Discourse Communities

Even though this has nothing to do with the topic at hand, I like to start my blogs off with a little check-in so that you guys have an idea of what frame of mind I'm in while writing my response. Not two hours ago I spilled water on my laptop and it won't turn on, so now I'm sitting in the computer lab at the library pounding on the keyboard as fast as I can so that I might finish this blog and start studying for midterms. This week just got a whole lot more stressful.

Given my hurried nature, I have made the executive decision to skim the Swales article rather than giving it an in-depth look. One common theme seems to be that nobody has an ideal definition for discourse community. This is strange to me considering there are six defining characteristics. I feel like somebody smart should have come up with one by now. The definition of discourse is "written or spoken communication or debate", and the three best definitions of community are "a group of people living in the same place or having a particular characteristic in common", "a feeling of fellowship with others, as a result of sharing common attitudes, interests, and goals", and "Community is an American television sitcom created by Dan Harmon that premiered on NBC on September 17, 2009". Can I just write the rest of this blog on the show??? That would be so much easier.

Thanks, Chang. So, Community is a comedy set at a community college in the fictional town of Greendale, Colordao, and follows a group of.... Alright I'm done, back to thinking. If you look at the definitions and combine them, a discourse community is a group of people with similar characteristics who communicate shared ideas and attitudes to achieve a common goal. I'm not sure if this is entirely accurate, but I think its the closest I'm going to get and seems to fit all six characteristics.

Having played and watched sports my entire life, the first example of a discourse community that comes to mind is a team. I will use a basketball team as an example and go through all six defining characteristics. First, a discourse community has a broadly agreed set of common public goals. The main common goal for a team, obviously, is to win. You will rarely find a player who does not want to win, unless they are solely interested in padding their statistics, in which case they are playing for the wrong reason. More specifically, the goal is to win enough to make it to the next round of play, which in this case would be the playoffs and then the championship. Secondly, a discourse community has mechanisms of intercommunication among its members. For a basketball team, it is important to establish at least a basic level of camaraderie so that the players will mesh and stay on the same page. The players must be able to communicate with each other in a way that is specific to what they want to accomplish. This is where the coach comes in to play. The coach will go over certain plays in practice with specific names, and later tell the players to run said plays in game. In all likelihood, the other team will be caught off guard because they are not a part of the same discourse community.

As for the third characteristic, discourse communities use their participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information and feedback. The only way for a team to get better is for them to improve on their mistakes. This is where practice comes in, and even more specifically, the film room. Coaches will sit their players down and go over film of previous games in order to point out errors and explain how to fix them. This feedback allows the team to focus more energy on specific areas that need improvement, therefore increasing the chances of winning games to come. Fourth, a discourse community utilizes and hence posses one or more genres in the communicative furtherance of its aims. Teams communicate using many different genres, including informal oral instruction, the use of written gameplans or playbooks, and video playbacks. Each one of these has the potential to help contribute to a team's goal of winning. The fifth characteristic boldly proclaims that a discourse community has acquired some sort of lexus. Given that the average NBA salary is $5,323,789, this is an easily attainable requirement in the realm of professional basketball, but might not be quite as feasible for some communities. Why this was included as a defining characteristic is escaping me, and leads me to question Swale's motives.

Last but not least, a discourse community has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discoursal expertise. Most teams are selected by the "tryout" format in which a large group of players showcase their skills before a coach, and the coach selects the players he wants on the team. As a result, teams normally consist of experienced competitors who know what they are doing on the court.

Even though I had a pretty elementary understanding of what a discourse community is going in to this blog, relating it to something familiar helped me to create a clearer picture. This blog actually took me longer to write than intended, but that's ok because I enjoyed temporarily distracting myself from the $1,000 I just lost as the result of knocking over a cup. I hope you guys enjoy reading this blog almost as much as I enjoy researching new laptops while simultaneously attempting to study for two exams. Cheers!