Six Characteristics Of A Discourse Community Analysis

Gee defines Discourses as a way of being in the world; they are forms of life which integrate words, acts, values, beliefs, attitudes and social identities as well as gestures, glances, body positions, and clothes. (Gee 278) I decided to do my paper on The World Overcomers Church because I wanted to learn how a church is considered a discourse community. According to Swale’s there are six characteristics that make up a discourse community. They are common 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. (Swale 321) I had to go to the church to observe to understand how it is considered a discourse community. The churches goal is to obtain happiness, values, beliefs of ethnic and morals to trust in god and have faith.

A discourse community is a group of people who share a common goal and work together to achieve that goal. In order for this to happen, the individuals in the discourse community have to effectively communicate with their audience and act in ways that help them achieve their common goal. To be a successful discourse community, Professor John Swales says there are six characteristics that must be present. These six characteristics are common public goals, fixed channels of intercommunication, use of communication to provide information and feedback, set ways to intercommunicate, established jargon and a proper member ratio (Swales). Several groups and organizations possess these traits, but to be a legitimate discourse community, according to

Stevens Institute of Technology is a technically oriented university with a diverse set of majors not limited to just engineering. From engineering students to history majors, Stevens makes sure to highlight the importance of understanding technology in today’s world. Computer science is one of the more prominent majors outside of the field of engineering and the Stevens freshmen in computer science have created a discourse community for all those taking entry level computer science courses. According to American Linguist John Swales, a discourse community is defined by a group of people with a means of entry maintained by following set goals and rules, as well as, communicating using genres and lexis unique to the community. It’s unsurprising

Promptly from the very beginning, feeling of formal writing strikes in mind while reading the paper and it is maintained throughout the whole writing. Coherence, clarity and attention grabber particularly at the onset of first paragraph through definition of discourse community, in the fifth paragraph via counterargument and many examples of real life experiences makes the paper interesting and always engaging to read. These are the strengths of this paper.

In the discourse community he was apart of all of them had a “highly literate, hyper-aware language users, who valued professional, grammatically correct, Standard English in written communication” (Wardle 295). Another one of Swales points in his criteria is that a discourse community has some sort of lexis, meaning a language specific to that discourse community (Swales 222). Alan’s form of communication to his community was email, however, his co-workers were older than him and saw the way he would write his emails as informal and inappropriate (Wardle 294). Alan did not adapt to the change and even resisted from changing his ways of composing emails. Alan believed since he had authority they would adapt to his style. As a result he was not able to communicate with his community, which is necessary for a discourse community to function. With Alan choosing not to participate it resulted in “disturbances and breakdowns in work processes” (Hasu and Engestrom 65)(Wardle295). As we can tell from Wardle’s story about Alan and Swales criteria for a discourse community, it might not be always difficult to obtain authority but is difficult to use that authority within your discourse

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.

What is a discourse community? A discourse community is an interactive group that shares common discourses. Meaning that they share a common set of values that similar towards others. Most of society belongs to a discourse community that share values or even similar personalities. The discourse communities I joined needed to reflect my personality. For example, I like culture and I like to involve myself in some culture-based activities such as Art or even Culinary Arts. Ideally experiencing diverse cultures other than my own would directly geared towards my personality traits. Here are a few. My personality is more of an introverted style; it mostly consists of my shyness near groups. I love taking care of children and teaching, but I do not

According to John Swales (1990), there are six characteristics that are adequate and important for recognizing a discourse community. Firstly, a discourse community has standard public objectives that they strive to achieve. Members of a discourse community all share the same common goals they are anticipating to attain, and they do not have individuals with separate goals. For instance, the Salvation Army public goals are “to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ and to meet human needs in His name without discrimination.” They offer spiritual, physical, and emotional service to the public, as well as the opportunity to donate. Secondly, a discourse community has various techniques of communication for members to correspond with each other. For

According to Swales a discourse community is created with six defining characteristics that are “made up of individuals who share a broadly agreed upon set of common public goals; further, it has mechanisms of intercommunication among its members, uses it participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information and feedback, [that] has or uses one or more genres that help group achieve its shared goal, has acquired some specific lexis and has a reasonable ratio of novices and experts” (Swales, 795). To explain Swales’ concept, I have chosen to apply his six characteristics, necessary and sufficient for identifying groups as a discourse community, to analyze my united states history one class, taught by Mrs. Medley, along with some feedback I retrieved from both a fellow student and my professor.

We now know what would be the necessary threshold levels for members who wish to join in such a community, but now we must realize the rest of the questions that need to be answered when talking about the discourse communities. But, what is a discourse community? Well, by definition, a discourse community is a group of individuals whom share similar ideals to one another, and are able to communicate with one another so that they all may be able to achieve a goal. However, as any other term within the English dictionary, there is something more than what was stated to be the definition. And John Malcolm Swales, a linguist best known for his work on genre analysis, would agree with that train of thought. He had stated that when it comes to a

Wardle and Swales both have a vast amount of similarities while discussing discourse communities. Part of the Wardle article that stood out to me was the part where they mention newcomers to an organization and how they find a mode of belonging. For example, the “modes of belonging” are engagement, imagination and alignment. A key point in both articles that I feel is important is someone finding their identity in a community. The main difference that is between the articles is that Wardle talks more about a workplace and Swales talks more about a discourse community.

My discourse community is SESHOLLOWATERBOYZ or S.H.W.B. that is four friends Bones, Xavier Wulf, Chris Travis, and Eddy Baker, and their fans. I’m in the fans section of the discourse community, but the artists consider all real fans a part of S.H.W.B. Which is why I don’t classify my discourse community as “Fans of S.H.W.B.” Bones older brother Elliott also deserves to be mentioned, because he is the man behind the scenes and has set up tours for S.H.W.B. and is the closest thing to a manager they have. My discourse community is really cool to the people in it.

My research as a student has started to prepare me to participate in my academic discourse community. I plan to use the information I have gained from my research to become a thoughtful and academically engaged member of my academic discourse community. I plan to learn the ways of thinking, communicating, and evaluating the ideas and concepts that are important to my community so I can successfully interact within it. As I take classes within my major, I expect the readings and writings of the criminal justice field to not only better prepare me for a career in law enforcement, but also assist me in my role as a member of the academic discourse community. I expect there will be quite a bit of practical reading and writing, but I also expect

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.

At the beginning of this semester I decided to join Montana State University’s Army ROTC program with no prior knowledge of the program other than it will pay for my tuition. When the school year started I realized very quickly that this was a very strict and structured community. We are required to be at school at 0600 four days a week, attend mandatory weekend trainings, and volunteer in the community. Thankfully when something is done consecutively it just becomes habit. This research is derived from my personal drive to figure out if the Army ROTC is an accurate depiction of a discourse community. In an excerpt from Writing about Writing, John Swales does a profound job in describing six unique characteristics of a discourse community; however, I believe that the two fundamental characteristics that define the Army ROTC as a discourse community are “a broadly agreed set of common public goals” (Swales 220), and “a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discoursal expertise” (Swales 222). These two characteristics not only depict a discourse community but also describe a department that effectively develops young men and women to their full potential as leaders.