Response 14 - Swales

Summary
In his article "The Concept of Discourse Community", John Swales attempts to explain to his readers what a discourse community is. He argues that there are differences between discourse communities and other academic groups because there are speech communities, where people are inherited into the group, while in a discourse community recruits its members.

Synthesis
This article was similar to the other article that we read about discourse community a few weeks ago. I do not remember off the top of my head who wrote that article, but I think that this one by Swales goes a little deeper into the topic than the other one did. I feel like I understand a little more about what a discourse community is now.

Pre-Reading
The time that I think I felt most out of place was when I first came to college here. I felt so different from everyone, and I'll be honest I felt pretty stupid too, everyone seemed so much smarter than me. I grew up in a small farming town that had pretty traditional conservative values. Then, I come here and everyone is so different, most of them from fancy city suburbs with beliefs and lifestyles that to me seem a bit absurd. One time when my friends and I were talking about what we did over the summer, I mentioned that I worked on my Grandpa's farm, and they looked at me like I had twelve eyes or something. I felt really out of place when I first got here.

#5 QD
I suppose I belong to the discourse community of this class, because in the work we do we have a set of goals and you can't just be "inherited" into this class like in a speech community, but instead had to sign up for it and get accepted. Our shared goals are the projects and these responses. The lexis I suppose would be the readings we do and the terms that we talk about there.

My thoughts
I thought this reading was pretty informative, it really did clear up a few things about what a discourse community was. However, some of the terms that he was using in the article are still a bit confusing to me. I didn't really like the article, but I'll be honest, I've read worse.