Discourse Communities
What exactly is a discourse community? This question has multiple criteria the must be
addressed in order to completely answer it. Swales has already laid out the distinctive characteristics
that determine discourse communities in his article “The concept of Discourse Community.”
According to Swales, “A discourse community has a broadly agreed set of common public goals.”
Before reading Swales’ article I believed that a discourse community was just any group of people
together at any given time. Now the term “public goal” has great meaning when applied to discourse
communities. They are public because, according to Swales, some people join the communities in order
to accomplish various goals of subversion and betrayal. Others may even join for hopes of advancing
romantic, economic or even commercial goals. To accomplish the goals a community has they need to
be able to interact with one another, and sometimes be able to communicate without ever having even
meet before.
Secondly, Swales states that “A discourse community has mechanisms of intercommunication
among its members.” Swales has shown that if for instance, we take three people known as A, B and C
that all work in the same profession. That they will act and communicate in a way that only people from
that profession will act and/or communicate. What is interesting about this quality is that persons A and
B could be from the same workplace and communicate the exact same way C does yet neither A nor B
have ever even meet C. I have witnessed this phenomenon -rst hand between doctors. I have notice
that doctors can talk about a completely random medical case with perfect understanding even if they
are from di.erent departments, cities or even countries! This unique discourse communities to
accomplish their various public goals because even if the community spans across multiple countries
they can understand what needs to be accomplished with perfect understanding. One part of
communication involves the community exchanging information and feedback.
“A discourse community uses its participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information and
feedback,” Swales is saying that these communities are not just communicating in one direction, but
they are in fact a system of constant informational exchange. Being a member of these communities
means that you participate in the uptake of the informational opportunities given to them. One example