Discourse Communities: Enhancing Goals through Shared Expertise

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

Through these different study and friend groups, almost everyone is able to talk with each other in one way or another. The small scale off both the school and class size also help for one person to meet every other person around them. As one of my friends, Scott Noftsger, said, “I really like them except for the “knowing” of all of us of each other’s business.” This, again, shows the immense amount of communication among the students, with word of each other getting around very quickly, for better or for worse. Along with this though, many new abbreviations for words have come up in LCS that I did not understand when I came to the school from another. Words like “Charter,” “The Rock,” “The Park,” and “The Warden” each mean very specific things around LCS that came out of many inside events or jokes occurring around the students here. Although some other schools may use the same terms, the use them in different ways and mean different things by them then we do at Charter. With all of these different occurrences, terms, and way of communication combined, it is easy to see the complex interactions between the students at LCS as a more distinct characteristic of the

The main source of student made texts come with the many essays written, especially with ones like these where opinions are meant to be expressed. In many of the English classes, debates and essays are recorded that embody the student beliefs. One prime example is that of the “Scarlet Letter Essay” of our English 1 freshman class. Being one of the first debates, most students give it their all and let out many views on both the class and the school in general. Also, the Lincoln Charter Yearbook heavily embodies the spirit of many of the student s of LCS. It is able to show all of the faces of LCS, along with many activities everyone participates in and bonds through. These different genres provide significant insights into the general thoughts of LCS students and were really able to help me see the intentions and quarrels of the students as a single