Morgan's Imagined Communities

Researcher John Swales in “ The Concept of Discourse Community” explains that there are six characteristics that need to be identified for a group of people to be a discourse community. According to Swales, there are six characteristics that make up a discourse community. They are common public goals, mechanisms of intercommunication among members, participatory mechanisms to provide information and feedback, utilizing one or more genres in communication, a specific lexis, and a threshold level of members with a degree of relevant content and discourse expertise (220-222). Discourse is in communities are all around us.

In the article John Swales defined a speech community has a group that shares similar linguistic goals and have the similar language.” What he meant by same language was for the to understand the goal they are trying to archive. The different between a speech and discourse communities is in that speech communities, inherit its members, why discourse communities “recruit its members by persuasion, training or relevant qualification”. Swale also claimed in is article that there are two types of speech communities called sociolinguistic and sociorhetoric speech

I am a part of many different discourse communities. I am a college student, a millennial, a nanny, a family member, a friend, and a full time employee. In each aspect of my life, I participate in discourse communities with those around me; with goals, genre, and lexis. Of my discourse community memberships, the one which fit Swales’ definition most accurately would be in my place of work (HisWay).

As members of modern society, individuals have come together to form a unique community. In a quote by Rollo May, he states, “Communication leads to community, that is, to understanding, intimacy, and mutual valuing.” A discourse community consists of a group of people involving in and as well as communication about particular topics. Each group may vary in different categories but they all share the same goals. The importance of sharing the same goals and values is great because it leads to the true concept of a discourse community.

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).

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.”

Many examples of discourse community can be seen when you consider music. Every artist has two sets of fan bases; the first are the “band wagon” fans, these are people who only like the artist when they are what society considers main stream. The second type of fans are the loyal fans, most who have listened to the artist since they have started singing/rapping. These loyal fans are the groups who make up discourse communities. These communities are important because they are the structure of an artist career, without these loyal fans, artist aren’t able to grow.

Human beings have a tendency to surround themselves with individuals that share their same interests or likes. This is logical because being with people that have the same ideas would make it easier to converse in a way that would be pleasing to both parties because they would both be knowledgeable of the topic at hand. Discourse communities refer to groups of people that have the same goal and by communicating and working together they try to achieve this goal. Everyone belongs to many different groups depending on their activities and involvement in whatever it is that they participate in. Personally, four different discourse communities that I belong to include medical interpreter employee, soccer team member, pre-med student and group

According to Swales, there are two types of communities: speech and discourse. Swales defines a speech community as a group that shares similar linguistic goals, similar language, or both as “a community sharing knowledge of the rules for the conduct and interpretation of speech” (Swales, 1990). Swales also identifies that speech communities inherit their members, unlike the discourse community that recruits its members (Swales, 1990). Although these two communities may appear to be the same, to be considered 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.

An example of a discourse community I choose to talk about in this paper is the JPS Nail Salon located near Elvis Presley Boulevard. I recently became a part of this particular discourse community group by volunteering to help out on the weekends. I thought it would be interesting to dig a little deeper as to how discourse community works out as a whole.

A community is a group of people that share a common or similar characteristic with each other. Some communities can also consist of people living together or practice worship. My essay will include the communities that I am part of which are my dance, school and church communities.

Communities are affected, and in a sense defined by, forces that affect community members and their space. The forces can range from outside organizations such as the government and large corporations … These components of the community vary infinitely, and thus no two communities are the same; even a given community is not the same over time (Cnaan & Milofsky, p. 1)

“Pygmalion was written to challenge the class system, traditional stereotypes and the audience’s own views.”

Class distinctions are made abundantly clear in Shaw’s “Pygmalion.” Eliza is representative of Shaw’s view of the English working class of the day: Crude, crass, and seemingly unintelligent yet worthy of pity. Equal criticism is leveled at the upper classes, who pass judgement upon the poor precipitated by their appearance and mannerisms. Higgins and Pickering’s attitude towards Eliza is one of derision, stemming from their difference in social status. For instance, Higgins’ open mockery of Eliza’s speech: “You see this creature with her kerbstone English: the English that will keep her in the gutter to the end of her days.” (Shaw.