Swales, Discourse Communities Reading Response/ Discussion
In “The Concept of Discourse Community,” John Swales goes into depth about a discourse community. According to Swales, there are two different types of community: speech and discourse. Then there are six characteristics that define what a discourse community actually is. "broadly agreed set of common public goals", "mechanisms of intercommunication among its members", "uses its participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information and feedback", "utilizes and hence processes one or more genres in the communicative furtherance of its aims", "has acquired some specific lexis", and "has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discoursal expertise" (Swales, 24-27) The main difference between discourse and speech communities are that discourse communities separate the existing people into groups whereas speech communities are looking to include outsiders. One thing that I interpreted from Swales is that discourse communities can come and go, especially in today’s day and age. Would a “discourse community” in society nowadays be equated with a “fandom” of some sort? A group where people come together and communicate about their specific interests and goals that they all share with each other. In truth, Swales’ breakdown of the different communities and their characteristics was still very challenging for me to understand. The thing I understood most about communities though, through Swales’ perspective, is that in whatever community, communication is key. Work Cited Swales, John M. "2.2 Speech Communities and Discourse Communities." Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings. Cambridge [England: Cambridge UP, 1990. 23-24. Print. |
Brian Winarski Responded:
I can empathize with you based on the last paragraph, as I had some difficulty understanding Swales as well. In regards to your thoughts on communication in the last sentence, however, do you believe that "The Cafe Owner Problem" produces a negative answer since the owners do not communicate with one another, or do you believe that they might due to having communications back to base? Skylar Munsch Responded: Communication isn't always what makes a discourse community tick, but it is surely helpful. I'm not sure whether this would be considered a discourse community, but those that are deaf have successfully developed their own form communication that is different from what you or I do everyday. Could it be plausible that the inhibition of proper communication could possibly increase the success rate of a given discourse, under extenuating circumstances? Jacob Summerhays Responded: I completely agree that communication is key, otherwise Swales attempt at explaining discourse communities and just the use of them in general would be pointless. In my opinion the 6 characteristics defining discourse communities are more like guidelines and don't seem to be set in stone. For example many discourse communities only adhere to a few of the characteristics. |
WHY?
I thought this entry was important to include in my portfolio because I believe it was the entry I worked the hardest on. The John Swales article that I read was, in my opinion, the hardest to understand. Even after re-reading the article over and over, I still did not have a firm grasp on the true meaning of a discourse community. Other peers journal entries helped the most, as well as the discussions of discourse communities in class.