The Franklin Road Church of Christ youth group consists of youth of all ages. The group is divided into three subgroups: Tots for Christ (TFC), Kids for Christ (KFC), and the Senior Youth Group (SYG). In particular, for this essay I will be explaining how the Senior Youth Group is a discourse community. Franklin Road’s SYG consists of the ages 11-18. Within the group we do various things such as going to youth retreats, youth conferences, and many more; just to name a few. The group has been around for many years, all the way back to when my parents were kids. I have been a member of SYG ever since I was a baby; therefore I have enough knowledge about how this group in fact is a discourse community according to John Swales six criteria.
Before I begin, let me tell you a little about who Swales is. He was a professor of linguistics at The University of Michigan, who received his PhD in psychology from Cambridge University in 1957. During his years as a professor he wrote a book called Genre Analysis, within a chapter of this book Swales discuses what a discourse community is and how it is different from a speech community. Swales states that “speech communities are centripetal (they tend to absorb people into that general fabric), whereas discourse communities are centrifugal (they tend to separate people into occupational or specialty – interest groups)” (471). To make his argument stronger he develops six criteria that a group should have in order to be considered a discourse community.
The first criterion is that every discourse community should have "a broadly agreed set of common public goals" (Swales, 471). What Swales is saying is that the group must have a goal that all the members know of and agree on. The goal can ...
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.... Therefore, I asked Stewart whether or not the calendar was helpful. He replied that “the calendar is very helpful because when I am scheduling to do something; I will also check our calendar to make sure our group it’s doing anything on that particular day” (Stewart).
It is good that the calendar is helpful because when the members of SYG don’t overbook themselves our events will be a success and this helps the group fulfill its goal. Which is to prepare youth to become future leaders of the church and in the world, show them how to be faithful Christians, and it is a support system for the members. In order for the goal of the Franklin Road Senior Youth Group to be accomplished it requires many different aspects, some that are part of John Swales six criteria, therefore making The Senior Youth group a discourse community.
Of Swales criteria, conceptualization of discourse community gives the reader the best idea of what discourse community is. A main point Swales wants to get across to the reader is that discourse community is a group of people who want to make the effort to get the job done and be better. They typically have similar qualities and share common interests and they come together because they have one common goal. In the text it states that “ In some instances , but not in many, the goals may be
The New Salem Association of the Old Regular Baptist was established in the year of 1825 in Eastern Kentucky. The New Salem Association is still going strong today. Most associations today are a branch from the New Salem Association. There are a few Old Regular Baptist churches that are private; basically they do not belong to any association. The New Salem Association is in correspondence with several other Associations which is as followed Union, Old Indian Bottom, Sardis, Philadelphia, Northern New Salem, and Friendship.
A discourse community has mechanisms of communication amongst their members. A discourse community uses its sharing mechanisms mainly to provide information and feedback. A discourse community applies and holds one or more genres in the communicative progress of its goals. In addition to holding genres, a discourse community has to obtain some specific lexis. Lexis is the total stock of words in a language. A discourse community has a level of members with a proper degree of appropriate content and discoursal expertise, ranging from a novice to an expert. I will further explain each characteristic and how it relates to the dance
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.
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.
In the Swales document we looked at in class, a discourse community has a set of common goals (Discourse Community). In high school basketball, the goal is to win the state championship. Also, a discourse community uses a specific jargon (Discourse Community). We see this in the rules and how some players and coaches communicate. Finally, a discourse community has its new members learn from experienced members (Discourse Community). This is evident when we talk about learning the fundamentals from the coaches. High school basketball can be a very diverse discourse community because while every team has different ways of doing things, they all have the same end goal of being the state champions. Basketball has always
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
...s is a concept which should resonate with the teenage mind. The title of the book is the same title of a movie a few years old, yet he applies it to a plan which was set forth within the early church. To quote Steir, the outbreak, “spreads like an epidemic. It infected the general populace so quickly that no one was safe.” With a few emendations of word choices and phraseology, this is indeed a unique way of viewing and considering how to do youth ministry.
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
A discourse is an institutionalized way of speaking that determines not only what we say and how we say it, but also what we do not say. Originating in the field of linguistics, the term discourse initially referred to whole units of speech (conversations) and the speech community in which these units were communicated. William Labov (1972) and other sociolinguists have used discourse analysis primarily as a descriptive tool, leaving epistemological and postmodern considerations aside.
The six defining characteristics of a discourse community require a set of common goals, there must also be mechanisms of communication within the community as well as feedback among members. Genre is the fourth characteristic, describing the various methods of output. Similarly, lexis is required, a set language with exclusive terms and expressions. Finally, a discourse community must have a threshold level of membership; there must be a steady flow of changing memberships including the transfer of knowledge between novices and experts. It is this transfer of knowledge that allows the community to grow, novice members become experts creating room for more novice members. From the outside it appears that an English major studying at the university level may belong to an academic discourse community, having met the criteria. However upon further inspection, one notices that each characteristic can be molded to fit any community. The vagueness of the c...