Examples Of Discourse Communities

Discourse communities are a way of the world, everything and every person belongs to some sort of discourse community. The many forms of discourse communities are made up of anything from churches, to the part of the world that a person is from. America is a great example of a discourse community and how they work, for example Americans are classified from the view of everyone else in the world as Americans, however American is such a vague and non-descriptive term; It could literally describe almost anybody. In America we have millions of different people, varying religions, languages from all around the world, and many different social and economical classes. To describe America in one word is impossible and almost always incorrect. There

Swales, Gee, and Porter all gave us their own personal insight of what a discourse community is made up of. Using the three respective articles I was able to determine and synthesize the main points of discourse communities and form my own opinion of what they are to me. In this paper I only used two of the six main points that Swales talked about, however, Porter and John agree on almost every other point. James Paul is the outcast of the group in terms of understanding, to him a discourse community is different then what John and Porter see it as. Out of the three men’s opinions I agree with Gee the most; However, when reading the articles the easiest to read was Swales, for me John breaking up his paper into six main points made it easier to understand. Before the start of this paper I did not know what a discourse community was, but after reading and synthesizing the articles, I have formed an idea or understanding of discourse communities and how they work. Therefore I can honestly answer questions about discourse communities and can be confident in my ability to answer, I can also participate in discussions and now judge and determine what discourse communities I belong too in the