Quote1: ā€œLinguist John Swales defined discourse communities as ā€˜groups that have goals and purposes, and use communication to achieve their goals.ā€™ā€(3)

Response: This is the most concise definition given by swales to discourse communities. Through this quotation, I think the goal is very important, because the emergence of a common goal attracts people and produces specific groups. If the goals change, the groups will also change and forming another DC. Communication is a bridge to the goal. Today, communication does not have to be face-to-face. We can communicate more quickly and conveniently through email, text, social media, etc. People in DC make communication more efficient through some specific lexis, and achieve common public goals through discussion and feedback.

Quote 2: ā€œI do not believe that this necessarily implies that we adopt new identities, or that we are somehow merely an aggregation of different personae.ā€(19)

Response: We all grow up with many discourse communities. Some of them are short-term, such as football team in primary school or a course in college. Some discourse communities exist for a long time, such as our family or a stable job. It is one personae when we work hard at the office, and we change to another personae when we go to the club and get drunk. There is no conflict between them. If we regard each DC as a separate circle, the part where all DC circles overlap is me.

1. Chinese Christian Church

I think the Chinese Christian Church is a ā€œFolocalā€ discourse communities because it is a hybrid community that have a double allegiance. When I go to the church, there are two chapels at the same time. One speaks Mandarin and the other speaks Cantonese. Although we are in the same church, we belong to two separate discourse communities. Cantonese and Mandarin use the same Chinese characters, but their pronunciation is quite different. It is not like an accent, it is more like another language. Therefore, the church was divided into two groups to communicate. People can freely share their understanding of the Bible and the experience of embracing God. The greatest value of the Chinese Christian Church to me is that I can get encouragement and warmth, which is very difficult for me to get in other DC.

2. Bubble tea shop

I used to work part-time in a bubble tea shop in Manhattan, which belongs to a local discourse community for me. I work in a worldwide milk tea brand, and the positions are divided into trainee, employee, shop owner, manager and boss. Our colleagues need to cooperate with each other to meet the needs of customers. There are common professional terms in the communication between us, for example, BT represents black tea. We have our own group chat, which is used to communicate, arrange schedules and upload performance. I think the value of working at a milk tea shop to me is that I have learned teamwork and working experience.

3. Course IND 2313

Last semester I took IND 2313 (Industrial Design) class, it was a local discourse community. The goal for this course was to let students show their ideas by designing multiple tools and machines. Because we have the same major, we talked about the topics of our major. In this class, each student had the opportunity to express their ideas through the presentations. Students can share their opinions and suggestions for other students who were giving presentations. This class was not only let me gain a lot of professional knowledge, but also made me more confident. I was very nervous when I was giving a speech, but now I am able to express myself on the stage.