This reading was hard but I understood it. This passage explains what a discourse community is. A discourse community is explained misty like a clique. Its a group of people with a common interests who have similar tendencies and all communicate with each other because of their similarities. It also briefly talks about Speech communities which is like a discourse community with out the common interests. For example, new yorkers all have a similar way they speak and may even act similar sometimes. But New Yorkers all have different cultures and interests. Discourse communities will also have their own version of speech but does not make it a speech community because this speech they have is common to them and relates to their interests. Another example, Skateboarding is a discourse community. Skateboarders may talk the same and may not but they all have a similar knowledge of skateboarding words. The six defining characteristics of discourse communities mentioned in the passage are:
- Discourse communities has a broadly agreed set of common goals.
- A discourse community has mechanisms of intercommunications among its members.
- A discourse community uses participatory mechanism primarily to provide information and feedback.
- A discourse community uses multiple genres in communication.
- Discourse communities also have specific lexis (Its own words)
- A discourse community has a threshold level level of members with suitable degree of relevant content and expertise.
I liked the reading because throughout the reading I thought about the discourse communities i know and may belong too. I wonder if you can divide discourse communities into smaller parts because some communities can be huge. I look forward to studying discourse communities more.
It was a bit of a hard read for me too, but I agree with your description of discourse communities. There seemed to be a special emphasis on both the common goals and the language that the group members have among each other.
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