According to John Swales a discourse community is a group of individuals that use specific words, or lexis, to work together to achieve a shared goal. The community has different forms of intercommunication that helps the members decrease any weaknesses and improve on any strengths. John Swales goes on to explain that there will be “six defining characteristics that will be necessary for identifying a group of individuals as a discourse community” (220). In order to really understand what a discourse community is I took specific observations of a group. These observations would lead me to understand what a discourse community is.
I would like to explain why this is the game I chose to focus on, this game is the most recent of the COD franchise out there but it also captures what COD is mostly about. To maintain the idea of discourse community from Swales article, I would like to define it. A discourse community is a group that has goals or purposes and work, communicate together to achieve them (Swales, 22). To identify a discourse community, there is six qualifications that should be displayed. These qualifications include having common public goals, a way to communicate with one another, giving back feedback, a specific language set for the community, genres the community produces and having members have relevant knowledge and can keep being passed down to others.
A discourse community is a group of people that share a set of values and goals. Members of a discourse community have their own way of communicating within the group and with the public. Although the communities may differ in subject matter and appearance, they do share varying levels of similarities. The three-discourse communities that we will be focusing on are: art, research biology and finance: specifically, the financial service sector. Furthermore, we will be comparing the three-discourse communities on: similarities among all the groups, similarities between each group and the differences among all three.
We communicate in many ways, either by email, telephone, text, face to face, social media or letters and the language we use allows us to get things done, nonetheless the language and communication method in which we chose to use can vary depending on the discourse community. Much like John Swales suggests a discourse community involves a group of people who share the same common public goals, such as shared interests, rules, structure, and vocabulary. When thinking about the several discourse communities I am evolved in, which include family, coaching football, college student, and a few friends. These discourse communities have influenced me, given me insight of where I come from and tell who I am as a person. I also believe much like Swales,
Before I read the articles about Swales . I had no clue at all about what a discourse community was, but the idea once was known, was quite simple . A discourse community according to Swales, has six illustrative characteristics . First of all, a discourse community must have a common set of public goals. The community must also have various methods of communication between their members.
Joining a discourse community is something that we’ve all experienced, whether it's family, sports clubs or even going to church. In class we have been talking about the types of discourse communities we are apart of and sharing it with our fellow classmates. A discourse community is a group of people who share a set of discourses, understood as basic values and assumptions, and ways of communicating about those goals. I feel that it is very important to be apart of a discourse community because you share ideas and thoughts upon each other to build a relationship. Everybody is apart of a discourse community throughout the world.
For instance, I define a discourse community as a group of individuals willing to exchange efforts and some with similar interests with a finality of contributing positively to a given society (Cerqueira “Analysis on Cate Restaurant” 1). However, James Porter defines discourse community as “a group of individuals bound by a common interest who communicate through approved channels and whose discourse is regulated” (Porter 400). These concepts above are to show that different people can have different arguments about discourse community. Fourth, using the notion of discourse community it was required to make an essay based on one discourse community and that we could conduct interviews, observations, a document of the community, and create an argument based on all sources. So, with all of these requirements I learn to make an analysis.
Various linguists and/or writers have different opinions in relation to their definitions of a discourse community. Even though it may be different from other authors, I define a discourse community as a group of individuals willing to exchange efforts and some with similar interests with a finality of contributing positively to a given society. For instance, a basketball team, has as focus the conquest of championships, which at the same time will give the fans something to cheer for and will also attract more tourists; thus, helping a given society financially. The University of Oklahoma is a university located in the United States of America, Oklahoma State, and in the city of Norman (where I study).
Discourse Community : why or why not? In his book, Genre Analysis: English in Academics and Research Settings, linguist John Swales defined discourse community as “groups that have shared goals or purposes, and use communication such as mechanism of intercommunication, participatory mechanism, genre and lexis to achieve their goals."(220). He asserts that the six unique attributes of a discourse community. I applied his specifications to one of my communities that I belonged to prove why my community is a discourse community, and not a speech community.
Living in my house, I consistently hearing about sports. Baseball is frequently the topic. It seems as if it is a 24-hour a day, 365 days a year thing. Well that may be a small exaggeration, but it is a lot. We now have a no baseball at the table rule. They discuss about which teams may be signing what player. Who may be traded and to whom. Why a specific team cannot sign a specific player even if they are the best-suited player for the team. They talk about the money that these baseball players make. The television deals that the various teams signed. Team revenues and payrolls. The numbers are staggering. I decided I am going to learn about this. If have I to listen to it all the time, I might as well know what they are talking about.
“It is hard to conceive, at least in the contemporary English- speaking world, of a group of well- established members of a discourse community communicating among themselves on topics relevant to the goals of community and not using lexical items puzzling to outsiders”(Swales, 2011). This is exactly how the communication in a football team works. All the talk about plays and routes could be quite mind boggling to someone who isn’t apart of the community. With both my interviewees being freshman learning the lexis isn’t something that they did a long time ago.
Baseball Narrative In 1985 the Royals took the crown against the Saint Louis Cardinals in the World Series, and it happened again in 2015 against the New York Mets. On a breezy night in November, my family was watching game 5 of the World Series. Throughout innings 1-5 nobody had scored yet, so the score, I guess, was looking alright. “Kaylea guess what!”
The tan sand around the bases with the growing green grass and old worn out cracked dugouts is where I would have been. The Albany baseball diamond was where me and my friends hung out. We would hit old worn out baseballs with the leather coming off of them and run around the aged bases and sleep on the old rickety metal things they called bleachers. The school right beside it also had a playground which we may or may not have supposed to be on.
Baseball and football are different. Yes, both sports play on unique field dimensions, scoring, and time systems. But the managers, players, and fans truly give these two sports their identities most associate with them.
Games are the greatest wellspring of amusement around the globe. There are numerous games in America, yet baseball is our distraction. Baseball is the thing that began America's enthusiasm for games, and a large number of individuals love the game right up 'til today. A ball game is an exceptionally uncommon occasion. Going to a diversion makes you understand that baseball truly is more than an amusement.