Even though many vocabulary heavy and complicated articles involve the general public, they aren’t written with their comprehension in mind. Of course, this is purposeful in most cases. But if an author wishes for their work to actually reach the general public, they should use the universal language every person uses and loves: geeking out.
To put things into perspective, while I was reading “The Concept of Discourse Community” by John Swales, I struggled to understand what he was trying to get across in his article. Even what little I could make out of his article didn’t really stick. That is, until he used his interest in the Hong Kong Study Circle (HKSC)—albeit, dryly, though it was still effective—as an example. I couldn’t care less about HKSC or post stamps, but Swales immediately brought the topic of his article down to my level by simply geeking out. His comparison and showcase of how his interest (something unacademic and rather simple) followed his six rules that constituted a Discourse community was what made it click. I could now test out the rules for myself and flesh out my understanding. Of course, I used my own interests for that.
I mainly used anime, a hobby of mine I’ve had for as long as I can remember. The first rule Swales brings up was that a Discourse community needs common public goals, either implied or written down. Well, in this case, that would likely be to watch anime and talk about it—to geek out about, similarly to the purpose of HKSC, just much less formal. That’s one box checked.
His next rule was that the community’s members needed a way to communicate with each other in one way or another. The anime community has multiple ways of achieving this: forums, Discord group chats, comment sections, Amino, cosplay conventions, any social media app, and the list goes on, through which they give opinions on animes, feedback on things made in relation to it, and answer questions about it—adhering to the third rule (the community’s way of communication is used to exchange information and feedback).
The fourth rule says that a Discourse community must have “genres”: a sort of set way of going about doing some things. In the anime community, an instance of this would be how its members keep track of what they have watched frequently through MyAnimeList.
And don’t get me started on terminology in the anime community—the requirement of the fifth rule. While some of its niche terms don’t apply to its Japanese members, such as ikemen, others like kabedon, tsundere, and yandere certainly do.
Lastly, for a community to be labeled as a Discourse community, it must have a substantial number of new and old members. This is no issue for the anime community, considering its consistent level of popularity.
Basically, what I’m trying to get across here is that my understanding of what Swales wrote in his article became more solid just through the example in which he geeked out; he spoke my language, not the language of experts in his field.
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