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Discourse Community Analysis

Decent Essays

In his article “The Concept of Discourse Community,” Professor John Swales defines what a discourse community is, following with a list of six different points that a group must align with in order to qualify as a discourse community. These parameters are as follows: “a broadly agreed set of common public goals,” “mechanisms of intercommunication among its members,” the use of “participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information and feedback”, use or possession of “one or more genres in the communicative furtherance of its aims”, “some specific lexis”, and “a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discoursal expertise” (471-473).
After identifying and describing the six points of criteria for qualification, Swales writes that even if just one attribute is missing, it may still be enough to prevent the formation of a discourse community (469). Keeping this in mind, it is important to identify all six points when trying to prove the existence of a discourse community. Due to the presence of all six attributes, I am a part of a discourse community myself. During the summer months, I work as a lifeguard at Avalon Summer Sports Club, a local …show more content…

The use of words and phrases that outsiders may be confused by expedites conversation and everyday tasks, and is “driven by the requirements for efficient communication between experts” (Swales 473). The lexis of guards contains typical lifeguard phrases and terms for performing rescues and maintaining a safe environment. There are also terms and phrases for objects around the pool and tasks that must be completed. For example, there is a pool cleaner that is placed in the water at closing and left there to vacuum the bottom of the pool overnight. The vacuum is a called a dolphin pool cleaner and guards are often told to “clean the dolphin,” which often results in funny looks from those who overhear the

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