What is Discourse?

Discourse 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

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].

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

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

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.

There is an abundant amount of communities in the world we live in. Whether they’re jobs, hobbies, or even school. Everything is part of it’s own particular community. When associated with a community, disregarding the type, they all tend to have different discourses. Discourses according to Gee “are ways of

Discussion My chosen discourse community is the occupational therapy profession. The American Occupational Therapy association was formed in 1923 with the hopes a creating a central vision for the budding profession. (AOTA, 2017).

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.

I felt confident about Gee’s concept of Discourse enough to use it in my academic essays. As stated in my second essay, paragraph 2, “Discourse now Is writing in action. Any form of writing in any situation”. This is my understanding of Gee’s topic. As Gee explains in his own terms he puts it as “writing in action”(pg-274 in Writing About Writing). I changed the meaning very little but in doing so I

Like I mentioned earlier, the word discourse is The writer outlines the barrier between a student and a teacher/scholar, stating that students don’t feel that they have a right to even interject in a conversation. Referring to what I mentioned earlier, this can reflect in students’ writing. I believe that this is created from the intimidation created by the higher-ups. Students’ feel that their ideas are wrong and will be ridiculed for even going against another viewpoint, especially if it’s a superior. This is a daily occurrence in classes. The writer wants to break this barrier so students’ don’t lack the confidence in their argument in discourses. The writer tells us to find a commonplace so students’ can do both-explain their points along with feeling that they do have the right to interject their argument respectively. “Not my place” evolves to “yes I do have a place” in the discourse through discovery of a