Gee and Swales both talk about discourse in their essays that we read. Both authors seem to agree that discourse (Gee distinguishes it with a capital “D”) is more than just communication. They both see discourse as a kind of cult, where membership is very difficult to earn. They also both view discourse as going beyond communication through a common language. Gee takes into account body language and dialect when considering true discourse, while Swales looks more at the motivation behind the discourse. Gee focuses more on the abstract of discourse, viewing discourse as inherently abstract, even comparing it to dancing, “When we have really mastered anything (e.g., a Discourse), we have little or no conscious awareness of it (indeed, like dancing, Discourses wouldn’t work if people were consciously aware of what they were doing while doing it.” Swales on the other hand looks at the more concrete. He defines all of the requirements of being in a discourse communities, and believes that not meeting these standards excludes something from being true discourse.

Both Swales’ and Gee’s theories can be useful for our upcoming project.  Our prompt is to find ways in which an article we choose use connections to assert connections to one or more discourse communities. By examining these theories we can see the ways in which people connect themselves to discourse communities. Swales’ criteria for being a discourse community is especially helpful with this because he provides qualities which we can identify in the articles we select. Gee, again, is more abstract. His theories on discord seem to be so broad that they can be easily manipulated to suit any argument. His ideas on qualities besides language that make up discourse are useful, however. By identifying the qualities that define Discourse, we can see how our articles associate themselves with certain discourse communities.