ENC 1102-Professor Wolcott
 
Personally, reading Swales' article was very difficult. In the beginning i could not concentrate but once I started understanding Swales' purpose and reasoning's, his passage became very informative. In “The Concept of Discourse Community,” John Swales discusses the meaning of discourse communities and the six characteristics that make us the community. In the beginning of Swales’ passage, he quotes Herzberg stating “Discourse operates within conventions defined by communities, be they academic disciplines or social groups.” Also, he pronounces that “a mean of meaning and extending knowledge” and “epistemic or constructive of knowledge,” signifying that the discourse communities are not focused solely on furthering the knowledge of each community, but in fact dependent on the existence of the discourse community. Swales’ continues to elaborate on the vagueness of discourse community so he seeks to validate six characteristics to distinguish what may actually be “discourse community.”

     Swales’ discusses six various criteria’s which aid the determination if a community is in fact a discourse community. The first criteria is a community with a set of goals that are agreed upon by its members. With this said, it is important to remember that the shared opinions do not make the community, but rather the shared goals. Second, the members of a community must have intertextuality and an effective mode of communication. Third, Swales declares that in order to be a discourse community, the community must provide feedback and their input within the neighborhood. Fourth, and most important, genres, which are type texts that are results of repeated rhetorical situations. Genre’s are utilized to further a communities communicative goals. They “are how things are done, when language is used to accomplish them (472).” Fifth, discourse communities use their own specific lexis meaning that communities would communicate goals among their self using language which would confuse other communities. Finally, the sixth criteria involve communities having and maintain a sort of status between new and original members.

     Swales’ article discusses the differences between a speech community and a discourse community. A speech community is composed of people who share linguistic rules. They are seem as being composed of those who “share functional rules that determines the appropriacy of utterances.” A speech community is defined as a community who shares knowledge of rules for the interpretation of speech. This type of community inherits its members from bitch, accident or adoption. On the contrary, a discourse community recruits its members by persuasion, training and relevant qualification. “A discourse community has a broadly agreed set of common public goals.” These goals predominate in the development and maintain the communities’ characteristics. The community uses their members to provide information and feedback. Overall, I found Swales’ article to be very interesting because I learned copious information about discourse communities.

      Citation: Swales, John M. "2.2 Speech Communities and Discourse Communities." Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings. Cambridge [England: Cambridge UP, 1990. 23-24. Print.

Why Swales?

John Swales article “The Concept of Discourse Community” reflects on the topic of discourse community through six criteria’s that determine a discourse community. Though Swales’ in depth explanation of a discourse community, I clearly understood what the communities characteristics were by the end of the passage. 
 I choose Swales article as one to discuss because in the beginning of his passage, I was very confused but by the end, his information clicked and was very interesting. This was a pick for me because it was one of my first discussion posts so it shows my initial work within these discussions. His article was the most important to me because the course, ENC 1102 was based majority on discourse community. Without reading this vital piece of work, I would have failed to know the definition and purpose of a discourse community. 




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