When defining a discourse community I would say it is a group of individuals who share

a common goal or interest who practice a specific way of participating in public discussion.
Discourse communities come in a variety of forms. Some require a certain level of expertise or
threshold level in order to obtain membership so everyone as a whole can reach their common
goal. Although the basic definition can take on plenty of meanings, throughout the course of
learning about the discourse community the authors in Writing about writing have shown just
how the community of people who study writing function as a group and the way they analyze
text and readings along with depicting specific parts about writing.
People who study writing go about it in a numerous amount of ways and many have
proposed a number of different theories about it. I would say that the community of writers who
study writing belong to a Secondary Discourses which is what we acquire by apprenticeship in
the community or social institutions seeing that it is their job to educate about the writing process
and community. Discourse communities normally recruit its members by persuasion, training or
relevant qualification. John Swales says that discourse communities dont necessarily change its
followers world view but they can be so called spread out as opposed to a speech community
who are more likely to be closer together. Seeing that the study of writing entails a lot of
different perspectives, thats what makes the community so diverse and spread out. He also talks
about the six characteristics that define a discourse community. He talks about theyre shared
interest in reaching a common goal, theyre unique style of communication, a specific type of
lexis, etc. (Swales, John. The Concept of Discourse Community. In Genre Analysis: English
in Academic and Workplace Settings, pp.21-32.) I feel like theyre are a lot of shared goals
within the community of people who study writing considering they all have their own way of
going about analyzing writing. In contribution to people who study writing James Porter does say

that instead of creating new ideas, authors have the ability to alter and edit the text which changes
the way a discourse community thinks about plagiarism. Porter believes that instead of romanticizing
the idea of originality in writing, students should be taught to write for a discourse community.
(Porter, James. Intertextuality and the Discourse Community. Rhetoric Review 5.1 (1986): 34-37.
Copyright 1986.) Seeing that Porter has a different view of plagiarism not all professionals who study
writing may agree. He offers a different more in depth insight on a different way students should
write for their audience.
After studying and discussing the many ways people evaluate writing I think I have taken a
great deal of information out of these studies to benefit me. I think one of the most valuable pieces of
information had to be when one of the authors talked about Shitty first drafts It taught me that
writing wasnt about everything being perfect. Even if it takes us four more tries to perfect our
writings its perfectly okay to have a crappy first draft. The whole editing and analyzing process
becomes a lot easier if you have the mindset of just putting all of your thoughts on paper without
hesitation. I think after realizing this I became more conscious of how I write and it actually benefitted
me to some degree. As well as applying these styles of reading and writing to my personal
experiences I also found that Tony Mirabelli had some very relatable content within his piece about
Learning to serve and communication within the workplace. He says that within specific
environments or workplaces, the communication they use is not necessarily a written or spoken
language. I can apply this to everyday life because in some social situations not everything we say
to each other is technically considered a language as odd as that may be. I think society has
somewhat conformed to that and each group or environment we are placed in holds its own type of
communication which leads back to our communities of people, our discourse communities and what
separates them from all of the others.

Mirabelli, Tony. "Learning to Serve: The Language and Literacy of Food Service Workers."
What They Don't Learn in School. Ed. Jabari Mahiri. New York: Peter Lang, 2004. 143-62.
Print.
Porter, James. Intertextuality and the Discourse Community. Rhetoric Review 5.1 (1986): 3437. Copyright 1986.
Swales, John. The Concept of Discourse Community. In Genre Analysis: English in Academic
and Workplace Settings, pp.21-32. Cambridge University Press, Copyright 1990.