DICOURSE COMMUNITY 1

Discourse Community

Micheal Comer

RWS 1301
DISCOURSE COMMUNITY

Discourse Community

Discourse community is the set of discourse from a group of people who share and

understand the basic values from assumptions and different ways of communication. This paper

will discuss the different definitions and the different methods of research used to find the

different characteristics of discourse community in the classroom.

The definitions of the six characteristics from swales book stated by him in chapter 4

Pages (471-473) “The Concept of discourse community 1. “A discourse community has a

broadly agreed set of common public goals.”2. “A discourse community has mechanisms of

intercommunication among its members.”3. “A discourse community uses its participatory

mechanisms primarily to provide information and feedback.”4. “A discourse community utilizes

and hence possesses one or more genres in the communicative furtherance of its aims.”5. “In

addition to owning genres, a discourse community has acquired a specific lexis.”6. “A discourse

community has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and

discourse expertise” Pages (471-473). swales use the key ideas to tell about discourse

community.
DISCOURSE COMMUNITY

According to “The concept of discourse community” by john swales, he used nature of

language to make arguments about the differences of discourse community and speech

community in his book to give his true definition on discourse communities. In the book the

swales talks about the six characteristics to give his definition of discourse community and why

he uses the nature of speech to show the difference between speech community and discourse

community . John swales explains a discourse community as a body of people working towards a

common goal while sharing a set of ideas and rules and unlike speech.

According to Jodi Schneider’s definition of discourse community (August 6th ,2003) Jodi

uses the 6 characteristics from john swales book the concept to discourse community” to back

up his definition with showing his similar beliefs to swales in his book “The concept of discourse

community. According to James porter discourse community is “a local and temporary

constraining system, defined by a body of texts (or more generally, practices) that are unified by

a common focus. Jodi definition is between the motive of agreeing with swales and describing

discourse community in a different way.

Jodi definition talked about that A discourse community is a textual system with stated

and unstated conventions, a vital history, mechanisms for wielding power, institutional

hierarchies, vested interests. Giving the information and data from the three primary sources this

paper gives us the different definitions and similarities between the authors who gave their

statement on discourse community. discourse community has no effect on the class given the
DISCOURSE COMMUNITY

information from this paper. After observation about the different types of sources and john

swales this paper is giving the information from different authors and their opinion about

discourse community. The answer to the question is yes because, during the class it is very much

noticeable during the brief conversation and discussions going on in the class .
DISCOURSE COMMUNITY

References

Swales, John. Genre analysis: English in academic and research settings. Cambridge

University Press, 1990.

Borg, Erik. “Discourse community.” ELT journal 57.4 (2003): 398-400.

Swales, John. ''The Concept of Discourse Community." Genre Analysis: English in Academic

and Research Settings. Boston: Cambridge UP, 1990.21-32. Print

Porter, J. (1992). Audience and Rhetoric: An Archaeological Composition of the Discourse

Community. New Jersey: Prentice Hall.