The Troubles with Identifying a Discourse Community

The Troubles with Identifying a Discourse Community

The first week of class, we read an article called “The Concept of Discourse Community”. We discussed the meaning of discourse community, while analyzing the text by John Swales. We reviewed Swales’ six defining characteristics for identifying a discourse community, and did the Creeper assignment to study styles of conversations out of the classroom.

One of the particular items that interested me was “The Café Owner Problem” Swales suggested. The problem argues whether three separate coffee shops operating with the same goals and forms of communication can be a discourse community even if they never interact with each other. The majority of our conversations in class revolved around discourse community as a social group that physically interacted with each other. Whether it was a school club, sports team, Greek Life, or just small circles of friends, all of these discourse communities contained physical interactions. Meanwhile, an isolated lighthouse keeper uses the same forms and styles of communication as other lighthouse keepers, but they never physically interact with each other. Swales brings up the lighthouse keeper, as well as missionaries in separate jungles, as examples where classifying a discourse community is uncertain. A discourse community is defined by communication, but if two people never communicate with each other, how can they be identified as a discourse community? These examples follow all six defining characteristics described by Swales, but without direct interaction, how can they be considered a community? These questions brought me to realize how this article is just one man’s view of what he felt a discourse community was, and everyone has their own version of a discourse community. This is why concretely defining a discourse community is still open for debate.

            I decided to try to think of other ways a discourse community would be difficult to define, and I stumbled upon the idea of one person being in multiple discourse communities. If an individual shares all the same communicational characteristics as two extremely different discourse communities, can they be a part of both communities simultaneously? For example, back in high school I took all Honors and Advanced Placement classes, but was also a captain on the Varsity hockey team. I had two very distinct groupings of friends and discourse communities that rarely overlapped. I was like a median to two different social circles, but shared characteristics of both. In one discourse community we’d joke or complain about all the classwork we had and get together for projects. In the other community we’d go out late during the week and get together for practice. Each discourse community had its own lingo and forms of communication, yet I was a member of both. When I head to the diner with the hockey team after our game (as was tradition), am I still a member of my class-related discourse community? Are we constantly switching the different discourse communities that we’re a part of, or are we part of all our discourse communities simultaneously? I don’t know if there is an exact answer to any of these questions, but I found the thought process that inspired them interesting and could easily lead to debate.