Chavez1

David Herman-Chavez

Emily Litle

ENG 121.002

12 October 2017

Discourse Community

In the academic article The Concept of Discourse Community, John Swales first

introduces the reader to the various definitions different scholars and researchers have given to

what they believe a discourse community embodies. After reviewing their definitions Swales

comes to the conclusion that there needs to be clarity and criteria in how we recognize a

discourse community stating, it is better to offer a set of criteria sufficiently narrow that it will

eliminate many of the marginal, blurred and controversial contenders (218). Two of the

concepts that Swales distinguishes from each other are the Speech community and discourse

community.

Aside from the fact speech communities consist of the spoken word rather than the

written word as in discourse communities, Swales felt the separation of the two necessary. A

clear distinction of the two would be, A speech community inherits its members by birth,

accident or adoptions; a discourse community recruits its members be persuasion, training or

relevant qualifications. (220).

Swales then goes on to purposes that there are six defining characteristics of a discourse

community. First and foremost each community has common goals that they strive for, usually

purposed through a mission statement. These goals are public and in some instances can consist

of high level of expertise or be abstract goals. Swales makes it a point to distinguish that having
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a shared object of study does not necessarily imply it is a discourse community, even though a

common goal can includes a shared object of study.

Secondly, each discourse community has ways to communicate and will vary given the

type of community. This can include message boards, telecommunications, regularly scheduled

meetings, and so on, as long as a communication method has been established. This leads into

the third characteristic that in order to participate members must communicate with another.

With communication and participation members can provide information and feedback on ways

the group can improve their performance in achieving the common goal.

The fourth characteristic occurs naturally as these communities develop and use different

genres as textual tools that are recognizable to readers and writers within their community.

Swales goes on to say that, Genres are how thigs get done, when language is used to accomplish

them (221). Examples of genres would include memos in an office and published papers in

an academic community. In addition to genres, the fifth characteristic in a discourse community

is an acquired lexis occurs naturally. Lexis is a specialized terminology, driven by the

requirement for efficient communication exchange between experts. (221). Often times words

will be abbreviated and only those who are members of the specific discourse community would

be able to understand them. The Final characteristic of a discourse community involves a

threshold of membership with a variety of expertise levels. Threshold is to help keep the

discourse community organized. When a member leaves the discourse community through death

or other involuntary ways a new member is initiated into the group and mentor/apprentice

relationship takes place. After listing and defining his six characteristic Swales goes on to use an

example from his personal life to help the reader better understand a discourse community.
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After reading this article I found myself annoyed with Swales arrogant and incessant

need to take something as pure as the formation of a hobby group and give it defining

characteristics so he can classify is as a specific community amongst his linguistic experts.

Especially when the people who formed the discourse community are not even aware of what

one is, unless of course they themselves were required to read and write about one in college

also. I believe this is because the article was written for a discourse community, especially with

the language/lexis used within the article. Often times I found myself having to look up words in

the article and rereading to fully understand what Swales was trying to convey. Swales uses his

creditability of having a Ph.D. from Cambridge University and the credentials of his fellow

linguistic experts to help persuade the reader to use his six characteristics to define what a

discourse community over other definitions.

Despite my distaste for Swales article, I found myself analyzing all the different special

interest groups that I was involved in over the years to see if I was a part of a discourse

community. It didnt take long for me to realize that I was involved in several discourse

communities, even participating in a few each day. At this point I came to the conclusion that it

is unimportant for people to understand what a discourse community is because they will still

continue to exist despite people being completely unaware they are involved in one.