Chloe Brotherton

English 1510

October 24, 2012

Swales/Gee Dialect Journal

 

“In this chapter we ask you to consider the idea that literacy learning is never over.” (Page 463)

What exactly is “literacy learning” and how would one define it..?  Seems like a pretty broad topic to me.

“We need then to clarify, for procedural purposes, what is to be understood by discourse community and, perhaps in the present circumstances, it is better to offer a set of criteria sufficiently narrow that it will eliminate many of the marginal, blurred and controversial contenders.” (Page 469)

What a long sentence!  At first, I didn’t quite understand what the problem was with a discourse community and now I’m starting to understand what Swales is saying.  It’s more of a suggestive term and cannot be defined in just a sentence or phrase; a discourse community is more like the center of ideas rather than a settled notion.

“1. A discourse community has a broadly agreed set of common public goals.” (Page 471)

According to Swales a discourse community is a group of people that share goals or purposes and use communication to achieve them.  This definition of six backs up that statement.

Overall, I found this reading to be a little dry and boring to read, but I think it’s safe to say I officially know what a discourse community is.  A discourse community, broken down into six characteristics, must contain the following: broadly agreed set of common public goals, mechanisms of intercommunication among its members, provide information and feedback, possess one or more genres in the communicative furtherance of its aims, acquired some specific lexis, and threshold of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discoursal expertise.