If John Swales’ The Concept of Discourse Community is anything to go by, the definition isn’t unanimous. For example, Swales writes about the perceived difference between a speech community and a discourse community. In short, a discourse community is a group separated by the presence of specialized writing and the active effort of recruitment. Swales also establishes that not just any community is a discourse community.
Muddling the concept of discourse communities further is the word, discourse. Discourse, with a capital D, already denotes communities on its own. As a matter of fact, I had written about this concept a couple of weeks ago. Merriam-Webster simply defines it as “verbal interchange of ideas” as a baseline. All that being said, there are tighter guidelines for a discourse community than for a Discourse.
According to Swales, a discourse community must have a set of common public goals and way to communicate internally. Said method is used mainly for feedback and information; this must use genres. No, these aren’t genres as in “movie categories,” these are ultra-specific, purpose-made documents. The preliminary text for Swales’ portion uses a wedding invitation as an example. In addition, purpose-made “lexis” must be present, and the community is somewhat finite.
It is somewhat ironic that this particular use of “lowercase” discourse ends up so specific. One’s Discourse can range from their church to their school. One’s discourse community looks more like the niche club that they’ve joined to kill time. It’s a lot to take in. Even Swales felt the need to address issues that may come with his definition.
For our purposes, a discourse community is a group that is run might tighter than your average group of friends.
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