Discourse Community: Core Concepts 

Speech Vs. Discourse Community

• "A Speech Community typically inherits its membership by birth, accident or adoption; a discourse community recruits its members by persuasion, training, or relevant qualification" (Swales 471)

QUESTION FOR YOU: Based on the quote about what do you believe the word "discourse" means within "discourse community"? What does a group like this look like? What might they do? 

1. Public goals

• What is the D.C. trying to achieve? What is its purpose? 
• How does it seek to meet these goals? 
• Are these goals stated among members? Through mutual understanding? Posted online? 

2. Intercommunication

• How do members consistently contribute or engage with one another? 
• What artifacts may get circulated among members? 

3. Participation/Mechanisms for growth

• How is information exchanged among members? 
• How do members spread awareness, outreach, or further its aims? 
• How might they "go public" with their info? 

4.  Use of Genres

• What is a genre of communication within a D.C.? Something that circulates topics, info, status, etc. 
• Genres can be "Multimodal" - in what forms do they take for your D.C.?

5.  Owns a Specific Lexis

• Insider language: not everyone would know
• Slang
• Code
• Ways of speaking

6.  Levels of Members

• Does the group have a hierarchy (leaders, supporting roles)?
• How does one gain expertise and status?
• How do different roles participate? 

D.C. Example: Graffiti Writers - Art or Vandalism? 

D.C. Example: Graffiti Writers - Slang Terms for Action

• Tagging - Subcultural Nickname (distinct mark)
• All City - Gain a reputation based on your work
• BUFF - Working out a new piece
• Bomb - relates to stealing space, ideas, covering up content on walls, encroaching on another's territory
• Bite - Copy a style

Tagging is "writing" or expressing one's identity, background, or opposition to authority.

Writing Exercise: Exploring Discourse Communities Part 1

Swales and Melzer's articles explore what discourse communities are while our Language Awareness readings talk about speech communities and how we may be born into a group but have to navigate into new discourse communities:

• Write about a time where you first entered into a new discourse community and the learning curves you had with this group. When has entering a group taken more effort on your part? Refer back to Swales or Melzer for ideas (around 250 words).
• SHOW an artifact of a discourse community you know about or would like to know more about. (screenshot, image, an example you want to talk about). Is this artifact a genre? Part of Communication? Goal?

Memorable Moments from Language Awareness

• "I knew the difference between half-runners and blue lakes, and know of no sound more satisfying than the pop of lids sealing on the kitchen counter in the late afternoon. But there were plenty of Appalachian traditions that I did not know. And there was nothing markedly Appalachian that we did because we had to" (McCarroll 165).
• "We never talked about how many Deaf people, myself included, liked being Deaf, liked the close-knit community, the culture and vivid three-dimensional language deafness affords us" (Novic 195).
• "I spend a great deal of my time thinking about the power of language - the way it can evoke an emotion, a visual image, a complex idea, or a simple truth" (Tan 224). 

Swales

"Genres are types of texts that are recognizable to readers and writers, and that meet the needs of rhetorical situations" (Swales 467)

Discourse Communities use Genres for: 

- Rhetorical Situations 

(e.g. message, persuasion)

- Needs

- Conventions of the group (rules of the genre)

Melzer

Draws on Swales discussion of Discourse Community through his own experiences - What kinds of discourse communities does Melzer refer to in his article? What kind of genres do these communities interact with? 

Writing Exercise: Exploring Discourse Communities Part 2

The Interview Process: Based on the Worksheet handout for today, you guys will want to start thinking about how you might answer your classmate's questions about discourse community and explaining that in writing. In groups, everyone will individually work with one side of the sheet (on your own), then each of you will take turns practicing answering questions about your discourse community based on Melzer's questions he poses. 

-Group Members: Pose 2 questions you want to ask your partner.

-If it is your turn, try to answer everyone's question about the D.C. you may want to write about to the best of your abilities and then compose a reflection on this process (around 250 words) in your own document - there must be conversation going on to complete this task. 

In Canvas, you will submit your work from Monday/Wednesday under the assignment: 

In-Class Week 2: Exploring D.C. 

Group Canvas: D.C. Content (Friday)

Looking ahead to the Topic Proposal...

We will go over this more later in class.