Discourse Communities are defined as “a group of individuals bound by a common goal who communicate through approved channels and whose discourse is regulated” (Couzelis et al. 12). Every person on this planet belongs to a discourse community whether they realize it or not. If you start at a larger scale, Texas A&M University-Commerce is a large discourse community, and within that larger discourse community there are hundreds, quite possibly thousands of smaller discourse communities. Many of the discourse communities overlap with members belonging to several communities at the same time. One of these smaller discourse communities that I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to experience is the Sigma Zeta chapter of Chi Omega Fraternity. Every girl in this fraternity shares 6 common goals that we strive to achieve every day. These ideals are: friendship, high standards of personnel, sincere learning and credible scholarship, participation in campus activities, career development, and community service. We live by these six purposes to strive to make us better than the people we were yesterday. By embracing the six purposes we …show more content…
place value on each other as sisters and friends, showing ourselves true in word, thought, and deed. In order to learn more about my Fraternity and her ideals, I attend New Member meetings every Sunday.
Once I am a fully initiated member of the Fraternity I will attend chapter weekly. The entire pledge class bonds and learns about the Fraternity, ideals, and history together. Chi Omega also plans activities that helps us bond together as sisters, such a flag football against the other sororities, or even something as simple as ice cream out together. These activities bring us together as a discourse community very frequently. This year we had the largest pledge class in the history of the Sigma Zeta chapter at 24 girls. Every year there are two recruitment periods, one in the fall and the other in the spring. It is during these periods that the fraternity replenishes the members that went alumna with new
members. We communicate through an app called Group Me. Our secretary uses it to send out important reminders and helpful tips throughout the day. We also have a website that is open to the public but there is a member login that gives access to a private website for members of the fraternity only. One of the most important part of discourse communities is having a “lexis or personalized terminology that only “insiders” know” (Couzelis et al. 12) While I am not a liberty to divulge the secret handshake or dialogue unique to Chi Omega, I can assure you that they exist. Discourse communities are a very important part of society. They make people feel included, wanted and involved in society. Discourse communities exist to help fill the void in an individual by participating in and feeling valued by a social or professional community. Whether it is a college sorority or fraternity, the American Nurses Association, a cycling club, or a scrapbooking group, each type of discourse community allows the members to become greater than they are by themselves. It allows for discussion of ideas and values that are of importance to them, and finally to connect with other individuals that are like-minded. Discourse communities give individuals a feeling of belonging, a purpose, and a place to be who they are.
In the article “The Concept of Discourse Community” John Swales touches a few very important main ideas about what discourse community really is. I found it to be refreshing that he is able to express his feelings how he does in this article. Swales talks about discourse community and how our world today really isn 't that good at being apart of them. He discusses the six qualities or characteristics of being apart of a discourse community. You have to be active in communicating and wanting to be apart of that community and if you 're not that type of person than maybe it 's not your thing.
Joining a discourse community is when you all share a common like or belief. Joining a discourse community can sometimes be a challenge. Rather you’re new at it or been participating in something for a very long time. Every discourse community is different and can be operated differently and by different type of people. They say drill team and dancing is easy and doesn’t take a lot of hard work like in other sports so in this paper I will be sharing with you all my journey of joining drill team/dance team and appealing ethos, logos and pathos.
Discourse communities are groups of people with a unique point of view. There are many discourse communities around your everyday life. These communities are part of the entire human environment. Many discourse communities are distinctly large due to all the societies wanting the same things. My discourse communities are mostly Facebook.
A discourse community has an agreed set of common public goals. It is a group of individuals that have a specific way of interacting and communicating with one another. It is also used as a means to maintain and extend a group’s knowledge, as well as initiate new members into the group. Specific kinds of languages are used as a form of social behavior. Such discourse communities vary in size, purpose and importance.
To examine various discourses, it is crucial that the idea of discourse and the way in which discourses operate is clear. A discourse is a language, or more precisely, a way of representation and expression. These "ways of talking, thinking, or representing a particular subject or topic produce meaningful knowledge about the subject" (Hall 205). Therefore, the importance of discourses lies in this "meaningful knowledge," which reflects a group’s ideolo...
“A discourse community has a broadly agreed set of common public goals, has mechanisms of intercommunication among its members, uses its participatory
Football is a discourse community I am involved in where the members have similar goals and expectations. As in, what Swales describes a discourse community as groups that have goals or purposes, and use communication to achieve these goals”. In his article “The Concept of Discourse Community” (Swales 466-479) Swales argues for a fresh conceptualization of discourse community, especially as a distinct entity from the similar sociolinguistic concept of speech community, and building upon the foundations of that argument defines discourse community in his own. In the Conceptualization of Discourse Community he talks about the six defining characteristics of a discourse community. The discourse community I am part of is playing and coaching football.
If I am chosen as a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated. I will work hard to uphold the reputation and exceed the standards that those before me have set. I believe becoming a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. means joining a group of highly educated women that together I believe are capable of facilitating the type of change that is imperative in today’s society. It is my hope that I will be accepted as a member and be afforded the opportunity to take part in that change. I look forward to hearing from you regarding my request to join your
As put by Jen Waak in regarding the human need for community, “By surrounding yourself with others working toward a similar goal, you’ll get...yourself a bit further than you would have done on your own,” (Waak). By being able to see and participate in these different communities centered around different objectives, the goal becomes easier to achieve and bonds the group into something more through trying to reach it. This new unit is called a discourse community and is defined by John Swales as containing six specific characteristics: having a common goal, showing intercommunication and using lexis, having participation within the group, being defined by genres of texts, and having members with areas of expertise for the community. When looking
In his article “The Concept of Discourse Community,” John Swales describes a discourse community as a group of people that “have a broadly agreed set of common goals, contain certain mechanisms of intercommunication among its members, have acquired a specific lexis, and have a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content discoursal expertise” (Swales #). An example of such a discourse community is the legal profession. The legal profession has the common goal of understanding and applying general principles to particular factual situations. In doing so, lawyers use language, concepts, and methods that are unique to their community. In order to become a recognized member of the legal community, a person must graduate from law school and pass the bar exam thereby demonstrating an in depth knowledge concerning all areas of the law and the specialized rules, methods, and jargon used by lawyers to communicate about legal principles.
A discourse community is a group of people with relatively the same goals and interest to achieve a specific goal. Discourse communities gain there members by qualification, shared objectives, training, or persuading others to join their discourse community. In order for a group to be a discourse community, they must have their own languages, text, rules, and ethics that will make the discourse community run more efficiently. They will also have a form of intercommunication among the group to keep everyone involved or informed with upcoming events or just important news. Discourse communities will have a type of mechanism to provide feedback to help improve the group. The participatory mechanisms provide feedback from inside and outside of
My discourse community is Christianity. My discourse community involves people who believe in God and lives up to the guidelines of the Bible. The people from this community are trying to enhance themselves by learning the Bible. An impeccable member attends church, strive for better lives, and aim to help others spread and disseminate words of wisdom. There are several reasons why Christianity is a discourse community. My discourse community has all of the six characteristics defined by John Swales. In my paper, I will describe how my discourse community meets all of Swales characteristics.
Discourse communities play a big role in life and how humans interact in general. A discourse community refers to a group of people who have language, life patterns, culture, and communication in common with each other. The idea of a discourse community has also been used to bring people of different orientations together, like family members, students, or committees. All of these types of people might have different standards of living, like their level of income, education, and work abilities. Discourse community can also refer to a speech community, because the main feature of a discourse community is communication. A discourse community can include groups of different regional areas that may or may not share norms and living patterns
Millions… millions of discourse communities exist all around us each and every day. Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, Tumblr, and Group Me are just a few of the many examples of the functional discourse communities that our world consists of today. A discourse community is a group of people who share a set of discourses that are agreed upon as basic values and expectations and use communication to achieve set goals. There are six requirements to have a true discourse community. They must include: a community of people who share the same goals, regular communication, steady feedback and advice from one another, at least one means of communication that will assist in achieving an aspired goal, a lexis which is a
As a freshman at University of Texas at Arlington, I enrolled in English1301 as a basic class requirement for freshman and we have discussed about the discourse community. A discourse community is a group of people gathering together to share their knowledge skills, abilities to help one another with the knowledge they have, exploring and learning the new things occur in living society and setting up the goals to achieve it together in community. My discourse community was according to Karenni families from Myanmar who just settled in U.S began in 2009, faced to many problems in U.S because of the language problem, life style, culture and environment. Therefore, we came up with the Karenni Community of Texas to preserved, promoted, built and helped Karenni families living in Texas and in Karenni State which is in Myanmar along with Karenni identities. With my communicate skills, leadership skills and computer skills from High School, I have successfully joined Karenni Community of Texas (KnCT) because of my abilities to volunteered (Pathos), Self-Confidence and loyalty (ethos) and knowledge skills such as communication, leadership and computer skills (logos) to helped KnCT families to live confidentially delight and getting along with the community to build Karenni identities in U.S and Myanmar.