Blog #3- Discourse Community and Rhetoric

“Thus we see that for Swales, the concept of “discourse commu- nity” is useful to explain how a social group employs discourse to coordinate complex activities, to work together on very large, long-term projects.”

-Patricia Bizzel

Bizzel backs up this statement with Swales’ six criteria that makes a discourse community. The first 3 mentions that they must share a common goal within the community, there must me a forum involved and the group must work towards the common goal with providing information and feedback. The last 3 mentions that the group must develop a shared genre of some sort, shared specialized terminology, and there must be experts in the group to properly help novices of the group accomplish the common goal of the discourse community. I agree that these 6 things make a group specialized as a discourse community.

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