Blog 4

John Swales goes into detail about what should make up a discourse community. He has a crucial setup of six simple statements that would determine if whether or not a group is considered a discourse community. First, a discourse community simply put, is a group of specific "identities" that all share the same and specific purpose. Some examples are:

• teachers
• doctors
• fans
• class
• etc.

According to Swales "Concept of Discourse Community," his writing contains a basic format:

1. Connects to researcher(s)
2. Give definition
3. The purpose of the paper
4. Distinguish

The format is what breaks apart discourse community. In my group which consisted of me, Adrian, Florie, and Sara, we were able to take apart Swales' six statements to determine whether or not our research class is considered a "Discourse Class";discourse community:

1. "A discourse community has a broadly agreed set of common public goals"-Yes
• In our class, we all have the same syllabus, use a blog to input our thoughts and research on either data or readings, we collaborate together, and our ultimate goal is to compile a research paper.
2. "A discourse community has mechanisms of intercommunication among
   its members."- Yes
• Within our collaborations, we battle different ideas and often have debates, nothing too serious but more of a way to get different ideas and points mentioned.
3. "A discourse community uses its participatory mechanisms primarily to
   provide information and feedback."-Yes
• Our blog! We use a blog to mention our research and receive feedback. This tool is a simple platform for our class
4. "A discourse community utilizes and hence possesses one or more genres
   in the communicative furtherance of its aims."-Yes
• We have topics that all revolve around researching and incorporating a writing study into a project.
5. "In addition to owning genres, a discourse community has acquired some
   specific lexis."-Yes
• some specific language we use in our class are:
• formal
• questions
• language use
• behavior
• value/perspective
• rhetoric
• rhetorical situation
• analysis
• rhetorical analysis
6. "A discourse community has a threshold level of members with a suitable
   degree of relevant content and discoursal expertise."-Yes
• In our class, we are all certified to do research, according to the NIH.
• We are all studying writing
• We are all working together to enhance what we know about discourse and rhetorical analysis

        These six statements all contain reasonable answers to why our group felt that our class would be considered a "Discourse Class," however, I personally feel that we are not fully there yet, but we are building to that common goal.
        As mentioned in statement five above, there are specific lexis within our class. With that said, the teacher and student discourse affects our discourse community, to some extent. Keeping it simple, the teacher holds the following:

• formal
• questions
• higher level
• form discussion

The students hold the following:

• responsive to teacher
• seated
• discussion
• answers
• collaboration

I'd like to say that teacher and student discourse work together, which is crucial. Together we form the discourse community, or "class". It is a mechanism that would fail without each other. What is a teacher without a class? Together they shape to form or modify a discourse community.