According to John Swales, a discourse community is a group that has a broadly agreed set of common public goals. This means that a group of people have come together to work towards something while also communicating in several different ways depending on the community. There is also specific intercommunication that occurs between members. Things like interacting with the same clients, how messages are received and responded to, and a similar range of genre skills might be seen as characteristics of a discourse community. In general, its members may face similar social class based and ethically based practices in these communities.
Another goal of Discourse communities is feedback and information being shared throughout several mechanisms. A major reason for joining a community is the uptake of information between members. Regardless of the actual community or goal, most of the communication is meant to help improve something, teach a method, or communicate to grow the community. Different genres are used to share information as well. Genres are basically how things get done when language is used to do them. Each community may have different methods in sharing these genres. Within this communication there are also specific lexis used. Lexis are languages used in communities that may be foreign to others. Lastly, within these communities, you have varying levels of membership. With any new members, you need a master, or at least someone well educated in the community. This keeps the information accurate and able to be passed down to newer members for the cycle to continue.
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