World Civ I - Exam One

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.

A discourse community is a social collective that shares ideas, goals, values, and themes. Discourse communities existed in all facets of life, and are important to each individual’s social life. We all belong to varies discourse communities. The people you hang out with, the social networks you belong to, and even your favorite sports teams are discourse communities. Today we will look at a specific one; we will look at the discourse community of Mixed Martial Arts.

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

Gee also writes that discourses can influence each other. In well of communities secondary discourses can influence primary discourses, but in poor and uneducated communiites primary discourses can influence secondary discourses. Like the lady who went to the job interview who used a different dialect that was not suitable for an interview.

The concept of discourse is the key to understanding a social constructionist approach to childhood. A discourse is an independent set of interrelated ideas held by a particular ideology or worldview. The social constructionist approach tries to describe the different ways in which knowledge of children and childhoods are constructed.

James T Porter describes a discourse community as a group who “Shares assumptions and what objects are appropriate for examination and discussion”, in other words; a group of people who are in some way or form connected. So, take engineers for example where every member pays the same price for entry, an engineering degree. This would mean that from day one every member is indoctrinated with the same way of thinking and share a common knowledge at the core of their education. The shared goals of the community are to design, develop and create new feats of engineering in their respective fields. In order for engineers to accomplish their goals, they need to work together and communicate. But, how exactly does an engineer communicate if they are

After identifying and describing the six points of criteria for qualification, Swales writes that even if just one attribute is missing, it may still be enough to prevent the formation of a discourse community (469). Keeping this in mind, it is important to identify all six points when trying to prove the existence of a discourse community. Due to the presence of all six attributes, I am a part of a discourse community myself. During the summer months, I work as a lifeguard at Avalon Summer Sports Club, a local

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.

According to James Paul Gee, in his essay “Literacy, Discourse, and Linguistics: Introduction and What Is Literacy?” He defines the word “discourse” in two ways. He separates the two definitions by using a lowercase “d” and an uppercase “D.” Even though technically they are the same word he defines them differently. “Discourses are ways of being in the world; they are forms of life which integrate words, acts, values, beliefs,

A discourse community is a group of people that share a set of common goals and use communication to achieve these goals. My discourse community is the Bartlett High School Band. The band has a set of goals that we set up at the beginning of the year during leadership. I have been a part of this discourse community for three years. I was a part of a similar discourse community for one year, which was the Bolton High School Band. The Bartlett Band is a discourse community that has multiple methods of communication, a set of common goals, and a lexis.

The heuristic that is used for this research guide to identify a discourse communities is the six characteristics that John Swales identifies in “The

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 a group of people or communicators who share the same common goals or interests and use different forms of communication to achieve these goals. Some of these forms of communication may range from reading, writing, the use of technology such as blogging and emailing, and even visual art such as painting and drawing. As an English major focusing on the aspect of creative writing, the discourse community I so happened to be associated with is of the English subject. The discourse community of the English literature is made up of many people, genres of literature, and even terms. The discourse community of English literature can be traced back to as early as the year C.658 with the development of Anglo-Saxon literature. Some influential eras of English literature include : Romanticism, Victorian literature, Medieval Theater, Poetry, and the Elizabethan Period. Of course with every discourse community there are a vast number of people who help to make it up. In the discourse community of English some of these people include author and playwright William Shakespeare, author Mark Twain, author and poet Jane Austen , and a slew of famous African-American authors some including Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Lorraine Hansberry, and poet Maya Angelou.

For the purposes of this paper, I will be using the criteria that were outlined by John Swales for what classifies as a Discourse Community. Swales said that for a community of individuals to be considered a Discourse Community if must meet six basic requirements. These requirements are that "there are common goals, participatory mechanisms, information exchange, community specific genres, a highly specialized terminology and a high general level of expertise" (Swales 224). We will explore these requirements further as we look into whether Reddit fits them or

In Intercultural Communication: A Discourse Approach, Scollon, Scollon, and Jones presents and develops the notion of ‘discourse systems’ as a way to get beyond the culture and the idea that culture is a person’s background. Rather than depending on ‘culture’ it is advised that it is the different discourse systems into which we have been socialised into should be a guidance to our interpersonal communication ‘Each definition of culture can lead us down a different pathway, and all of these pathways are potentially fruitful’ (Scollon, Scollon, Jones 2011).