Reading Response #14 Swales

Summary:

 In his article "The Concept of Discourse Community," John Swales attempts to explain to the reader what a discourse community is and offer a set of criteria to make it more clear as well as how they work. He argues that a speech community has different criteria than a discourse community and it is important to know the difference between the two.


Before you Read:


A time when I felt out of place was when I was rushing for a sorority. I went to a house and it was the first day and we walked in and the girls did a fashion show. I felt so "out of place" because I don't like fashion that much, I just wear clothes that I like. I am not the girl-est girl but I can be girly but the fashion show at this house was ridiculous, and I just felt so uncomfortable being there.

Synthesis:

    “The Concept of Discourse Community” shares similarities to “Intertextuality and the Discourse Community”, James Porter’s article because they are both showing text relationship. The reader has a clear view of the discourse community and it's different movements. Both deal with concept and how it is beneficial to writing.

Questions for Discussion and Journaling:
5. A discourse community that I belong to would be my soccer team. It meets the six characteristics of a discourse community because everyone on my team loves the sport and wants to work hard to get better at it. Everyone on the soccer team also gets updates and emails regarding times and the practice schedule. Our lexis would be that we always make up crazy nicknames for corner kicks or free kicks and nobody understands them or gets what we are trying to do.  The genres of this were just the different types of drills that we would practice and deciding what the names of the plays would be.

 Opinion:

 I thought the article was interesting because it discussed the concept of discourse and discourse communities in various ways.The reading was very difficult for me but I feel like all the readings are difficult for me to read.