Juan M Gama T.
Introduction
According to Swales (1990) Use of the term discourse community testifies to increasingly
they academic disciplines or social groups (p.217). With this said we can define a discourse
community as a group of individuals that share different characteristics, like interests, goals,
Lexis etc. What Im going to do in this paper, is to introduce a discourse community (The
League of Legends Forums) and with that Im going to try to analyze if fits in the Swales idea
of a discourse community or the Porters one. I choose this discourse community because for
me is a very close and important community, I have been in that community for about 4 years
now and I think I can explain how is this community communicating and if it fits in the
discourse community category. Also, its a very big community with at least 100M monthly
players, that maybe half of them are in the forums, so it is indeed a large community thats
worth analyze.
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Literature Review
Swales starts his article by explaining how other instructors and researchers already
use the discourse community topic before, but they just do it by giving an example of a
discourse community and how it works. They start asking questions like: how a particular
discourse community gain new members? or how a discourse community relies on certain
beliefs?; although this questions are good for the debate says Swales, he thinks that first we
have to ask how a discourse community became what it is? and with that to quote him "We
circumstances, it is better to offer a set of criteria sufficiently narrow that it will eliminate
many of the marginal, blurred and controversial contenders". Then he talks about how a
discourse community is different from a speech community, and explaining why one has to
do with the other but don't affect his individual rules, after that he propose 6 characteristics of
the discourse community that we would revisit later and ends the article with an example of a
Porter's article starts with the definition of intertextuality, and explains "the web of
meaning" or logos. Also he is saying that looking for intertextuality is looking for "traces" of
how the writers gets his inspiration from, and he tells us that the propose of the text is to
explain how intertextuality matter in rhetoric studies. Then he starts explaining the presence
of intertext in structuralism and post structuralism. Then he points out two types of intertext:
iterability, which is the repetition of textual fragments; and presupposition, the assumptions
that a text might be there but it is not 100% explicit. He also talks about the power of the
discourse community by explaining what it is, giving examples of what they do, and showing
4 rules that all the discourse community should have (Porter, 1986).
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We can say that both of the texts have certain similarities, for example they both talk
about how the topic of discourse community lack of a real and concrete meaning, also they
both give you their versions of the characteristics that a discourse community should have.
They both think that they have common interest but Swales thinks that those interests have to
become public goals. Also they both have mechanisms of intercommunication but Porters
says that the mechanisms have to be approved and have to had specific rules, which I think its
brief and wrong to think that just that kind of communication is valid. One of Porters
characteristics is that if the text doesn't add knowledge, it is not accepted but for Swales its
different, for Swales all of the texts and communication its valid information, but the
community has the obligation to give feedback about it. For Swales is very important that the
community creates his own lexis, an especial vocabulary that only them would know how to
interpret, that would make a lot of discourse communities out of Swales perception that's why
I think Swales is wrong with that. The last characteristic from both authors for me makes
Swales more credible, because I think in a community should be order and for that it has to
be levels of expertise and leadership in the community, not normal leadership like politics but
someone to look up when you need advice with something. In conclusion we can say that
both have their points, but I think they are too rigid and the meaning of discourse community
is so vast that just because a community does not have a characteristic means that they are
both Swales and Porter and make a more flexible definition in which a lot of communities
can be on.
Methods
My strong source of information its going to be the League of Legends forums page
itself because I think there is no better way to get to know a community and what are they
doing as watch it for yourself. In this page we can see a lot of discussion about the game but
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also about another topic that doesnt fit in the game category such as the community
category, so its going to be very helpful for the investigation, that we can see how maybe
one moderator or a player can be in both forums and be participative of it. Almost all of the
texts that Im going to analyze are going to be the forum entries but Im going to have also
the rules of the page and even some forms of personal communication like a response in a
Discussion
When I was navigating from page to page in the board of discussions I get into the
boards welcome page, in which says the board objective which is in Keyrus (a worker for
Riot Games) words Our goal here is to encourage discussion about how we can further grow
the community here on the Boards (Welcome to Discuss the Boards! May, 2017). This show
that the community that are in the boards, have their shared goals, such as the discussion and
feedback of topics about League, so it fits in the first criteria of Swales and Porter. About the
mechanisms that they use to communicate are primary the boards themselves, but the
moderators also used sometimes emails to make the players that his post in the boards was
answered or to clarify something in particular. Also we can say that they use not only words
but videos, gifs, emoji and even images that make you understand better some of the points
that the board is saying, and all of the boards in the board page are validated by the Rioters
(The Riot Games workers) so if some board breaks the rules it is erased from the page. This
gives us the chance to see that in fits in the second criteria from swales that is mechanisms of
The board is always getting new entries, some of them are made by the players themselves,
others are made by Rioters who want to start a conversation of a topic that matters to all
players, and the moderators want that the players always get their answer if they have a
question; Thats why they try to answer a lot of the posts that the people do, so we can see
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that they care and we can make a discussion not only with players but also workers for the
company. So in the information and feedback criteria of Swales I think they are very covered.
Although The forums have a lot of ways to write an entry, there are only that entries, so in
paper, there is not a lot of genres only the forums and the emails that maybe a moderator can
send you but is not in all of the cases, so in Swales perspective, there is a lack of this
acceptable within the forum only insofar as it reflects the community episteme (p.39), its
almost impossible to a community this big to have all the texts to add knowledge so they can
The fifth characteristic of Swales article for a discourse community (1990) is: In addition to
owning genres, a discourse community has acquired some specific lexis (p.222). When I
read this characteristic I immediately knew that this community it has indeed a lot of lexis,
its not a defined lexis that is in a dictionary or something, but I manage to found a wikia
made by League fans that has the meaning of a lot of this words:
Babysit: For one champion to continually assist another champion in order to assist them in
getting more powerful. For a champion (usually jungler) to cover a lane and see to it that the
minions don't push to the friendly tower, while the usual laning champion is temporarily
elsewhere.
Backdoor: To attack an enemy tower or base without the support of a minion wave.
Typically, this is done by sneaking through the jungle and only becoming revealed to the
Farm: To seek out and kill minions to obtain experience and gold.
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Minion: The computer-controlled unit spawned from the allied structure (nexus or capture
And like this we have at least a hundred more of it, this are more of an in-game lexis, but we
can see all this lexis plague in the forums, so basically are the same.
The last Characteristic for Swales discourse community (1990) is: A discourse community
has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discoursal
expertise (p.222). We can compare that with the forums, and say in obvious words that yes
in fact they are a number of individuals that are approved by Riot Games to be the
moderators of the forums, they have to know a lot about the game, and about the community
to fill this position and know when a post has to be erased, a player has to be banned, etc. But
this fact, makes the forums break the fourth characteristic of Porters, that says that there is no
Conclusion
When I started the comparison with Swales and Porters article with my discourse community
I notice that, the similarities between both terms of discourse community are a lot, but the
difference is based on the last 2 rules of Porters, when he gets a little rigid with the
characteristic saying that if it doesnt add knowledge then it doesnt count, for me this is not
true because maybe doesnt add knowledge but makes people open a conversation, a
discussion about a topic and creates knowledge in the long term. But in Swales hand I realice
that the forums fit almost perfectly with the Swales idea of a discourse community, the only
thing that lacks on is the genres, but I think that characteristic is the less important for a
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discourse community to have so, in my opinion the League of Legends forums are a Swales
References
http://leagueoflegends.wikia.com/wiki/League_of_Legends_terminology.
New Player's Guide to League of Legends. (2011, February 03). Retrieved October 14, 2017,
from http://forums.na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=556519.
Keyru (NA) submitted in Discuss the Boards. (2017, May). [] Welcome to Discuss the
https://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/community-moderation/hp4ZjjeF-welcome-to-
discuss-the-boards.
Academic and Research Settings. Boston: Cambridge UP, 1990. 21-32. Print.
James E. Porter. Rhetoric Review, Vol. 5, No. 1. (Autumn, 1986), pp. 34-47.