John Swales: Discourse Community Analysis

According to the NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English) , a discourse community is “the grouping of people who share common language norms, characteristics, patterns, or practices as a consequence of their ongoing communications and identifications with each other”, with that being said the discourse community of Political Science is one of relevance and interest to myself. There are many different articles and pages that serve to help one understand all about discourses and the discourse of Political Science solely. The goals and characteristics of the Political Science community are reflected substantially through scholarly journals and the book Writing about Writing that are seen throughout this paper. John Swales states in Writing
Some of the characteristics are more obvious than others, but in my interview and studies of the community I basically found information on all 6 characteristics named. I also found out the relevance of each characteristics and the goals they are meant to have set forth by each characteristic specifically. It is very fascinating studying this community because I always heard that Political Science was a good choice of majors if someone is considering becoming an attorney; however, I never fully understood how or why. Through my studies I got the opportunity to “dig deeper” into the field through my knowledge of the concept of “discourse community” , and realize the relevance and how they are apart of each
John Swales explains his idea of discourse communities through his six characteristics in the book Writing About Writing . The community has common goals, the community has intercommunication, the community provides feedback and information, the community has one or more genres, the community has a specific lexis, and the community has a relevant degree of discoursal expertise. With that being said, his six characteristics are what defines a community as a discourse community. Through scholarly journals and other forms of research I found that the community of Political Science does in fact incorporate or perform all six of those characteristics that help reflect its goals and characteristics of the community itself. There are many different concepts that make the Political Science community unique and beneficial to other communities. Political Science deals a lot with studies of other countries, and studying the legal system. Through the research of Political Science and by its members reaching its goals, helpful data and research has been performed to better understand countries and politics worldwide. The discourse community of Political Science is extremely relevant and beneficial to our