CL 9/12

1.)Speech communities spread as people spread. Information/people drift away from center. You can be either born into or adopted into a speech comm. Speech communities include verbal communication.

Discourse communities formed for specific functions. Information and focus begins to centralize and specialize. Examples could be going to a trade school or joining the military. Reasons for joining these groups could be to feel included, training, career aspirations, etc. These communities include written comm.

2.)Discourse communities has a set agreed upon public goal

Disc. comm has a threshold of membership & expertise

Mechanisms of inter-communication between members

Utilizes those mechanisms to provide info and feedback

Acquired particular language and lingo between members of discourse communities

One or more genres of communication in furtherance of it’s goals

3.) I believe problems with discourse communities is that they are more closed off to speech communities. Even members of discourse communities need to leave their own speech communities at the door.

It takes time and training to get a new initiate up to speed with the speech/lexi usage.

People may feel restricted to new ideas within the discourse community as not to disrupt the agreed setup upon goals or set ways of doing things.

1.) I Believe Swales see’s the gap as being the disconnect between speech communities and discourse communities. Also, there are multiple definitions of these two types of communities that hampers communications fields.

2. This piece fills the gap by informing the uninitiated to discourse communities and how they could join them or even how to excel in them. He provides definitions and attempts to clarify these communities.

3. I believe the intended audience is for the yet to be initiated discourse community members. It could also serve as a refresher for those already in multiple comms to not be closed off to ideas.

4. The danger in an essay like this is that Swales writes as if discourse and speech communities should be exclusive of one another. I think that this is dangerous in practical application because everybody is different and it should not always be black and white like Swales explains.