Running head: DISCOURSE COMMUNITY 1

Discourse Communities

Madeline E. Jones

University of Texas at El Paso RWS 9:00 TR Professor Vierra

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Abstract

The subject of the paper is discourse communities. I will define what this is by using Swales

Article. There are six topics that will be discussed: inter communication mechanisms, common

Goals, dedicated genres, self-sustaining hierarchy, looped inter communication and specialized

Vocabulary. These topics will be defined and examples will be given.

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Dedicated Genres

Discourse Community is defined as a group of people sharing a common and distinct

mode of communication or discourse, especially within a particular domain or Intel. It contains a

broadly agreed set of common public goals. Also agreed set of common public goals. These

public goals may be inserted in documents. The goals are public, making the discourse

community contain mechanisms of intercommunication among its members. It also uses its

participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information and feedback. A discourse

community utilizes and possesses one or more genres. Examples are websites, magazine articles,

journal articles, vlogs and much more. Not just owning genres, a discourse community has also

gained some specific lexis. Lexis are used by artists to explain tools, techniques, and mediums.

Overall a discourse community is found everywhere. All around campus, jobs, your own friends,

family, and many more groups of individuals involve a discourse community.

Dedicated genres is defined by Swales’ “that they are texts recognizable to readers and

writers, and that meet the needs of the rhetorical situations in which they function” (pg. 467).

Genres are used in everyday lives, we don’t even know it though. We have many music genres,

history genres and book genres. Genres are usually visible to others. Most people have used

genres when they are going to watch a movie, because some people don’t like romance,

musicals, or action these are all genres. All types of genres have been around for a long time now

and we have come up with new ones almost everyday. People don’t know the power of genres,

some can hurt others. Genres are a huge part of our lives we don’t notice we use them everyday.
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For example if someone tells us a hilarious joke; that joke is a genre because it’s funny. The view

of genres have changed when we first started using them.

One example discourse community is dedicated genres. Dedicated genre. “Are types of

text that are recognizable to readers and writers and meet the needs and the rhetorical which they

function (Swales pg467).” Some examples of dedicated genres are essays, articles, journals,

movies, websites, and blogs. Scholarly journals are bibliography that uses other sources. An

article uses magazines, newspaper, and publications. Essays give information on a subject from

the author's point of view. Movies are something that is recorded and can be shown on television,

theater, and a motion picture. Movies have genres also like romance, horror, drama, action, and

more. Websites is engine that has many pages that give you information on subject. There are

chat groups, personal homepage, Message boards, and weblogs. Blogs are web page created by a

small group or person that is written in a communication style. Dedicated Genres are different

styles of something is expressed.

In the sources I found It does talk about genres and discourse community, also agrees to

the term. One example that it gives is that that genres did to that " one such grouping that Is

widely used to analyze written communication is discourse community" said by Erik Borg from

the book, Key Concept In ELT Discourse Community. Discourse community came from the

concept speech community, Speech community(# ymes 1972)refers to actual people who

recognize the language users. There is one example that says another authors name " swales"

which says"in 1990, for example, suggest that a prototypical discourse community might be a

society of stamp collectors scattered around the world" So see swales in his book talks about

genres and comes out in this book by Erik Borg, the two topics agree with each other. So pretty
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much "Genres “and "Discourse community" say that is can be found every where in the world,

just by simples groups anywhere.

Intercommunication Mechanism

.Discourse community: According to Swales, a discourse community is a group of people who

share common goals and use different communication skills to achieve them. Swales defines

discourse community as a group of individuals that communicate to develop the same set of

goals and proposes six defining characteristics that will help identify what a discourse

community looks like. Each of the six characteristics are different than one another but they all

provide ways of what a discourse community is.

According to Swales, intercommunication mechanisms is a way of interpreting and

responding to similar purposes and being able to communicate in any form. It is a working

towards the same goal through communication with others.

The principal example of a discourse community given by Swales is a hobby group and

has an ''umbrella organization ‘called the Hong Kong Study Circle which he happens to be a

member. The aims of this group are to foster interest in knowledge of the stamps and their

uses.He mentions brief facts to show that the members of the discourse community

have,superficially at least nothing in common except the shared lobby interests. He goes ahead

and gives two more examples as the extracts of Hong Kong,Type12,with index and The B.P.O's

in Kobe and Nagasaki.Communication takes place regularly but the mechanisms of the

communication vary according to the group or the community, which of course is a discourse

community.

A class being one of the discourse communities,meets the Swales six characteristics

defining it,in a class there are common public goals between the teacher and the students goal
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being that the students should understand at the end. Phones and computers being examples of

mechanisms in a class, we write blogs and respond to emails participate in group and class

discussions in the Internet and in a class is briefings by the teacher, slide presentations, articles

assigned for the class, class presentations, research reports are other mechanisms. All of this

have one motif and goal through the communication also dialogs and personal narratives can be

part of the communication mechanism.

Looped Intercommunication

According to Swales (p 472), looped intercommunication is when you are provided with

information and give feedback to that person and/or when you yourself provide information to

others and receive feedback. Looped intercommunication is important because this is how we are

able to communicate with our peers, co-workers, professor, and others; we are able to have an

understatement of each other. Looped intercommunication does not have to be used in just a

school environment, it can be used in a work environment, even in a grocery store, it is important

to know this characteristic so we can be able to work with others and communicate with them in

a professional manner. With looped intercommunication, we have the advantage of being able to

talk with others, express our feeling and thoughts with them, allow others to express their ideas,

thought, and feelings with us, and we are also able to get along with one another in a well-

rounded society.

According to Swales, 6 characteristics are necessary for identifying a group of people as

a discourse community: common public goals, mechanisms of intercommunication, looped

intercommunication, dedicated genres, specialized vocabulary, self-sustaining hierarchy. A

discourse community is a descriptive study of speech that brings people with similar objectives

together. The members of a discourse community are recruited by persuasion, training and just
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qualification. Occupational or special interest’s groups are the way that some of these discourse

communities separate into. Many researchers associate genre with discourse community, such as

academic disciplines. Discourse communities also consist of people and genres of written

communication in order to achieve a common goal. Discourse communities use participatory

mechanisms to provide information and feedback. Overall, a discourse community can be

defined as a group of people who share values and discourses, and are working together to

pursue a common goal, with the help of each other’s knowledge.

Some examples of looped intercommunication within our classroom are replying to

discussion boards, academic discussions (verbal/nonverbal), and communication with group

activities. Replying to discussion boards makes us thinking critically about the prompt and how

we are going to organize our thoughts, helps give feedback to the person who wrote the

discussion and helps them to expand on their ideas as well as gives the reader information on a

topic they weren’t aware of. Academic discussions give students knowledge which is taught by

the professor, then we show the professor what knowledge we obtained by quizzes, test or even

aloud responses, this also benefits the professor because it shows what the professor is doing is

affective. Communication in groups gives knowledge from our peers and helps us see different

point of views also we use our peer’s information and ideas to better our own.With looped

intercommunication we are able to expand our ideas and knowledge to use not only in class but

carry them outside the classroom as well.

According to swales discourse communities examine concepts for the

development of intuition to relationships between modern world texts, text roles, and texting

environments. Second look at discourse community is speech communities the way that these

works are the speech people use. A third way to comprehend the discourse communities' speech
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is by not thinking that only certain people in the same community who speak the same language

are the only ones who can be a part of that certain community. Due to shared linguistic speech,

regulative rules, and cultural concepts but looking beyond language and adopting those three

criteria is what John Swales believed to be the speech characteristics of a discourse community.

(Pg. 211)

Common Goals

Discourse Community, according to Swales (2011) is a group of people who have

common goals of expanding knowledge within the group through the six characteristics of

common public goals, intercommunication, looped intercommunication, dedicated genres,

specialized vocabulary, and self sustaining hierarchy (p 471).

Common Goals, according to Staff (2008) " The goals must be shared, not the fact that

the discourse community treats a particular subject matter." Sometimes Common Goals can be

done by studying the same subjects but the Goals in mind can be different. Common Goals

change depending on the reason why several things are getting done. (p.1) According to Gill

(2014) " Accomplish these goals through the use of intercommunication among members of the

community. With common goals we all believe that we want to achieve the same goal for the

same reason, but in reality we all have a different reason for wanting to achieve those goals and a

different way of achieving them all.

According to Swales (2011) “discourse community has a broadly agreed set of common

public goals”(pg.471). Three examples of common public goals can be a religion because it

brings people together with certain values and spreads faith. Another example can be a sorority
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that participate in philanthropy and grow together with sister hood. One last example is a honor

society simply because they all seem to maintain a good standing with grades and volunteer. So

pretty much these examples shared the values and agree upon them as a whole.

According to Gilstein Julia, "John Swales was the first to expand its definition in his

1990 book Genre Analysis. The book describes a discourse community as distinct from a speech

community. Discourse communities, while sharing common goals, do not need to be of the same

ethnic or geographic group. Speech communities do, with members in close proximity to each

other. According to Swales, objectives of a discourse community are often established prior to

any socialization or group solidarity, and the discourses are often focused on special interests.

The interests of speech communities are much more general."

Self-Sustaining Hierarchy

Discourse Community- According to Swales "discourse community is a group of people

sharing a common and distinct mode of communication or discourse." as seen in this definition,

many researchers associate genre with discourse community, such as academic disciplines. in the

genre of studies literature, genre is often defined as a 'distinctive category of discourse of any

type, spoken or written' serving as responses to speakers and writers to the demand of a social

context. Knowing the function and how this affect the way in which members of that community

write is an analysis that will require an engagement with modes of rhetoric and argumentation.

Self-Sustaining Hierarchy- One of the six characteristics Swales give us for discourse

community is self- sustaining hierarchy. Self-sustaining hierarchy, according to Swales (1990)

means to be able to maintain yourself by information people have impart to you. In a discourse

community we have two types of people either the experts or the newcomers (pg.8). In order for

a community to have a type of order there has to be people who can lead them to do the things
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they have to do since they have learn from the good things and the bad things. The experts would

give the new members information for them to be successful that would help them out when the

experts are gone.

List 3 Examples- An example within a self-sustaining hierarchy, in terms of this rhetoric

course, would be beginning as a student. Everyone starts off as a (1) novice. The next example

would be a T.A., or (2) teaching assistant. The people on this level of the hierarchy know enough

about the course to enlighten beginners, helping them move up on expertise. Finally, the last

example would be a (3) professor. The person on this level of the hierarchy is the one who is an

expert on the subject, therefore the one that teaches the T.A's and the novices. Without experts,

there would be no intermediates, leaving novices with no opportunities to enhance their

knowledge. There needs to be a balance between every level of the self-sustaining hierarchy.

Another definition of discourse community there two traditions or more accurately, two

families of traditions in which community is a key concept. The first traditions of families are

descriptive studies of speech is a discourse community. Also, in how the community’s keep their

tradition. The second involves in theorizing about how communication links to the community

and will have a positive or negative effect Each of these theoretical traditions builds on the

ordinary meanings of community, albeit pulling the concept into a theoretical frame that raises

very particular issues about communication.

Specialized vocabulary

A discourse community, according to Swales, “consists of a group of people who link up

in order to pursue objectives that are prior to those of socialization and solidarity” (Pg. 271).

There are six different characteristics that have to be met in order to consider a group of people a

discourse community. For example the first characteristic is that a discourse community “has a
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broadly agreed set of common public goals” (Pg. 271). Which means that the reason of their

group is because of the same one goal. Another of the characteristics that has to be met in order

to be a discourse community is characteristic number five. According to Swales, “a discourse

community has acquired some specific lexis” (Pg. 473). What that means is that the group that is

there for the same goal has to have their own type of language they prefer where they all

understand what they are trying to say. For example a discourse community could use

abbreviations and acronyms so that whenever someone sees that type of lexis they know it is for

that discourse community. The reason there were six characteristics created, according to swales,

was that “we need then to clarify, for procedural purposes, what is to be understood by discourse

community and, perhaps in the present circumstances, it is better to offer a set of criteria

sufficiently narrow that it will eliminate many of the marginal, blurred and controversial

contenders” (Pg. 469). What Swales means is that these six characteristics were created so that if

any type of group did not meat all six characteristics then they would not be considered a

discourse community.

Specialized Vocabulary as described by John Swales(1990), is vocabulary that outsiders

of the discourse community would not understand along with abbreviations and acronyms

special to that discourse community(pg.473). For Instance, the abbreviation used in a rhetoric

and writing class APA which stands for the American Psychological Association or a type of

format used for citation. In a rhetoric classroom there are three types or ways to convince an

audience using either ethics, logic, or emotions, but in the discourse community we use Greek

words to represent terms as ethos, logos, and pathos. These are just some of the many specialized

terms used in this rhetoric classroom that makes it a discourse community.

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One of the characteristics of Discourse Communication is specialized vocabulary.

Specialized vocabulary is the fifth out of six characteristics that Swales describes in the article

we looked over. According to Swales, Specialized vocabulary helps establish a discourse

community by using specific key terms that are exclusive to the group. When referring to the

“group”, we are referring to a set of people who are sharing a common goal who share that mode

of communication. They share that mode of communication in order to properly address and

achieve this “common goal” because otherwise that “group” of people would not be considered a

discourse community. According to Swales, “It is hard to imagine attending perchance the

convention of some group of which one is an outsider and understanding every word. If it were

to happen …then that grouping would not yet constitute a discourse community.”(pg. 471).

Community of Practice community is almost identical to Discourse community.

According to Lave and Wenger (2009) term they say it has “set of people who share a purpose

and pursue that purpose jointly in shared practices.” [pg. 145] The small difference that separates

them is that discourse community is it has less rules/ guides, and less to reach out to accomplish

goals. Another author Beaufort (1997) wrote that the discourse community is basically what

Swales wrote about discourse community, with the six main points needed to make a discourse

community. She even broke down those six points into two sections of 3. Influencing (writing)

and communicative (speaking) factors that a norm fluently communicate.

In conclusion discourse community is a group of characteristics, ideas, etc. We

use these characteristics in our everyday life. Whether we know it or not our class has a lot to

deal with discourse community. We all have different characteristics. Our class can be divided in

to many groups.
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References

John Flowerdew, a. (2000). Discourse Community, Legitimate Peripheral Participation, and the

Nonnative-English-Speaking Scholar. TESOL Quarterly, (1), 127. doi:10.2307/3588099

Tracy, K. (2009). Community. In S. W. Littlejohn & K. A. Foss (Eds.), Encyclopedia of

Communication Theory (Vol. 1, pp. 143-147). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Reference.
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