Discourse Communities: Musicians

Musicians fit the six criteria that make up a discourse community as defined by Swales.  While all musicians have their own individual style and taste, they can be unified by their desire to study music, as well as produce distribute their own work. Communities of musicians can form within the schools that they study, the cities, they live in, or the genre that they prefer most. I find the effect of the internet on music very interesting. Many more communities of musicians and music lovers have flourished over the internet. Which ties into the second  and third defining characteristics of a discourse community – intercommunication among its members. Concerts, recording studios, jam sessions, etc. are all vectors for correspondence and providing information and feedback. The internet plays an interesting role in these characteristics as well, because it enables members of this discourse community from all over the world to hear music and communicate with other musicians that they would have never otherwise had access to. It facilitates a freer flow of  ideas and styles, which not only opens peoples’ eyes to new things, but makes the fourth characteristic – genres – more flexible and vast. As we spoke about in class, genres are not static, but are evolutionary ideas. Categories for types of music were once simple and straight forward – jazz, rock, classical, etc. – but now it is more common to see musicians experiment and borrow from other genres to form their own styles. Examples of new genres you can see emerging include post-punk progressive math rock with a jazz influence. Genres, I think, have become their own form of lexical items. Additionally, musicians not only have a lexis that includes the type of instruments and recording equipment they use, they have to know how to write music itself. This discourse community also most definitely contains members that have a diverse level of expertise. There are beginners, students, teachers and enthusiasts who continuously strive to improve their art.