Discourse Community Reflection

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.

Preschool teachers have not been given the credit they deserve, with lots of people over looking their importance. Being a preschool teacher is more than just watching a couple of kids for a couple of hours. This field requires a lot preparation and behind the scene work that put into the job, so it really is not as easy as it may seem. Preschool could possibly shape the rest of their academic lives. At this level of school the children learn their basic building blocks for learning that they will use forever. That leaves parents with big expectations for the teacher. And for the teacher, they will have to set goals, have a plan to reach those goals, and for the most part

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 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

There are a number of things that I still need to do to revise my draft of the Discourse Community paper. First, I must check whether I have answered all the research questions required. I also must make sure I have completed all the activities that are also mandatory for this paper. For instance, I have to figure out where I will include the thirty-minute interview of the International Relations professor that I am going to conduct on Friday. Including the interview will allow me to properly answer the following questions that concern how research is conducted, what is the writing style like, and elaborate others. The more proof or evidence I have, the better my argument will me.

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].

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.

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?

John Swales defines a discourse community as a group of people that has an agreed set of common public goals, ways to communicate with its members, to provide information and feedback, genre(s) that the group may further communicate its goals, lexis, and a threshold level of members (220-2). The group I chose to study St. Luke Church of God in Christ, St. Luke COGIC, bears the qualifications to be a discourse community. Founded in 1925 by Millissis Shannon and her husband Charles with only twelve members, pastoring St. Luke COGIC is Elder E. A. Shannon with over eight hundred members (St. Luke Church of God in Christ). This church is a great church to attend and has several activities, groups, departments, and ministries for any person at any age. Some of them include Sunday School, music, men’s, women’s, youth, children’s, and Bible Study and they all help to reach the community and lead people to Christ. The church’s mission statement states that their purpose is, “to function as a Christian fellowship where the gospel of Jesus Christ is preached and the ordinances and doctrine of the church is taught and administered…” (St. Luke OB). My goal while observing and interviewing people was to figure out how people praise and worship the Lord at St. Luke COGIC on a Sunday.

The conversation of assimilation into a discourse community has been a long standing presence in academic conversation. Especially if a religious community is given the title of a discourse community. Typical methods of assimilating new members into a desired religion usually standout. For example, representatives of a religious organization go door to door to give out information about the religion is common practice, it a simply direct. Daniel Olson states in his research that smaller religious groups find more committed members through leaving and joining the group, compared to larger religious groups (359). Although Rahsaan Maxwell and Erik Bleich uses Muslims as his topic, presents relatable assimilation reasoning that Muslims who were

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.

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