Before reading the articles of discourse communities of John Swales and James Paul Gee I had no clue in what the term discourse community meant. I didn’t know if I was part of one, or if I wanted to join one. After reading their articles on discourse community, it gave me an idea of what it all consist of. John Swales explains six characteristics, that breakdown what the discourse community should include. The six characteristics start with having a set of common public goals. There should also be communication among members and a form of way where they can provide information and feedback. Another concept is the genre and the special lexis one has acquired from that discourse. Lastly, there should be a threshold level of members within the …show more content…
Communication has to be occurring at all time. It starts with the coach. During practice the coach has to communicate with each player and discuss on the players strength and or weaknesses, and how they can improve their skills. While in the game the coach has to communicate at the best that he can with all his players, but mainly with his captain. His captain is the indicated person to organize the play during the game. The communication needs to be clear for both the captain and the coach to understand. I remember when I used to play, the communication me and the coach had was very strong. Instead of my coach yelling out loud where we were having our mistakes, he would rather communicate it with me and I would go with my fellow teammate and let him know what he was doing wrong and how he can fix it. If the coach would have yelled it out loud, the other team could have listened where our weakness is at then they would have had a chance to capitalize and even score. Communication among the whole team is very important to maintain each other on the same game plan. Communication can also be used to inform the teammates how great they are doing and to keep up the hard …show more content…
The lexis would have to be the vocabulary that is acquired from the specific discourse community and wouldn’t be used on a regular basis by an ordinary person outside of the community. An example of lexis in the soccer community would be when a player on the team would call for a “through ball”. This means a player is asking the teammate in possession to pass the ball not directly to him, but ahead of him so the player has the ability to run into space and then receive the ball there, instead of having to dribble through a couple defenders to reach the same space. Other words or phrases that are part of lexis used in the soccer community are a corner kick, a penalty kick, an Olympic goal, and even a hat-trick. Lexis can carry over from practices into the games and back to the team meetings and begin to take place in the vocabulary of a player. Lexis can include abbreviations that can simplify and shortened whatever they want to say. For example, instead of saying don’t give away a penalty kick, the player can say don’t give out a “PK”. Using lexis can make communication easier and faster for the team , and it can positively alter the outcome of games by simply eliminating mistakes which could end up into costly errors. My coach used to make up his own phrases for any specific play, like a corner kick or a free kick. I remember of a specific corner kick play where he wanted the kicker to