To me, the term discourse
community identifies a grouping of people who share common language,
characteristics, patterns, or practices as a consequence of their ongoing
communications and identification with each other. It allows different academic
collectives to write in characteristic registers and genres. After looking at
the six concepts of discourse community, I agree with John Swales that forming
a discourse community is an effective and clever way to let different scholars
to express and discuss their opinions. The most important point is after the
scholars had their “professional discussion”, they will inform the ordinary
people about their academic research. In that case, they can spread more
advances knowledge to the commons or the people of the other discourse
communities. It will also be a good method for the students in Stevens
Institute of Technology to exchange their opinions on various topics and enhance the interaction
between students.
E.g. A discourse community map by Daniella McDonald
