Response #11

Sean Demme

10.22.12

English 1510

“We need then to clarify, for procedural purposes, what is to be understood by discourse community.”

This shows the way that swales is trying to categorize the different communities to understand what they do for us and what they do tour writing – also to eliminate communities that don’t necessarily count as a community.

“I would now like to propose six defining characteristics that will be necessary and sufficient for identifying a group or individuals as a discourse community.”

He cares about what makes a discourse community what it is. He has developed four steps in order to make sure which communities fit into what categories and which don’t.   

“A discourse community has a broadly agreed set of common public goals”

This confuses me because he goes on to say that students aren’t a discourse community. We have a common goal and seem because of technicality we aren’t a discourse community – I think he makes it a little too “technical”.