The Concept of I Discourse Community

john Swales is a professor of linguistics and codirector of the Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English at the University of Michigan. He received his Ph.D. from Cambridge University and has spent most of his career in linguistics working with nonnative speakers of English on strategies to help them succeed as readers and writers in the university. His publications include English in Today's Research World This excerpt is a chapter of a book Swales wrote called Genre Analysis. In it, he refers to concepts discussed previously in the book, which will be somewhat con· fusing since you have not read his book's preceding chapters. In the beginning of this chapter, Swales also refers to an ongoing academic argument over the social (constructed) nature of language use and to arguments about what a discourse community is and how it is different from a speech community. You likely will not fully understand this discussion, since you may not be familiar with the academic debates to which he refers. What's important for you to understand is simply that a lot of people think that discourse community is an important enough concept to argue about. Once Swales gets through this background/framing material, he goes on to define the term himself in section 2.3, since he thinks other people's definitions have not been clear and specific enough. This is where you should really start paying attention. As Swales defines his six characteristics of a discourse com· munity, you should try to imagine groups you belong to that exhibit all six of these characteristics. Be aware that Swales's style of writing is a little dry and for· mal, and he may use specialized linguistic terms that you don't understand. He is good, however, at highlighting his main claims and defining his terms, so if you pay close attention, he should clear up most of your confusion. If he uses terms that he does not define, and with which you are not familiar (for example, lexis), be sure to take a moment to look them up in a dictionary. You need to use the six characteristics he I JOHN SWALES I The Concept of Discourse Community 4671 describes to analyze communities you are familiar with, so it is important that you understand his definition. One of the most important-and complex-of Swales's characteristics is genre. Unfortunately, Swales does not spend much time defining this term because he assumes …