itself defines what counts as acceptable criticism” (Gee 162). All of the articles use similar rhetorical strategies by describing a problem in shared thinking; the common conception that the

The heuristic that is used for this research guide to identify a discourse communities is the six characteristics that John Swales identifies in “The

John Swales defines the term discourse communities as "groups that have goals or purposes, and use communication to achieve these goals" (Swales). A discourse community is defined by the following six characteristics: The community has a broadly agreed set of common public goals, the community has mechanisms of intercommunication among their members, the community uses its participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information and feedback, the community utilizes and possesses one or more genres in the communicative furtherance of its aims, the community also owns genres and has some acquired lexis that are specific to the community in terms of jargon, and the community has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discourse expertise. In such communities, members often come as novices, and due to their high level of commitment to the community, they “leave by death or other less involuntary ways” (Swales, 27).

1. What is the discourse community you are studying? The discourse community that I chose was bearded dragons and other animals of similar characteristics. a. What academic majors, departments, and disciplines is it related to?

A discourse community is a group of people who share common interest, values and aim to reach the same goals. For example, this English 1301 course where we’ve been assigned to write a paper with the same goal and ideas in mind. A class where we all discuss our views and passions and relate them to English and composition. I am excited to share with you what I have learned so far and the skills that I have acquired in this stimulating English course that has managed to spark my interest in writing after many years of cranking out meaningless papers with no personality or style. In this paper, I explain to you, my classmates, the process I went through in joining my discourse community, showing you just how intense and difficult it is to meet

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