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Discourse Community Research Paper

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All great minds think alike, a common cliche we have all heard at some point or another, but is this true? Well yes, some minds do think alike and, when they organize, we may call them a discourse community. A discourse community is a specific collective that compares and converses. It is a thought-provoking group that promotes common ideas and benefits its members. Any true discourse community can be identified by six necessary characteristics, as described by Swales. First, “a discourse community has a broadly agreed set of common public goals.” Second, “a discourse community has mechanisms of intercommunication among its members.” Third, “a discourse community uses its participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information and feedback.” Fourth, “a discourse community utilizes and hence possesses one or more genres in the communicative furtherance of its aims.” Fifth, “a discourse community has acquired some specific lexis.” And finally, “a discourse community has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discoursal expertise.” …show more content…

Being a self-proclaimed nerd, I was a member of a gaming community (I am staying very vague since I am slightly embarrassed about this). In the community, we all focused on one singular game, Swales first characteristic. All of our members played together so that we could better benefit our experiences in the game, Swales second characteristic. Within the community, we had adopted specific codes, in which we could all recognize and understand fluently, for nearly a hundred different situations, Swales fifth characteristic. And finally, most members had some real-world experience that went beyond the game. For some this game was what they experienced in their careers, Swales sixth

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