Chairez 1

Arturo Chairez

Emily Litle

ENG 121.001

16 October 2017

Paper 2: The Concept of Discourse Community

John Swales, a professor of linguistics that works with non-native speakers to help them

become better readers and better writers. Swales wrote a book called, Genre Analysis in which

there is a chapter where he discusses what discourse community is and how it is different from

speech community. Also, in this chapter, John Swales defines discourse community in his own

words. Throughout this chapter he expresses on how people have a different understanding on

this term. Swales gives us six characteristics of discourse community so we can have a better

idea of the meaning from his criteria.

The first characteristic Swales gave us was, A discourse community has a broadly

agreed set of common public goals (Swales 220). As a soccer player, there are different goals

that a team wants to achieve. In the beginning of the year, here in OJC, we created a set of goals

we wanted to achieve this season. One goal the team had was to represent the school well, have a

good behavior on and off the field, and behave mature at all times. Another goal was to win the

Regional Championship and participate in the National Tournament in Prescott, Arizona. In

soccer, the main goal is to win every game you play and be successful. Discipline is the key to

achieve every goal our team has.

A discourse community has mechanisms of intercommunication among its members

(Swales 221). This second characteristic Swales gives is about how there is communication

among its members. In soccer, we communicate outside of the field to let each other know that
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practice got cancelled, or that they changed the location of the practice. There are times coaches

have meetings with individual players to let them know what they are doing right and what they

need to improve on. These meetings help players know what they need to work on in practice

and in their free time. Also, this type of communication is very helpful.

Swales states, A discourse community uses its participatory mechanisms primarily to

provide information and feedback (221). What his third characteristic is saying is that they give

feedback to improve performance. In soccer, coaches give us feedback during practice to

improve our performance in the field. In practice, there are times where they stop certain drills to

tell us why were doing the drill and how it will help us during the game. During game halftimes

coaches get us together to and tell us what we're doing wrong, what we need to be doing against

our opponent and what we as a team need to be doing to score more goals.

The fourth characteristic Swales talks about is, A discourse community utilizes and

hence possesses one or more genres in the communicative furtherance of its aims (Swales 221-

222). In this characteristic, what Swales is trying to say is that there are ways of communicating

to achieve something. In the soccer field, there are ways to achieve victory. During the game,

there are set pieces we create. Set pieces are plays we make when there is a corner kick or a free

kick. We have different hand signals for different set pieces. These are ways of communicating

with our teammates to achieve goals or opportunities to score. To ask for the ball in a certain

direction we use hand signals to point where we want the ball.

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

(Swales 222). This means that there are terms used that people may not understand because they

are not familiar with the club. In soccer, we use simple terms that people may not understand
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because theyre not familiar with soccer. When there is an opponent going at one of our

teammates we use the term man on to let him know hes got a player on his back. When one

player is coming from one side of the field and there is an open space on the other side we

say switch. Another term we use is turn. This means that the player who received the ball

and has his back turned to the goal has no man on his back and can turn to go forward.

There are times where people either learn or get frustrated. In soccer, this is common.

Players during practice learn many things and learn how to do things in the field or get frustrated

because they cant get a drill right. Most of the time they end up learning a lot of stuff. A

discourse community has a threshold level of member with a suitable degree of relevant content

and discoursal expertise (Swales 222). Very few players in the professional leagues retire from

soccer being legends. When I say legends, I mean real legends. They either break a lot of records

or they do things in their teams no one has ever done.

These six characteristics are given by Swales so we can have a better understanding of

what discourse community is and the different groups you might fit in to. This article is mainly

about Swales giving his criteria towards discourse community. There are people that have other

concept of what discourse community really means. Here Swales tries to clarify the meaning in

his point of view and in his words.

Reading this article was difficult to understand because very often I did not know what

Swales was trying to say. There were terms I didnt fully understand so I had to look them up.

Although it was a bit confusing I enjoyed reading this article because it challenged me to really

get into the reading. The way Swales presented the six characteristics made the rest of the article

very easy to understand. Swales used ethos to present this topic because as he wrote this, he gave
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his own criteria and his own point of view to define discourse community. What Swales did in

the article was simply give his own point of view towards the meaning of discourse community.

Swales states in the article, We need then to clarify, for procedural purposes, what is to

be understood by discourse community and, perhaps in the present circumstances, it is better to

offer a set of criteria sufficiently narrow that it will eliminate many of the marginal, blurred and

controversial contenders (Swales 218). I totally agree with this because many people had

different perspectives of the meaning of discourse community. Swales came and wrote this and

really clarified what discourse community is. He supports his argument and makes it credible,

and easy for people to understand what discourse community is.

Swales wrote about discourse community for a reason. The reason couldnt be any

clearer. Many people had very distinct perspectives of the meaning of discourse communities

and with Swales writing this he clarified the meaning. Swales gives clearer information to make

his audience understand why discourse community means as he defines it. He compared speech

community and discourse community. Swales gives us six characteristics of discourse

community so we can have a better idea of the meaning from his criteria.
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Works Cited

Swales, John M. The Concept of Discourse Community. Genre Analysis. 1990. Print. Pg. 215-

217