Talk:Discourse community

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With the current wave of community building outside of geographical communities (i/e communities of practice, communities of action, communities of purpose, etc.) growing, has anyone done work on reframing the basic concept of community?
 * James Paul Gee critiques the use of "community" beyond local boundaries (such as a neighborhood) and develops the concept of "affinity groups." But "communities of practice," itself, is a reaction to the idea of discourse communities (see Ann John discussion in Text, Role, and Context). Communities form around practices and doesn't mean they share the same values and beliefs regarding things beyond the shard practices (and their associated values and beliefs). In this way, communities of practice may be an adequate term for online communities.Crowdsourced (talk) 17:18, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 3 September 2019 and 13 December 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Sabrina.Chowdhury001.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 19:34, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Page Number for Nystrand Reference
I checked on this article to see if perhaps there has been some development beyond the D.C., and was surprised to see Nystrand cited (I wasn't aware he coined the term), but owning this book, I haven't been able to find "discourse community" anywhere in Nystrand's contributions to this collection. Could someone (perhaps Ntennis) tell me what page this is found on? Thanks. Crowdsourced (talk) 17:37, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

Nystrand, M. (1982). Rhetoric’s ‘audience’ and linguistics’ ‘speech community’: Implications for understanding writing, reading, and text.” (1982). In M. Nystrand (Ed.), What Writers Know: The Language, Process, and Structure of Written Discourse (pp. 1-28). New York and London: Academic Press. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mnystrand (talk • contribs) 20:16, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

This article fails to adequately define the concept before diving headfirst into complex analysis
We really need something that reads more like http://shrike.depaul.edu/~jwhite7/discoursecommunitydef.htm (but in an encyclopedic tone). And don't SOFIXIT me, I don't think I can do it.  S ven M anguard  Wha?  05:48, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

This is about writing a paper, not about discourse communities themselves
It doesn't even explain what a discourse community is, apart from the definition in one sentence.

64.189.63.51 (talk) 06:09, 20 September 2012 (UTC)
 * agreed.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 15:31, 20 September 2012 (UTC)
 * What do you mean that "It doesn't even explain what a discourse community is, apart from the definition in one sentence"? The whole section starting with Nystrand and moving to Swales introduces a list of characteristics of discourse communities. Crowdsourced (talk) 09:14, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

We would like to add "Rhetoric" as a main component of discourse community, or expand on the related items section. Why hasn't this been done yet? Ejrandall2 (talk) 17:15, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

Adding rhetoric as a main component
Here is a source that was found regarding Contemporary Rhetorical Communities. It states, "Thus a contemporary rhetorical community is less a collection of people joined by shared beliefs and values than a public space or forum that permits these people to engage each other and form limited or local communities of belief." Incorporating this factor suggests an introduction to a democratic system in discourse communities.

Do you think we (me and three other students are working on this article) could add this?

Source: Zappen, James P., Laura J. Gurak, and Stephen Doheny-Farina. "Rhetoric, Community, and Cyberspace." Rhetoric Review 1997: 400. JSTOR Journals. Web. 10 Oct. 2015.Ejrandall2 (talk) 05:24, 10 October 2015 (UTC)

The intro immediately sets readers on the wrong track
"A discourse community is a group of people who share a set of discourses, understood as basic values and assumptions, and ways of communicating about those goals. Linguist John Swales defined discourse communities as "groups that have goals or purposes, and use communication to achieve these goals."

There is so much wrong with this opening definition, which I have unfortunately come across too many times in my students' DC papers. Discourse is quite simply written and spoken communication. It is not "understood as "basic values and assumptions," which are abstract nouns. This inaccurate statement is finished with an illogical one: "use communication to achieve these goals." That they have and share goals has to be stated before claiming that they use communication to achieve them.

The concept of discourse communities is pretty simple, but too many public contributors want to change or swap Swales' language with their own inaccurate interpretations. The focus is discourse. We all do it on a daily basis, and sometimes we do it with a shared purpose, but that doesn't mean we have become a DC. For example, if a group of neighbors come together with the sole purpose/goal of helping another neighbor remove a downed tree, they might communicate verbally to accomplish that task. Neighbor 1 says "let's take off the limbs first; N2 says "that makes sense," and N3 says "I'll drag them to the curb." Are they a DC? No. They will only come together for this shared goal one time. They do not utilize mechanisms and genres for communicating, and they did not use a unique lexis (relevant words, abbreviations, and terminology built over time and out of necessity). In fact, they could have grunted and pointed and still accomplished their goal of removing the downed tree).

Aside from teaching, I make jewelry out of vintage beads and findings. The word findings is part of my lexis, as is C-clasp, jump ring, crimp bead, and more. Members of my DC will recognize and utilize these words in their discourse. We share the same goal of making, learning about, sharing, and possibly selling unique jewelry creations. We share information - tips, tricks, designs, products - as well as feedback (try using nylon coated beading wire) through mechanisms such as group forums (FB, websites), Etsy, craft fairs, messenger, InstaGram, and more. We learn through genres - textbooks, Internet - and we have varying levels of discourse expertise (I had to learn what a crimp bead was and how to use it when I first started, etc.).

There's no need to overcomplicate the concept of a DC, but don't oversimplify it either. 2601:243:C005:C330:2C8B:49AF:4665:3D5C (talk) 17:19, 16 July 2023 (UTC)