Discourse community is place where a group of people communicate to achieve a specific common goal. Linguistic John Swales outlined 6 characteristics a discourse community should have. First, the group should have common public goals, what I understood by that was that everyone in the group should have the same goal so that in the discourse group they could help each other achieve the goal together. Second, the group should have methods of communicating among members, lets say the group didn’t have any methods to communicate with each other, do you think any think anything will be accomplished ? No right, that’s why in the group everyone should be communicating about what they are going to do to get to their goal. Third, participatory communicating methods, everyone in the group has to participate, they all have to share their ideas that way everyone could see how to get to the goal. Fourth, the group should have a genre because that will define the group. Fifth and sixth, would be that the discourse group should have a lexis and a standard of knowledge needed for membership. What I understand that role of the discourse community is way where people can communicate to achieve a goal or a purpose.
The social context of my writing in the academia would be that my writing has been the same always. Ever since high school I’ve been trying to get better at writing but I think it still hasn’t changed a bit, I still need help. Last semester in eng 1101 my teacher goal was to make everyone in the class a better writer and it will be really difficult for me because I have a hard time trying to know what to write about. My writing outside the academia would be better than the one in the academia because I really don’t have to write a lot which makes it easier for me. My understanding changed through our reading and discussion by making me understand that everyone has a different way of communicating with others. For example, in the book we are reading right now called ‘Drown’ by Junot Diaz, the author speaks in 2 languages (Spanish and English), this shows us that you can communicate in many ways it doesn’t have to be just one language, people express their feelings in many different ways. In my household we speak both Spanish and English , sometimes it be difficult for my siblings and I to understand my parents when they speak Spanish to us but that’s how we are able to communicate within our family.
Another example would be that in text messages people would express their feelings and communicate through emojis, we can admit everyone have used emojis to communicate with other people. I feel by using emojis we can express our feelings through text messages. In the book one discourse community is the one they have with their family. In the book Yunior is telling us what kind of relationship he has with his brother ,mother and father. I could see the relationship he has with his brother is really comfortable. For example he would be calling him names , they would tell each other everything and they would both go and bother other kids about how they play any type of game. The relationship he has with his mother is actually good he loves his mom, and he be telling us how beautiful she is and how much she takes care of all 3 of them ( his brother, his sister and him). The relationship he has with his father is very strict because Yunior wouldn’t know when his father is actually happy or not, he would always has a mean face and also he knew that if he doesn’t behave good his father would beat him up. This is a discourse community that I can compare too, and I know other people can also. The relationship Yunior has with his family is the same relationship I got with my parents and siblings. Even though I don’t have a close relationship with my father we still communicate and laugh every time we hang with each other every chance we get. Then with my mother and my siblings we communicate with each other all the time and we also have a family group chat where we would find memes and send it to each other. Our goal as a family would be to go to many cities during the summer and have fun.
Another comparison to discourse community is the way Yunior looks up to Rafa ( who is his older brother). Even though Rafa would pick on him, make fun of him,etc, he still looks up to him because that’s his older brother. Yunior doesn’t care about those things even though it hurts his feelings he just want to be like him and share many experiences with Rafa. I don’t have an older brother but I have a cousin who I look up too because I’ve lived with him since I was six years old. At first I would think he was the most annoying person but still loved him as if he were to be my other brother. We would argue a lot, play fight a lot and even call each other names but I look up to him because I just wanted to be like him. I wanted to create many memories and experiences with him.While I was reading Drown I came across this character named Ysrael. Ysrael was this character who had a an accident when he was just a baby that made him wear a mask. What happened was that when he was just a baby a pig ate his face which made him get bullied a lot. Yunior and Rafa goal was the see what was underneath that mask they would throw rocks at him and even go to his house. But not only Yunior and Rafa bullied him it was also his cousin, and other Kids in town. Ysrael was a really nice boy but the others didn’t care because of his face. The discourse community was that they call were cruel and their goal was to see what was underneath that mask, and I don’t think they care anything about him.
In conclusion in each discourse community everyone in it should have the same goal, share the same ideas to conquer it. If none of them had same goal nothing will be done, they would understand each other and there would be no discussion to talk about. Each of these examples of discourse community that I talked about, some of us would understand but I think others won’t really know how it feels . That’s an example of how each community some people would understand what is happening but others would actually know how it feels and how it’s significant to them.
