Let’s Talk with a Purpose.

The simplest definition for what I think a discourse community does is “talking with a common purpose” or a “common goal” in mind. Aside from work, the coolest community I am in to a discourse community is my sorority. It’s not really a college affiliated sorority, but more of a career field based one. It’s a chapter under the National Sorority of Phi Delta Kappa inc. (NSPDK) a sorority for women in the field of education and my division is a college guidance group called Kappa Omicron Tau.

Qualifications of a discourse community

On the six characteristics of a discourse community, Swales mentions; goals, intercommunication, participation, genres, Lexis, and expertise. In terms of my sorority’s goals, it has a set list

• To interest more women in training for a teaching career or other related educational career.
• To have the College Guidance Program become operative in the college life of these women.
• To expand the knowledge of and interest in the philosophy of the National Sorority of Phi Delta Kappa, Inc

We communicate Via email and hold weekly meetings via Zoom. Not going so even pretend to comprehend the genres explanation, but I think perhaps we have this covered in the sense of having certain things organized in a specific way (documentation).

In terms of participation and feedback, there is a weekly report given out on the accomplishments, of and our meeting a supervised by a committee, who reports our progress to the NSPDK president. On lexis, we use Greek letters and and Acronyms like EA I think this is more than adequate and that is all I want to say about it.

Our NSPDK Committee members checks our guidance leader, and she checks me the president. I check the other KOT members the chain of command also works by experience as our NSPDK committee members are all respective people in their ‘filed of education’ careers and have been long time members of the NSPDK sorority. As charter member I hardly have any idea of what I am doing, but under their guidance I am staying afloat, and have been a KOT the longest.

In short, I think the sorority checks off all the marks for discourse community, even if my understanding or is a little iffy.