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Justyn Gray

UWRT 1104-057: Writing and Inquiry in Academic Contexts (I & II) with Studio

Professor Gabrielle Volstad

12 February 2019

Discourse Communities

In order to understand discourse communities you have to know what a discourse

community is. According to researcher and writer of “The Concept of Discourse Communities”

John Swales a discourse community is a group of people that have goals or purposes, and use

communication to achieve these goals. Be careful discourse communities and speech

communities are different. People choose their discourse based off their interest and knowledge

of the community we chose.

A discourse community is defined by six characteristics the first one being a discourse

community has a broadly agreed set of common public goals. They all joined that group and they

have one goal or maybe many goals for example teachers common goal is to teach their students.

High school seniors common goal is to graduate high school and possibly go to college or the

military. The goals vary depending on that specific community like a sports team for a school

might have a goal to win the championship, but another sports team for another school might

have a goal to increase bonding. The second characteristic is a discourse community has

mechanism of intercommunications meaning they use one or many mechanism to communicate

to each other. Professors use email and canvas to rely their information to their students. A

football team might use a bulletin board inside the locker room to post information about

practices and games. A team might also have a messaging group chat to communicate between

teammates. The third characteristic is a discourse community uses these mechanisms of

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communication to provide feedback and responses. Like I said earlier a team might have a

messaging group chat where they can respond quickly to their teammates. A professor can use

canvas where they have a discussion board for students to quickly respond to them.

The fourth characteristic is a discourse community uses one or more genre to

communicate. For example a group working on a project may communicate face to face, but

sometimes it may require skype, text messaging, or email to communicate with your group

members. The fifth characteristic is acquired lexis. A discourse community has words specific to

that community. A football team may specifically name their plays something that only their

team and no one else would know. The final characteristic is threshold level of membership and

every discourse community should have a hierarchy. In a high school the hierarchy would be

students, then faculty, then administrators, principle, then superintendent. All of these

characteristic define a discourse community.

After playing runescape I learned about the MMORPG community and the goals they set

out to accomplish. They speak to each other through game chat and they set out to level up and

become the highest ranking member of the game. They have forums and blogs to communicate

to each other as well as a website to provide information. They also have their own language that

is specific to the MMORPG community such as crafting, smithing, etc. They have a hierarchy

that keeps the peace with in the game to keep everything running smoothly and in an orderly

fashion. In general I learned that many discourse communities are open to new members. Many

communities welcome you with open arms as long as you follow the rules they set. I also learned

that there is not a limit to how many discourse communities you can join as long as you balance

them well. It’s like clubs at school you can join many of clubs as longs as you balance them out.
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Playing runescape in a group was better than playing alone in my opinion because it gave

me a chance to get to know my classmates. It also made playing the game easier to me as I

couldn’t get a good grasp on the concept of the game. Playing alone became very boring the

more I played because I like to make things a competition. I couldn’t do that by myself, but with

teammates I was given the opportunity to one up them. I could try to kill more demons than them

or level up faster than them. I got to meet my classmates more as well and learn how they truly

think. One of my classmates Richie is a very busy person and it took a while to get a meeting

time for us to actually play the game together. He is also a very intelligent person as he tried to

help me with my computer troubles. My other teammate Parker is also a very intelligent person

and he is very cheerful and is a good person to be around because he does not really give out bad

vibes or energy. Overall if I had to play the game again I would as long as it is in a group.

For me I am in a select few of discourse communities because I do not really go out. The

first obvious discourse community I am in is being a UNCC student. We all have similar goals

and that is to graduate, meet new people, and enjoy college life. We have our lexis which is our

pickaxe symbol, “Forty Niner”, and “Niner Nation”. We communicate with each other through

social media, texting, face to face interactions, and posters throughout campus. We have a

hierarchy from freshman, to sophomores, juniors, seniors, and graduate students. Another

discourse community I am in is Haskell Heights Progressive Baptist Church. Our common goal

is to become closer to god as well as bond with our fellow church members. We communicate

through posters, programs, social media, telephones, and face to face interactions. Our hierarchy

consist of members, trustees, deacons, then pastor. We have a similar lexis for example God,

Bible, Jesus, etc. Hunt Hall residents is another discourse community that I am apart of. We

communicate through phones, social media, and posters. Our hierarchy is from residents, to
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RA’s, and finally RA Coordinator who lives in the building. Our goal is to enjoy our college life

and keep our resident hall clean. The final discourse community I consider myself to be in is

Richland Northeast High School graduate. The graduates of RNE high school all have a common

goal and that is to represent our high school that we graduated from. We want to make our

school look good by utilizing the knowledge we gain from the school to become functioning

members of society. We still communicate with each other through social media, sometimes

phone, and face to face interactions.

This assignment helped me realize that discourse communities do exist and they are

everywhere. Some people may see it as you are just playing a computer game, but it more than

that. The people who actually play the game may feel different about the game because they are

able to meet people who enjoys it like them. Once you realized that the people playing this game

all have something common because of the game they are playing you start to think that some

other people may feel the same way about another game, sport, or place. They all have a

common goal and methods to achieve this goal they must be a discourse community.

It is important for us to know about discourse communities to understands others and

why we behave the way we do. We behave a certain way when we are comfortable because we

are accompanied by people who behave the same as we do. We also want to feel accepted by

society and whenever we find people have the same thing in common as us it feels comfortable.

One of maslow's hierarchy of needs is belongingness and love. All humans need to feel that they

belong somewhere and they need to feel love. That discourse community or family is what

provides that. People around you that have the same interest as you and be have the same way as

you provides that comfortability that makes you feel like you belong.