Swales Reading

Summary
In John Swales' article The Concept of Discourse Community is about the six characteristics of the discourse community. He also explains how it differs from a speech community. The six characteristics include discourse communities having: a broadly agreed set of common goals, mechanisms of intercommunication, use of these mechanisms to form information and feedback, utilizes/posses 1+ genres of communication, aquired specific lexis, has a threshold level of members with a degree of enterprise.

Questions For Discussion (1,3,5)
1) In your own words, explain the 6 characteristics of discourse community, then provide an example from your writing experience to compare to the characteristic.
1. A discourse community has common goals that they all would like to achieve through their writing.---This is evident in my writing because when I am assigned a paper, my fellow writers (my classmates) and I all have the common goal to get a good grade on the paper and to influence the professor as much as possible.
2. A discourse community has certain lingo they use to communicate with eachother. ---I can relate to this because I believe there are certain words that I would be able to use to communicate effectively with my friends, that would not work with my parents. Thus making the words exclusive to my group of friends, aka my discourse community.
3. A discourse community can take those same terms and use them to provide feedback and information to eachother.---Sometimes when I see a peer review, or a comment on my blog, it may include a word that I would understand and put a meaning to, that other people wouldn't be able to relate to.
4. A discourse community is able to use their existing characteristics and goals to further themselves, and be able to advance their goals. ---In my writing, when I recieve a peer review, or when I give a peer review, they are done because we want to help eachother and advance eachothers writing.
5. "In addition to owning genres, a discourse community has acquired some specific lexis" ---I have no idea what this means, or how it would apply to my writing.
6. Discourse communities have an ever changing membership. This may be due to death or change in expertise, or opinion. --I am rather fortunate that I am of the age where none of my fellow writers have passed away, or passed me up in writing 'expertise' so I cannot really relate to this characteristic (that is, if I am translating it accurately).

3. According to Swales, would a first-year college classroom count as a discourse community? What about a graduate class? Why or why not?
I think there are two ways to look at this question, thus two ways to answer it. The first way I interpreted the question as in thinking about the two classes as their own individual discourse communities, inwhich they function on their own, with influences from other discourse communities, but mainly, each writer influences the other writers. In that case, yes, they are both individually their own discourse communities. However, if you were to look at this question with a 'world-wide' stand point, and consider all of the writers in the entire world as one discourse community, then I believe that the first-year college class would not be considered part of THE discourse community, however the graduate class would be. On the other hand, I could argue that it does not matter how old/educated someone is, they can contribute to the discourse community and come up with new and bright ideas about writing.

5. Consider a discourse community that you belong to, and describe how it meets the six characteristics of a discourse community. For example, what are its shared goals? What is its lexis? What are its genres?
A discourse community that I belong to includes my ENG 151 class. It is a discourse community because we are a group of writers that all have about the same writing ability and a common goal: to do well in our class. We help eachother to improve through our peer reviews. One could argue that we have our own secret lingo that we communicate with.

Meta Moment
I definitely didn't think that discourse communities were so intricate, and had so many different parts to them-- let alone, that I belonged to one. But I suppose anyone who has ever picked up a pen, or typed a paper (for any given purpose) fits into their own discourse community somewhere in the world. From reading this article, I have a better understanding of where I fit in on the DC spectrum, and how I contribute, and specifically what I get out of it. This article has helped me to understand how I can maximize my benefits and my contributions to my DC. This can be done by challenging myself to a higher standard of writing, and expecting the same out of my classmates so we can grow together in ability and communication of this ability.

My Own Thoughts
My meta moments reply basically sums up "my own thoughts". I liked this article because it pulled my concentration and focus away from "ME: the writer" to "US: the discourse community." And it was nice to look at it from a membership stand point where we are all learning from and supporting one another, and also challenging eachother to become better.