This academic writing has a rather long winded clarification piece as in introduction. Unfortunately Swales fails to give me a definition in bold font so I had to peruse this paper and come up with a rough definition.
Discourse Community- A select group of individuals that have a certain parlance that is exclusive to said group and they use this to meet specific goals... As Swales makes it out to be.
The upside to the paper is that Swales did not put the six characteristics incognito as they are numbered and displayed below.
1, A discourse community has a broadly agreed set of common public goal
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 some
specific lexis.
6. A discourse community has a threshold level of members with a suitable
degree of relevant content and "discoursal" expertise.
This seems to be a sort of rough checklist to make a certain group qualify for the esteemed title of "Discourse Community".
There are many discourse communities that come to mind when one thinks of the topic. One that stands out to me is the current Blacks Live Matter community. The goal of this organization has been made clear through all the forms of media that they want to raise awareness against police brutality against Africa Americas. The BLM group uses various means of intercommunication and mechanisms such as posting on social media, having peaceful and violent protests and raising awareness to events that occur. The community utilizes many genres to appeal to ethos, but mostly pathos as a way to communicate. BLM has also developed a specific lexis in the phrases they shout at protests. BLM is a discourse community that has a main goal as Swales spells it out to be. There are a large number of other discourse communities that can be easily identified in today's society.
Here I'd like to insert a thought--not everyone who goes to a BLM protest would be part of the discourse community. However, there is an organizational group that IS part of a discourse community.
ReplyDeleteHaving a few characteristics doesn't really create a discourse community. EF