Homework SourseTopic Discourse communities Reading Swales The Concept of a
Solution
discourse community is a group of people who share a set of discourses, understood as basic values and assumptions, and ways of communicating about those goals. Linguist John Swales defined discourse communities as \"groups that have goals or purposes, and use communication to achieve these goals\".[1]
Some examples of a discourse community might be those who read and/or contribute to a particular academic journal, or members of an email list for Madonna fans. Each discourse community has its own unwritten rules about what can be said and how it can be said: for instance, the journal will not accept an article with the claim that \"Discourse is the coolest concept\"; on the other hand, members of the email list may or may not appreciate a Freudian analysis of Madonna\'s latest single. Most people move within and between different discourse communities every day.
Since the discourse community itself is intangible, it is easier to imagine discourse communities in terms of the fora in which they operate. The hypothetical journal and email list can each be seen as an example of a forum, or a \"concrete, local manifestation of the operation of the discourse community\".[2]
The term was first used by sociolinguistMartin Nystrand in 1982,[3] and further developed by American linguist John Swales.[4] Writing about the acquisition of academic writing styles of those who are learning English as an additional language, Swales presents six defining characteristics:
A discourse community:has a broadly agreed set of common public goals.has mechanisms of intercommunication among its members.uses its participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information and feedback.utilizes and hence possesses one or more genres in the communicative furtherance of its aims.in addition to owning genres, it has acquired some specific lexis.has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discoursal expertise.
CommunityDespite the fact that these articles differ in many ways, they still belong to the samediscourse community. A discourse community is a group of people who share common goals,topics, and communication resources. Furthermore, discourse communities work on theircommon goals in spite of having different reasons of conducting their research (Swales).Businesses, firms, and schools are all prime examples of discourse communities. In businessesand firms everyone has one common goal, which is to keep the company running, and within thisdiscourse community people have different jobs to keep the company running. In school,students, no matter the age students, are there to learn, which is their common goal. The samecan go for teachers, since their common goal is to teach students and give them a good qualityeducation.Moreover, the Tri-Alpha Energy website that was covered in week five was a perfectexample of discourse community. As I analyzed the website to gain a better understanding oftheir discourse community, I looked into their careers tab. There I found many jobs within thatdiscourse community, besides the people who are working hands on with the reactor. There werejobs for people who have degrees in engineering, physics, chemistry, IT (or computer science),accounting and human resources. All these careers in this discourse community are helping the
ideas and supports the claimsthat are made. Finally, the discourse community allows people, with the same interest, to worktogether even though their reasons for conducting the research may be different. As the semestercontinues, I’m confident that our knowledge on these topics will increase progressively, as wecomplete more and more exercises. By the end of this class my fellow peers and I will be able tobecome better writers, especially when entering the workforce.
![Topic: Discourse communities Reading: Swales, \](/WebImages/14/topic-discourse-communities-reading-swales-the-concept-of-a-1019775-1761527296-0.webp "Topic: Discourse communities Reading: Swales, \")
