Is The Memphis Youth Symphony? A Discourse 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.

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 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.

A discourse community is a group of people that share a set of common goals and use communication to achieve these goals. My discourse community is the Bartlett High School Band. The band has a set of goals that we set up at the beginning of the year during leadership. I have been a part of this discourse community for three years. I was a part of a similar discourse community for one year, which was the Bolton High School Band. The Bartlett Band is a discourse community that has multiple methods of communication, a set of common goals, and a lexis.

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

Communities may be a home away from home for some members with their own terminology and varying degrees of formality. These groups are usually joined by people for different reasons, some ranging from socializing to the acquisition of a single dream the group shares. Some groups even have members who are either expert in their communities focus or are members who are eager and ready to learn. For some of these communities, this form of communication and other factors is what defines them as a discourse community. However, there are communities that share some trait of discourse communities yet they themselves are not. Due to these strict rules about what can and cannot be a discourse community can be hard to discern. Like, for instance, the

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 a group of people with similar ideologies, goals, life experiences and ways of communicating. A lot of us have been in a discourse community without even knowing it. They are so easy to be a part of, you are practically born into one, for your family has a culture and background, which fits the definition of a discourse community. I am actually a part of a few communities myself, and you probably are too. Some examples of mine are my family, being a UTA student, Italian, a woman and a part of UTA’s musical theater program. Which brings me to the most important community I have been a part of, so far in my life, Colleyville Heritage High schools theater department, I am no longer a part of it, but in the short four years I was, my life has changed for the better. In my paper, I will talk to you about my time at Colleyville Heritage High School theater department, and how the community gave me a sense of belonging, taught me how to persevere, by means of loving art and preforming. This will be backed by ethos, logos and pathos, for I have experienced all the emotions of joining a new group, along with the four years of taking acting, and singing lessons and doing shows, paired with real life events to prove everything in this paper is one hundred percent real.

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.

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.

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

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.

On November 7th, I put on the public performance of “Our Stage, Your Voice,” with the help of multiple students on campus. It was performed in the Rose Bell Garden and was from 2:30 PM to 5:30 PM. In that time span, the performers and I collected over five hundred notecards that were performed in front of the student population. The inspiration for this performance came from the class I took with Dr. Hatton in the Fall semester of 2014. Her generosity allowed me to put this performance last year for extra credit, and it went well but not without problems. This year I was able to put this performance on again for COMM 198. This paper is to explain how this performance came to pass to begin with, to evaluate how the performance went, and what I learned by doing this performance.