#gitgudinside

[vaqueropanda-blog]

In addition to owning genres, a discourse community has acquired some specific lexis

John Swales

This is the fifth characteristic of a discourse community. Basically, your community has certain lingo attached exclusively to that community. A good example is that in message boards or in video games, people yell out “banhammer” or “get b&” when someone is violating the rules of that message board or game. 

[vaqueropanda-blog]

The discourse community I have discussed meets all six of the proposed defining criteria: there are common goals, participatory mechanisms, information exchange, community specific genres, a highly specialized terminology and high general level of expertise. On the other hand, distance between members geographically, ethnically and socially presumably means that they do not form a speech community

 John Swales

This refers to when Swales had attempted to join the Hong Kong Study Circle, but had failed. He failed because there was little to no communication within the group’s members. The only form of intercommunication between the members was a bi-monthly journal and was the only thing holding the group together.

Point being is that a community cannot be a disclosure community without there being some form of intercommunication. That in itself is the second characteristic of a disclosure community. You can’t have have an online discussion board without some form of electronic medium.

[vaqueropanda-blog]

In a Senate or Parliament, there may well exist overtly adversarial groups of members, but these adversaries may broadly share some common objective as striving for improved government.

John Swales

This quote refers to Swales describing the first characteristic of a disclosure community. When you become part of a community, you and your members share one universal goal; regardless of viewpoints. That’s the first and arguably the most important characteristic of a discourse community: sharing a unified goal. An example would be the recently released Pokemon Go game. In the game, you are allowed to join one of three teams: Valor, Instinct, or Mystic. All three teams have completely different morals and values, but they all share one universal goal: to catch all the Pokemon in the game.

[vaqueropanda-blog]

#GitGudInside

So once again, my professor has tasked us (the Composition II class) to do some reading. Now, I’m fairly certain that you’ve read this article at one point in any of your English courses during your time in college It’s an analysis called “The Concept of Discourse Community”, written by John Swales. Today, I’m gonna go through how you can get good in becoming more comfortable in your community; whether you’re a new member or a solid veteran.