Discourse Community In American Speech-Hearing-Language By John Swales

Some people can’t communicate properly. Some never will. The only people that understand them are the people that struggle with the same things they do. People with communication disorders must become part of a discourse community to be able to achieve their ultimate goal of being able to communicate with everyone. In order for these people to achieve their goal, they need others that are interested in helping them that understand their disorder. For someone interested in communication disorders, it is not only to important to recognize the four main discourse communities as speech, language, hearing, and processing, but also the differences between them and the smaller discourse communities within.
According to the American Speech-Hearing-Language
He believes that a group that does not portray all of these characteristics can not be considered a discourse community (220-222). Others, including myself, think that his definition is too strict. James E. Porter has a much broader definition of a discourse community in stating that “a discourse community is a group of individuals bound by a common interest who communicate through approved channels and whose discourse is regulated” (400). In simpler terms, it is a group of people with a common interest working towards a common goal. By knowing this definition, it is clear how speech, language, hearing, and processing are the main discourse communities within communication disorders. They are each separate groups with separate goals, but also have smaller groups within
People in this discourse community struggle to produce “normal” speech and work toward the goal of being able to speak properly. The smaller distinctions within speech disorders are articulation, fluency, and voice. People within the articulation discourse community struggle with producing proper speech sounds or consonant and vowel sounds. People within this community would be people with lips, people who have difficulty with blends or any other issue of the sort. Fluency disorders disturb the flow of speaking and can also include tension and mannerisms. This disorder can be described by the rate at which people speak, their rhythm, and repetitions. The main example of this sort of disorder is stuttering. Lastly, another discourse community is voice disorders. This has to do with people who have an abnormal voice for the individual. This can mean that a person’s voice has an atypical tone, volume, or quality for his/her age and/or