Discourse Community : why or why not? In his book, Genre Analysis: English in Academics and Research Settings, linguist John Swales defined discourse community as “groups that have shared goals or purposes, and use communication such as mechanism of intercommunication, participatory mechanism, genre and lexis to achieve their goals."(220). He asserts that the six unique attributes of a discourse community. I applied his specifications to one of my communities that I belonged to prove why my community is a discourse community, and not a speech community. My freshman year in college back in Korea, my nursing advisor Daeyoung Won, who is also a psychology professor, had been studying about how early memory in childhood affects the development …show more content…
Won’s research on how childhood affects the development of personality. By sharing our experiences, we sympathize with one another and cultivated fellowship. As time goes by, sometimes the nursing students and I would go to the professor's house during the weekend to enjoy a barbecue party. This gave us an opportunity to meet other nursing students who were in the study. Dr. Won believed I have learned enough about psychology and she allowed me to assist her at the national healthiest baby contest among breast-fed babies; a contest that majority of the Korean nursing professors participate in . Even though our group session ended, Dr. Won and the nursing students who had participated in the study still keep in touch through the mobile messenger app. Participating in the group build a bridge to new societies involving many activities. When I read Swales’ chapter without analyzing it, I thought that my group was a perfect example which fits in his six specifications. However, I disagree with his idea where he says the discourse community has a certain threshold because it cannot explain how the meaning of my discourse community has expanded. As a matter of fact, I noticed the problem was that he overlooked the important part that every society has been changed and developed. His approach is too idealized, which makes it hard when it comes to containing