Discourse Community Essay Examples

A simple college English class or a department in a hospital are examples of a discourse community. One might not even know it. A discourse community is group, club, organization, etc. that share common values and goals and communicates using some form of writing. An English class is a perfect example of a discourse community because the students and professor communicate in and out of class using writing, they share common goals, values, specialized language and certain types of a genre. Unlike an English class, I want to be a registered nurse and work at a hospital someday. My plan was to interview a nursing student at the University of Texas at El Paso and observe a nursing class. I was unable to complete the interview and observation so I went to my plan B. I ended up observing a restaurant because if I’m not able to become a nurse I’d one day want to own my own restaurant.

John Swales (1990), author of “The Concept of Discourse Community,” basically explains his own definition of what an actual discourse community is. Swales was able to break to concept down into a list of six characteristics that a group must have in order to be considered a discourse community. The first characteristic he mentions is that “a discourse community has a broadly agreed set of common goals”. (Swales, 1990, p. 471) He provides an example of an ordinary person joining an organization with “private hopes of commercial or romantic advancement.” The second characteristic mentioned is “a discourse community has mechanism of intercommunication among its members”. (Swales, 1990, p. 471) This basically means that communities don’t always have to meet in person on a regular basis in order to be considered a discourse community. They communicate in li...

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...lso more faster at taking orders and delivering them to the tables faster the newcomers. This was very easy to spot. From the interview I conducted with the server I learned that the newcomers learn the language of Chili’s during their training when they are first hired. When the newcomers pick it up it becomes easier for them to communicate easily. This goes for learning the genres and knowledge too.

There are countless types of discourse communities that I want to become a member of sometime in life. In the end, Chili’s follows under the six characteristics of Swales. If opening my own restaurant or becoming a server at a restaurant doesn’t work out for me I’d like to maybe try harder to join a nursing school or an organization that conducts community service. They’re both discourse communities if you look carefully at the way they communicate with one another.