What is Discourse?

Discourse communities are all around us—we all belong to a discourse community. A discourse community is a body of persons who share common and unique modes of communication or discourse (“Discourse Community”). In order for a community to identify as a discourse community, the community must possess six defining qualities that categorize it as a discourse community. As defined by John Swales, a researcher and professor of linguistics, discourse communities “have a broadly set of common public goals, mechanisms of intercommunication among its members, participatory mechanisms to provide information and feedback, one or more genres in the communicative furtherance of its aims, an acquired lexis, and a threshold level of members with a

According to (Deapul.edu, n.d.), a discourse community is a group of individuals that communicate and covey their message in the professional and public domain. This format of communication depending on the job field is known as discursive practices (Deapul.edu, n.d.). These communications practices can include communication avenues specific to the field. This can include journals, books, research articles, case studies, public outreach, and lectures. Each field utilizes their own specific jargon that conveys their message. In order to gain membership in a discourse community, an individual must demonstrate

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.

Effective writing allows for both the participation and addition of knowledge in discourse communities. A discourse community is a group of people that develop and share a sense of identity primarily through the sharing and exchanging of information on a specific subject or field. The two main form of communication in discourse communities are through reading and writing. Through reading one becomes familiar and starts to understand a community, and writing is when one participates in it. Each discourse community develops its own unique technical language, often referred to as lexis. The lexis allows communication between the community to be precise and to the point [6].

Just like everyone starved for a safe community, the Discourse Community serves a place to build trust, respect, and communication skill. According to Merriam Webster dictionary, the word discourse means to express oneself especially in oral communication. Discourse community should be a place where one can live comfortably as it own self and not concealing its’ negative side. It should be a place where everybody treated each others like a family and where one can express its true feeling. Bethel Worship group is a community that I joined three years ago and still an active member there. Bethel Worship group is one of the department that Bethel Baptist Church If a person wanted to join a certain group, then “a person must learn the typical ways people in that community communicate and argue” (P30). This paper will prove that I successfully joined the Discourse Community through my logical appeal, emotional bonding, and my credibility.

A discourse community is said to be resistant to internal criticism and self-scrutiny because all ideas that severely contrast the values and beliefs within the community are defined as being on the outside, as demonstrated in the texts. “The Discourse itself defines what counts as acceptable criticism” (Gee 162). All of the articles use similar rhetorical strategies by describing a problem in shared thinking; the common conception that the

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).

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 defined as a group of people involved in and communicating about a particular topic, issue, or in a particular field. We all belong to multiple discourse communities.To earn a position of a discourse community one must possess accurate knowledge, establish reliability of members to be accepted and learn to persuade other members of the community. The discourse community that I identify with personally and the profession I plan to pursue is the world of film production. However, there are many jobs that need to be done on a film set leading to there being multiple discourse communities within the film industry, what I want to focus on specifically is the DP, otherwise known as the “director of photography”. According to “The Concept of Discourse Community,” by educator and researcher John Swales, a discourse community is defined by six characteristics.

Two definitive works done by Swales and Porter has helped established on the definition and criteria of a discourse community. While Swales was the primary source of information for Porter’s own piece, Porter can develop a more in-depth view on discourse communities.

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

Discourses are the “social and cultural practices through which individuals and groups use language to establish their identities…they provide ways of being, thinking, acting and using language so that people can identify themselves in social and cultural networks” Discourses affect peoples views on all things, for example, two different

When I first started to read the Gee article, I skimmed the reading and ended up not taking any content away from the article. But I went back and read everything word for word and took notes and now it has brought to my attention questions and new ideas to explore. Of course, the first question that I had was, what does Discourse mean? According to Gee, Discourse is a combination of acts, such as, speaking, writing, doing, being, valuing and the list goes on. But there is a difference between the Discourse I just explained above and then discourse, with a lower-case d. Discourse, with a lower-case d, means connected stretches of language that make sense. The idea of Discourse is interesting, it explains everything else that we do in the world.

When I first came to RIT, I had never even heard of discourses before, let alone write an entire essay on it in roughly a week. I suppose then that this could be considered a separate discourse itself. When I was in high school, our teachers had us focusing on completing essays solely based on discovering the author’s purpose and using literary elements to support our thesis statements. There it did not matter what our background was; we had to get through the work and were almost required to write it to a perfect state, otherwise it would not be considered as college material. Upon arriving at college, the classwork attitudes changed drastically. Here near perfectionism was not stressed and the backgrounds of students were taken into consideration for classes. With so many discourses present it a classroom, one would think that it would be difficult to accommodate everyone, but for me, it is a discourse that is surprisingly easier to adjust to. Instead of having everyone adjust to one specific discourse, everyone is permitted to their own discourses and contribute to the community. Similarly, Williams explains how these discourses impact conflicts that could arise between students and teachers in the academic classroom. In “Home and Away: The tensions of community, literacy, and identity,” Bronwyn T. Williams argues to researchers and teachers so that they understand that because everyone comes from different backgrounds. They all will not learn the same way and have