{"id":2493,"date":"2013-08-06T04:27:46","date_gmt":"2013-08-06T03:27:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jodischneider.com\/blog\/?p=2493"},"modified":"2013-08-06T04:42:31","modified_gmt":"2013-08-06T03:42:31","slug":"discourse-community","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jodischneider.com\/blog\/2013\/08\/06\/discourse-community\/","title":{"rendered":"Discourse community"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Discourse community&#8221; seems to be a good summary for a concept that I need. But I&#8217;m not happy with how to define it. One summary for my purposes might be: &#8220;a group with shared goals, a mechanism for communication, certain patterns of discussion, and enough members who have relevant expertise in the topic and how to argue about it&#8221;. That loses some of the richness but also manages the complexity of the full definition.<\/p>\n<p>According to Swales, ((Swales, John.\u00a0<em>Genre analysis: English in academic and research settings<\/em>. Cambridge University Press, 1990.))<br \/>\na discourse community:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>has a broadly agreed set of common public goals.<\/li>\n<li>has mechanisms of intercommunication among its members.<\/li>\n<li>uses its participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information and feedback.<\/li>\n<li>utilizes and hence possesses one or more genres in the communicative furtherance of its aims.<\/li>\n<li>in addition to owning genres, it has acquired some specific lexis.<\/li>\n<li>has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discoursal expertise<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>For a more recent summary, read Borg ((Borg, Erik. &#8220;Discourse community.&#8221;\u00a0<em>ELT journal<\/em>\u00a057.4 (2003): 398-400.)) (who however seems to advocate the term &#8220;Community of Practice&#8221;, which seems to me far less well-defined, perhaps since I&#8217;ve not gone looking for a definition).<\/p>\n<p>Swales presents a really interesting case study of a discourse community in his book: a stamp collection society&#8211;and explains rhetorical (genre-fit) mistakes he made in his first forays into the community.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;d expect this definition to be more famous than it is. For common use, it has some flaws: technical terms such as &#8216;genres&#8217; and &#8216;lexis&#8217; should be described, as should &#8216;discoursal expertise&#8217; and perhaps &#8216;participatory mechanisms&#8217;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Discourse community&#8221; seems to be a good summary for a concept that I need. But I&#8217;m not happy with how to define it. One summary for my purposes might be: &#8220;a group with shared goals, a mechanism for communication, certain patterns of discussion, and enough members who have relevant expertise in the topic and how [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175,174],"tags":[600,610,608,609,607],"class_list":["post-2493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-argumentative-discussions","category-phd-diary","tag-definitions","tag-discourse-communities","tag-english-for-specific-purposes","tag-genres","tag-linguistics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jodischneider.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2493","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jodischneider.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jodischneider.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jodischneider.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jodischneider.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2493"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/jodischneider.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2493\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2498,"href":"https:\/\/jodischneider.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2493\/revisions\/2498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jodischneider.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jodischneider.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jodischneider.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}