Throughout John Swales’ “The Concept of Discourse Community,” he discusses the various characteristics of a given discourse community. However, before I elaborate on the specific points (and questions) I gathered while reading this text, I think it would be most beneficial to note what a discourse community actually is. A discourse community can be best described as a group of individuals who share similar values and beliefs and work towards a common goal through communication. With this, Swales proposed and elaborated on six overarching characteristics that are useful to consider when identifying a group of people as a discourse community. Moreover, the characteristics mentioned include a set of agreed-upon common goals; mechanisms of intercommunication among members; participatory mechanisms to provide information and feedback; possessing one or more genres of communication; acquired specific lexis (or more easily understood of specialized lingo or language); and a threshold level of expertise among members.
Although I have had my fair share of being a member of some discourse communities throughout my life, I only truly realized that these groups I was involved in would be considered a discourse community once reflecting on the words of Swales in his piece. Knowing what it is like to be a part of a discourse community and the language and environment it creates, I can better connect to the statements and opinions made by Swales since I have had the opportunity to experience them for myself. However, in my attempt to fully digest the complex characteristics that he presented in his writing, I am left wondering some things: How many of the six characteristics mentioned need to be true to consider a group of like-minded and communicative individuals to be a discourse community and if all discourse communities one day began as a speech community and slowly evolved into a more complex community, which is now known as a discourse community.
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