Explaining+'Discourse+Community'

Discourse Community definition 1.

John Swales explains a discourse community as being made up of individuals who share:
 * "a broadly agreed upon set of common public goals;
 * mechanisms of intercommunication amount its members (newsletters, conversations, meetings, etc.);
 * participatorymechanisms to provide information and feedback (information exchanged in the discourse community will vary according to the goals of the group but is in order to benefit or even maintain the group);
 * one or more genres in order to further and maintain the group's aims (uses various methods / strategies for communication);
 * a specific lexis (lexis= terminology or jargon specific to this group (think about the terms used in psychology for example, psychology is a discourse community that has developed and maintains a specific lexis); and
 * threshold level of members witha suitable degree of relevant content and discoursal expertise (survival of the community depends on a reasonable ration between novices and experts)."

Discourse Community definition 2. See Wikipedia entry

Discourse Community definition 3. Charles Bazerman "//The term discourse community identifies a grouping of people who share common language norms, characteristics, patterns, or practices as a consequence of their ongoing communications and identification with each other. With respect to writing, the term has been used to point out that different academic collectives write in characteristic registers and genres. The term has been useful in orienting people to a sociological understanding of the varieties of writing done by students, academics and members of other social groupings, often differentiated by discipline, kind of institution, and level of education. The term was formed by analogy with the sociolinguistic term “speech community,” identifying regional groups that share linguistic norms and/or typical phonological, lexical, morphological and syntactic patterns.// //While useful in suggesting the social distribution of writing, the term discourse community has been criticized in being imprecise and inaccurate."//

Discourse Community definition 4 and 5: James Paul Gee and Gunther Kress (see word document file)



Discourse Community definition 6: By providing a list of examples of Discourse Communities (which I hope you'll help me add to) you might better understand what defines a discourse community (see word doc file)



Discourse Community definition 8: Have you seen these "$#!+ ___ say" videos? Here's ___ Hipsters say and ___Civilians say to Veterans I am including these because all the "__ say" videos not only poke fun of discourse communities they also reveal the very commonalities holding a given discourse community together (the things they say; how what they say is revealing of their values, beliefs, ideologies, views, etc.). While some of these videos are better than others, and while all of these videos can be seen as stereotyping and derogatory, they may help you identify a discourse community or an issue within that community you find interesting.