It’s not entirely easy to define a “discourse community.” John Swales’ essay on “The Concept of Discourse Community” ties into what I’ve been learning about discourse as a whole. It’s an extension of what I’ve learned a few weeks ago about discourse and literacy, where discourse itself is a broad topic that splits itself into you being either fluent in something—something being literally anything—or you’re not.
Swales first sets out to define the difference between a discourse community and a speech community, as there is a fine line separating the concepts. He states, “A speech community typically inherits its membership by birth, accident or adoption; a discourse community recruits its members by persuasion, training or relevant qualification.” The essay says an example of a speech community would be something like New York City, where people can be born there or move there and are then part of the NY community by association. It can’t be a discourse community because nobody really shares a common goal by living in the city; everybody is just kind of doing their own thing and minding their business.
From what I understand, a discourse community would be something like a school club meeting, a classroom, an office meeting. These things you can find in your everyday life; they follow Swales’ qualifications of being a discourse community in that members have a goal to achieve just by being there, there’s constant back and forth communication between members, there’s specific vocabulary to be learned that’s only relevant within the community, just to name a few attributes.
Once I understood what a discourse community truly is, I found myself identifying how many I’ve been part of—book clubs, volunteer jobs, editing teams. The concept is still a little bit shaky in my head, but discourse is a valuable thing to learn in this world, and opening yourself up to more communities would only help you grow as a person.
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