The Craigslist Discourse Community

     When discussing discourse communities in class we learned from Swales that there are 6 characteristics that are necessary to identify a group as a discourse community. The need to establish these criterion derived from Swales' reasonable expectation that one should be able to "...accept, modify of reject..." a discourse community if it is "the center of a set of ideas" as he suggests it is in his book. The reason I bring this up, is because Swales goes on to question whether it is right to point out a discourse community as an idea under the umbrella of a speech community. With these 6 identifying traits I believe it is right to characterize a discourse community, as it allows one to focus more on the audience and realize how ideas might be understood or misunderstood depending on that specific discourse community.

     A discourse community that I would like to point out that I am a part of, which is one I believe is quite interesting, is that of the community of people who use Craigslist. I believe those who use Craigslist create a discourse community, that while usually only consists of 2 people for specific transactions, can be understood by a multitude of people. As technology is ever evolving, human interaction can be accomplished through mediums never requiring face to face meetings. While this evolution calls wholly for a different discussion, it is obvious to anyone in the Craigslist discourse community, that transactions can be made without ever seeing the person on either end. 

     In terms of fitting the rules of a discourse community, the 1st one, having an agreed set of common public goals, I feel Craigslist clearly meets this. The users of Craigslist, all view the same web page and know the purpose of either posting or browsing on the site. While everyone might not be aware of specific users goals, I believe they are all public knowledge as to what one would use Craigslist for. In terms of how I identify with this discourse community, I use it to buy concert tickets. When I go on the site I know what section I will be using, where I will be browsing and who I will contact once I decide on a sellers offer.

     The next rule stated that a discourse community has mechanisms of intercommunication among its members. All members are able to contact one another through the links posted on specific Craigslist posts, whether they list an additional email or phone number or other method of contact, that just allows for more direct communication. The communication use of Craigslist is vital to its business model as well.

     "A discourse community uses its participatory mechanisms to provide information and feedback" Craigslist allows for feedback and information as one is to contact other members of the discourse community in order to receive responses or illicit answers for specific questions in regards to postings. As I further break down the Craigslist discourse community, I am also realizing that it might have a similar problem akin to the "The Café Owner Problem" in that certain people in the discourse community might never interact, whether it is because they don't see one another's posts or never reach out to contact someone. Though, I do not believe this disqualifies Craigslist from being a discourse community, as people that use the site still meet all 6 rules, as I will go on to explain.

     The fourth rule, that the discourse community uses and possess one or more genres in the communicative furtherance of its aim, is met by Craigslist as well. With postings by users of the site and email correspondence or text correspondence being the genres that Craigslist mainly identifies with.

     There is definitely a specific lexis acquired by the Craigslist discourse community. Certain abbreviations and words help create more efficient communication between those who are involved in this discourse community. It also meets the notion that an outsider cannot come in and understand every word being used. As Craigslist is an online forum, most of its lexis has evolved from "chat speak" and abbreviations that might be known, to an extent, by Internet users. For a specific example, when searching for tickets for concerts one might post "ISO" which is "in search of" or when selling say "OBO" which is "or best offer". 

     Lastly, discourse communities have a threshold of members with varying degrees of experience and suitable content. This is met by those who frequent Craigslist often and might know, for example, how to spot a scam or how to barter with certain posters. As compared to someone new to the site who might be unable to navigate its lay out at first in order to access what they would like, and then once contacting the other person or posting a listing, being unaware of the methods of progression. 

     Craigslist, thus, is an interesting discourse community to me as it somehow does not have to solely rely on spoken communication to be useful. It still accomplishes its goals and aims by using online communication, and often texting, to complete transactions between people. Craigslist is also a discourse community that varies in terms of membership as transactions can take place between 2 people or can be seen on a larger scale as those who interact in specific categories such as "jobs" or "for sale" or even more specialized as "tickets - for sale" or "government - jobs". The discourse community of Craigslist is one that I believe meets all the goals that Swales sets forth, but also allows for the evolution of the definition of a discourse community, in some sense, as exemplified by my confusion as to whether the entire site can be categorized as a discourse community or if specific transactions should be checked to see if they meet all 6 criteria. Either way, by looking at the rules and whether Craigslist is able to meet them, I have realized that almost all conversations or communications that take place in your life can be traced to a specific discourse community.