Quote 1- “The term discourse community is now more than thirty years old since it was apparently first coined by Martin Nystrand, a professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (Nystrand 1982). Since then, it has been widely used and discussed (sometimes critically) by scholars in applied language studies as a way of recognizing that communications largely operate within conventions and expectations established by communities of various kinds.”
Response- This grabbed my attention because I never really heard anyone say discourse community. However this text made me realize that I am in many different discourse communities. Discourse communities can be either in a positive or negative common interests and it is very diverse.
Quote 2- “Fine, but we now need to emphasize the roles of new digital channels, such as emails, blogs, tweets, etc., and we also need to stress that without any means of intercommunication of any kind, there is no real community. Subscribers to Le Monde may share certain characteristics, but they do not form a discourse community.”
Response 2- This is one of the many quotes that got my attention. This shows how technology just keeps improving and making communication a lot easier. It lets you keep in touch with old friends, family from different countries and people over seas. If it wasn’t for todays technology we wouldn’t have been able to do virtual learning this easy and fast. As the technology keeps advancing everything is becoming easier.
One of my discourse community would be my friends. Throughout the years my friends helped me become a stronger person. Without my friends I wouldn’t be where I am today. We all have the same goals in life and will work together. We push each other to better ourselves.
Another discourse community would be my family. If it wasn’t for my family I wouldn’t be the person I am today. We all work together and they push me to be successful in life. I know I can always count on them and they can always count on me. There comes times where there’s disagreements but we always get right back like nothing happened. These disagreements make our bond stronger and helps us reflect on ourselves.
In addition, my third discourse community is my gym. I have a group of people where we all have the same goal and train together. We plan to be healthier and get stronger. We do diet plans and everyone picks workouts that will help us all. We are not only helping out our bodied but we are able to have fun while doing it.
I would encourage you to think in more depth about your DCs so as to prepare for Unit 1. For example what are the factors that define your friends as a DC–are you all from a similar place, background? Were you all interested in the same major or hobby? Same for your family, where do the values, beliefs, ways fo thinking, communicating, behaving come from? Are these a DC?