Discourse Community

             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