By: Alissa Damiano
The Components of a Discourse Community:
In the article titled, “The Concept of Discourse Community,” the author John Swales discusses the different components of a discourse community and how to identify them. While reading, I found a few of the components to be very important and beneficial to any community. The first component talks about having a set of common public goals that are agreed on by the members of the discourse community. These goals tend to be very abstract and placed on a high level to make the public want to join their community and accomplish these goals with the community. I found this one to be very important since these communities should want their image to look professional and on a higher level compared to the rest, so having those big goals out there for the public to see can be very helpful.
Another component that I felt was very important was the one that discussed intercommunication among its members. Having different communication strategies like meetings (online and/or in person) allows the group to talk about anything that needs improvement or any issues happening within the community at that given time. Without this communication, the whole community can fall apart and more problems can start to progress over time. The final component that I felt was one of the more important components of a discourse community was the component that discusses possessing one or more genres
in the communication to further their aims. It is important for a community to continue to update and improve its expectations for the group since a community should continue to grow, expand, and get smarter over time. They should not have to settle once they accomplish their previous goals, they should always be working to be better for themselves and for their specific community.
Personal Experience With Discourse Communities:
I am currently part of a discourse community, otherwise known as my job as a hostess at a sushi restaurant. After reading more about discourse communities and how they function, I’ve come to realize that my job possesses a lot of these components that I was not aware of prior to reading this article. For example, as a hostess, it is known to customers that our job is to take your order, make sure everything is correct, pack your order, and/ or seat you at available tables when needed. Any outsider of the community can understand that these are the requirements of our job and that based on our appropriate behavior, we always do our best to offer the best service to our customers at all times. My job also possesses the second component of discourse communities, which talks about intercommunication among its members. My job makes it a point to have monthly meetings with each group within the restaurant and talk about what we are doing well as well as what needs to be improved on. They are always looking for new ways to make their restaurant better, so because there are always changes being made, it is essential that these meetings occur monthly in order to keep everyone up to date.
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