Thursday, October 18, 2012

Reader's Response #14


In the article, “The Concept of Discourse Community” by John Swales is as the title explains it. Swales’ redefines what a discourse community is to him. Swales’ comes up with six characteristics that a discourse community has to have. He also demonstrates that discourse communities all use genres.

I can relate “The Concept of Discourse Community” by John Swales to James Porter’s “Intertexuality and the Discourse Community” because they both mention how the discourse community has an impact on writing. Porter argues that what we write is shaped by our specific discourse community and Swales challenges that a little bit with his definition of a discourse community.

Before You Read:

2. I come from a city where there are so many Greeks; we get off of school for their holidays. I remember going to a Greek fest, and although being friends with many Greeks in my town, I felt a little out of place. They have never made me felt this way, but being the only one of color in a whole building can cause some discomfort.

QD:

5. As silly as it sounds, the only discourse community I can relate to is being a cheerleader. As a cheerleader, you must sign an agreement of public goals, or expectations. As for participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information and feedback I was captain of the squad and that position not only meant leading, but providing info and feedback to my coach. The different genre’s I was exposed to on the squad was that being a cheerleader you were held up to a certain expectation as a leader. A specific lexis that was required was creating different and various routines. Lastly, the threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discoursal expertise would be the try out process.

I enjoyed the article, “The Concept of Discourse Community” by John Swales. I really liked the concept of the six characteristics of what makes a discourse community. I can easily relate what Swales was presenting to discourse communities that I have been apart of.

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