Writing Project: Synthesis Prewriting

Community: Maryville Men’s tennis team

I. Introduction

As we grow, we participate in different activities, such as various sports, drama classes, math
clubs, debate clubs, and other extra activities to which we belong to a group. However, there is
always a group that we feel more identified with. And automatically when we think of a
community, we remember that group and the truth is that it is good to belong to a community so
that people feel that they play a role in it and interact with people who have similar tastes and
therefore belong to the same group. In his article “Approaching the Concept of Discourse
Communities,” John Swales defines that a community has six different characteristics, and they

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have to comply with these characteristics to be considered an adequate discourse community.

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Swales wrote this article 30 years ago; therefore, analyzing several communities, we realized that

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it is not necessary to meet the six characteristics to be considered a proper discourse community.

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So, I believe that these characteristics should be adapted to the world in which we live now and

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to the new communities. The characteristics proposed by John Swales are a good measure to
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know which group is a discourse community, however, I believe that it is not necessary to
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continue with all the characteristics and this should be re-evaluated with elements that are seen in
communities today. This is because in the 6 characteristics proposed by Swales, they do not
evaluate all the variables that today a discourse community can contain.
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II. Background information

 My discourse community:
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My discourse community is the Maryville Men’s tennis team. I am part of this community
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since the day I signed for the University, like 8 months ago, and I will be part for 4 more years
until I graduate. Men’s tennis is made up of 8 players, 7 of whom are international students and
only one is from the United States. Then there is the assistant coach, the physical trainer, and
finally the main coach. And we have a good relationship with each other because there is very
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good communication, the hierarchical levels are established and finally we see each other very
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often due to training, meetings and games.

 John Swales:
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John Swales’ article “Approaching the Concept of Discourse Communities” was published in
1987 and he define that a community has 6 different characteristics, and they must comply these
characteristics to be considered an adequate discourse community. These characteristics are:
common public goals, established ways of interacting, shared information, shared genres, utilizes

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 a shared vocabulary and specialized terms, Enough experienced members to survive, and Ideas
for sources/artifacts that represent your community

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This study source was downloaded by 100000820929603 from CourseHero.com on 04-20-2021 12:19:45 GMT -05:00

https://www.coursehero.com/file/87980848/Intro-and-summaries-disocurse-communitydocx/
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