The Franklin Road Church Youth Groups Are More Than Just a Religion

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.

Have you ever been among people who are very much like you? That it does not matter what differences you have you all have a lot more in common. A member of 4-H constitutes a discourse community because of an agreed set of common public goals, level of membership, and something that provides information and feedback.

While describing these characteristics, he notes that there are several things which are goals can be published in documents or implicit, high level or abstract. Next, Swales states that discourse community has mechanisms of intercommunication among its members. He also states that communication can be done using text or confrontation.

Gee’s entire assessment of discourses is the highlight of the essay. According to him, discourses cannot be imbibed or simply learnt in traditional classrooms, they cannot be taught to a person but rather they are what one learns through his experiences and social interactions. Since his experiences may encompass a great variety of social interactions and discussions with people from different spheres, these discourses are not very singular and may have conflicts among themselves. It is eventually the amalgamation of discourses that a person experiences that ultimately shape

So joining a Discourse community is a major part of life, because it can help you to grow as a human being, and to learn a lot of things that can turn helpful to become successful in the future, therefore through personal experiences one can demonstrate the importance of joining these communities thus to convey young people to understand that living this experience would give them the chance to share with self-opinionated people, that while arguing with them, they can reach into conclusions that could change their way of thinking and seeing life. Consequently by presenting my personal experience, I can let people know how essential joining a discourse community can be.

This discourse community consists of people who believe in God and follow the principles of the bible. Despite what people outside of this community may think, it is not full of people who think they are better than anyone else. The people who make up this community are far from perfect, but are striving to improve themselves through learning the bible, with one belief holding them all together. I am a part of this discourse community. It is tied to my primary discourse, because I have been in the Church since I was little, and have grown up in its values. To be apart of this community, you simply have to believe in God, believe in what Jesus did for all of us, and have a desire to learn to live your life right through learning the bible.There

Catholic Charities of Tennessee is the discourse community that I studied. The community is the social service arm of the Diocese of Nashville. The group was founded on July 17, 1962 at the request of William L. Adrian, who was the Bishop of the Diocese of Nashville at that time, with Msgr. Leo Siener being named its first executive director. Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Nashville has a mission of advocating for and provides services to enhance and enrich the quality of life for people in need, following the example of

Finding people who share common interests and enjoy the same activities as yourself can often be difficult to find, but is necessary to have. Especially during college, a time where you are receiving your independence, but unsure of what that truly means, feeling lonely is valid and expected. However, college can offer many resources to aid you in these emotions, by having plenty of discourse communities you can join, or even offering you the opportunity to create your own. As quoted by Herzberg in The Concept of Discourse Community, “the idea of a “discourse community” is not well defined yet” (469). Despite the vague concept John Swales offers, he further goes on to elaborate on what six characteristics discourse communities can be identified through. A discourse community which one of my roommates participates in is the Vietnamese Student Association (VSA). The VSA is a cultural club for students at University of California, Davis, who identify as Vietnamese, and want to come together with others a part of the same background. The VSA is a perfect model of a discourse community, as it passes the checkpoints Swales provides to identify one.

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

A discourse community is defined as a group of individuals who share a common purpose and use different forms of communication to pursue these goals (John Swales). In order for a discourse community to be considered as such it must have certain characteristics including communication, goals, lexis, etc. A community that I have been analyzing is the nursing career field. To analyze this community I interviewed a nurse named Deborah Henderson and some may recognize her as an academic advisor for the college of education and health professions and I was able to obtain an example of a literature this discourse reads. Using research that I have conducted and using the characteristics of a discourse community we can determine if nursing can be considered as a discourse community.

Swales’ second defining characteristic of a discourse group stresses the significance of communication; simply put, “A

John Swales lists six characteristics as necessary for a group of individuals to be defined as a discourse community, thus by his definition the Church I analyzed would be considered a discourse community since if fulfills his criteria. An important component of the community is the bulletin the Church hands every week which contains many of the characteristics Swales describes. Furthermore, the community is relatively new thus they are still trying to find it’s identity meaning it’s easier for new members to transition and become a part of this community allowing intertextuality to be found throughout the Church. Therefore, by analyzing the bulletin and other aspects of this community one can determine that the Church is a discourse community

Covenant encourages prayer, reading, and learning about God’s word. As indicated in Davis’ book, “Every member of the community needs to be growing in the Word. This has implications for our individual habits with the Word and for the way we use the Word inside and outside the classroom” (pg 60). Furthermore, according to In All Things Christ Preeminent, “Communal meditation on the Scripture is vital to Covenant’s academic life” (pg.61). In contrast, my experience with peers at LaFayette High School presented a greater challenge as a follower of Christ. Christians were a minority at LaFayette High School and were scrutinized for professing their faith in Christianity. Teachers were also discouraged from spreading the Word of God and faced job termination for doing so. The Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA) was the only type of Christian bonding within the school and even then, it was mandatory that it be student lead and

The discourse on

Prior to entering this English class, I never knew there was a such thing as a discourse community. Reading assigned articles and doing research of my own, I discovered that I too was a part of many discourse communities. While in high school, I was a part of many student and national organizations, as well as schoolwide clubs, and teams. Although they had different purposes, the organizations, clubs, and teams that I was a part of had the same type of layout. They all had a common goal, participatory mechanisms, information exchange, specific genres of the community, specialized terminology, and levels of expertise. There is in one in particular that I have been involved in for most of my life, the dance community, that has not been recognized for its worth.