I know that we spoke about discourse communities in class; we kind of touched base on what they are. We spoke about how they are going to be people of similar interests gathering together. However, Swales takes it to a new level and thinking about it, it makes sense. He talks about how a speech community “typically inherits its membership by birth…” while a discourse community “recruits its members by persuasion, training or relevant qualification.” I can understand that a speech community would be something that cannot be controlled, whereas a discourse community is something that can be changed; it can be obtained through proper training. Due to this, along with a couple other distinctions, these two terms cannot be grouped together.
A discourse community has a clear set of goals. They also have a clear way of communicating among its members, they are able to get information and feedback. They have genres, their own personalized lingo and they have some way of differentiating between “teacher” and “student.” Based on the example of a discourse that Swales gives, I would also say that a discourse community generally has people from all different backgrounds. In his example Swales talks about a group that he happens to be apart of called the Hong Kong Study Circle, he goes on to mention how, “a few are rich…but many are not…Some are full-time specialist dealers, auctioneers and catalogue publishers…” All of this is to say that a discourse community is bound to have people of many backgrounds within it.
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