Use your own words to describe each of the six characteristics of a discourse community according to Swales. Can you find examples of each from your own experience? WW 480 question 1 

          “The Concept of Discourse Community”, an excerpt from John Swales’s Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings, defines a Discourse Community which is a community that focuses on a written form of communication. In his except, Swales gives six characteristics to a Discourse Community.

          The first characteristic is: “A discourse community has a broadly agreed set of common public goals” (Swales, 471.) This means that all of the members of a discourse community shares a or a set of common goal(s). An example of this that I have seen in real life is in the church, or more specifically in the Christian missionary teams from Abundant Grace Internal Fellowship, an international non-denominational church in Shanghai, China. Although the destinations of each mission team may change, they all share one common goal: to evangalise and spread the word of Christ.

          The second characteristic that Swales provides is: “A discourse community has mechanisms of intercommunication among its members” (Swales, 471.) In other words, a discourse community has a way to communicate between every member. An example that I can think of from my experiences would be the instant messaging program, Skype. In Concordia International School Shanghai, a common way for clubs and sports teams to communicate with its members would be to use Skype. Usually this would take the form of conversations which is a very large chat where anyone in this conversation can contribute.

          The third Characteristic is: “A discourse Community uses its participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information and feedback” (Swales, 472.) This means that participation is used in a discourse community to share information. An example of a community that utilizes participation would be a social networking service and news webbsite called Reddit. This website relies entirely on user submissions, which are called posts. These posts usually contains information about current events, projects, pictures, or simply interesting facts.

          The fourth Characteristic of a discourse community is: “A discourse community utilizes and hence possesses one or more genres in the communicative furtherance of its aims” (Swales, 472.) In other words, this means that a discourse community has its own specific style that is used by the community. A community that would fit this definition would be the rather infamous 4chan, an internet imageboard where users can post pictures and comments. One feature that I have noticed in 4chan is the usage of “green text” stories. This is an interesting way of telling a story, which utilizes clipped choppy lines, each starting with a > symbol, which is programmed to make the text green, which is why they are called greentext stories. This is a unique feature that is seldom used on other websites and is an interesting writing convention, or genre, specific to 4chan.

          The fifth Characteristic of a discourse community as defined by Swales is: “In addition to owning genres, a discourse has acquired some specific lexis.” (Swales, 473.) This basically means, a discourse community has its own special jargon or vocabulary that is known amongst its members. An example of a discourse community with this characteristic would be the internet. A rather large and heterogenous community, the internet utilizes various internet jargon. Examples include: the word meme, which can be loosely defined as popular pictures with captions; various abbreviations such as lol (laugh out loud); usage of punctuation marks to imitate faces, such as colon and parenthesis to make a smiling face :).

          The last characteristic of a discourse community given by Swales is: ” A discourse community has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discoursal expertise” (Swales, 473.) Or, there are differing levels of expertise within a discourse community (Swales, 473.) A community that is a prime example of this would be the United States Army, especially in the enlisted and non-commissioned officer ranks. Members of a lower expertise usually have lower ranks, ranks such as a Private. On the other hand, members of a higher expertise usually have higher ranks, such as that of a master sergeant. Similarly to a discourse community, in the Army, any member can gain experience and rank, and those of a higher rank usually mentor those of a lower rank.

Bibliography:

Swales, John. “Discourses: How Do Communities Shape Writing?” Writing about Writing: A College Reader. By Elizabeth A.               Wardle and Doug Downs. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2011. 463-80. Print.