1

Sam Gehrlich

Professor McLaughlin

English Composition

November 19, 2019

Final Reflection

Community and genre are a big part of a discourse community. Over time I have

learned the definition of a discourse community which Swales states as “A group of people who

are trying to accomplish a common goal through inter-communication.’’ Through the course of

history, a discourse community has become more understood and has become even more

important for humans and establishing a system of communication. Genre has essentially

become the building blocks of discourse community along with values and text creation. Genre

stated by the article Genre in The Wild explains, “A genre is a typified utterance that appears in

a recurrent situation. A genre evolves through human use and activity to be a durable and

usable form for carrying out human communicative intentions in fairly stable ways.” Of course,

this is explaining that a Genre is characterizing a certain word or language that has been used

repeatedly. A huge part of a discourse community is text and language which of course has a

connection with genre. Of course, these two goes hat and hand. But helping understand what

2

a discourse communities characteristic are and what the characteristics of a genre are can help

identify the two and will help develop text creation.

I used this picture to show that anyone can be apart of a discourse community. There is

no unique membership to join one and really anyone can go about developing a community.

An age can go about developing a discourse community. Its hard work but worth it when you

need to achieve a common goal that other people are also trying to achieve as well. The most

common discourse community that’s talked about are in the classroom. The reasoning is

because every classroom has students that are trying to achieve a goal that is similar to other

students. Students will use different forms of text and language to help accomplish and

develop a discourse community that connects many students and can help develop different

values and ideas.

When viewing the article about not seeing the color blue, it made you wonder why this

could occur with humans. People have never questioned if what they were viewing was its

actual color or not. People would have never pondered this idea if it wasn’t for

language. History has revealed that it maybe could have an influence on the color people

3

see. Since the word blue was never thought of in earlier languages and never really discussed

in writing, some think that people living during these times couldn’t really see blue or

comprehend the color. Writings would show different terms or even different colors to explain

what type of color something may be. This of course reveals how important language is for

humans. Language has become a key communication tool with humans and is one of many

building blocks towards a discourse community. Of course, discourse communities can use

many different forms of communication such as text for inter communication. Many discourses

use text especially in today’s world as a quick form of communication. The article even shows

how dependent humans are. They are used to repeated language and this is an example genre

being used repeatedly.

When writing about genre in the midterm presentation I discovered interesting theories

about genre and what genre means in terms of language and creative writing. I also discovered

that genre and discourse are not the same thing, but they do help each other in creating a

community. Genre can be a vague term but is also very important in writing. As stated by

Discourse and Genre (the relationship between discourse and genre), “Genre refers to the type

and structure of language typically use for a certain purpose in a particular

context.” Structures, language features, and other characteristics help to formulate a genre

which helps form a discourse community in turn. A good example of something that has genre

is a classroom. When going to a classroom usually you have activities daily and these activists

are usually different daily but the way you go about these activities are usually the same. These

activities could be taking test, taking notes or even reading. All of these are re accruing events

and genre is used for recurrent events. Another example from the midterm was how an office

4

is run. In an office usually memos and transcripts are given to employees by their bosses this is

a sort of genre that occurs in some workplaces that use this type of text and

communication. Genre is very important to understand and is very important in writing.

Also, text creation has become key in writing. When looking at different ways of

writing, you can see different genres that may be identified. Different writings such as poems

or a fact sheet are genres. When writing about a discourse community that may be found at

UCBA, I explained how The University of Cincinnati’s football team is a discourse

community. This discourse is full of genres and different writing material. When each player

comes to practice, they have a set goal and have repetitive activities over time. A coaching staff

will have different coaching material that they use every day with certain football language and

writing. Even the stadium that the football team plays in has multiple discourse communities

that are involved with the game or with the fans. This could mean the stores that are selling

food or even the cheerleaders on the side of the field. All of these are discourse communities

that are trying to achieve a common goal through communication. Of course, these

communities share values that are very important to help create a discourse community. Erick

Borg in Discourse Community explains “discourse community developed from the concepts of

speech community and interpretive community.” The difference between speech and

discourse is that a discourse community is usually a group that you join with your own free will

where a speech community will usually develop certain types of language when growing

up. Interpretative on the other hand is a wide range of communication through text. You can

see how these groups helped develop discourse communities into what they are today. Speech

and text are a big part of discourse communities and help build a connection between the

5

two. The groups can be of course beyond an academic standpoint, it can also help with

different business techniques and help draw in a certain audience with text.

But how can a discourse community be made. It requires a lot of effort to help develop

a discourse community. Developing one in a classroom requires hard work and dedication. Lisa

Batista and Suzanne Chapin in Creating a Discourse Community explain, “Creating a discourse

community within a classroom enables students to share their ideas, and construct arguments.”

Discourse communities help students interact in unique ways that people may not have the

chance to do. This will create communication between individuals. Each student should know

what sort of actions they need to accomplish going forward and have a set of goals to

eventually achieve. And having respect in a discourse community can help develop the

community even more so and also have better communications that make a discourse function

so well. Being able to also write can help a discourse community. Text Creation requires

unique thinking and critical thinking, and this is very important in writing and helps any writer

develop more fluid sentences for the audience. As Ann M Johns states, “Writers should select

their vocabulary carefully and use it wisely.” All text should be straight forward and should

never leave anything important out.

From the midterm presentation a sort of community that I had used was living with a

roommate and how a roommate might have the same values as me. When having to live with

another person or even many other people, you must have the same values to be able to have

a functioning house or community. Each person will usually have a set of chores of certain

activities to do around the house and these are activities that will usually be

repeated. Roommates will connect via phone or text and this helps to maintain balance with

6

chores and other household activities. This shows that anywhere discourse communities can

be made and established even in the house. A family can be described as a discourse

community when living under the same roof.

My theory on discourse community is that these communities are a very special and

unique way to communicate through common language and text. Anyone can be apart of a

discourse community and these communities can be developed by anyone. Genre of course is

a big part of this and can be described as a text that are known to a certain audience and are

repeated over time. There are many things that make up both and these can be different

values in a group, different text creation, and other important factors that help develop genres

and discourse communities.

7

Work Cited

Aticka Dewi Follow. “Discourse and Genre (the Relationship between Discourse and Genre).”

LinkedIn SlideShare, 1 Dec. 2013, https://www.slideshare.net/TickMutZ/discourse-and-genre-

the-relationship-between-discourse-and-genre.

Borg, and Erik. “Discourse Community.” OUP Academic, Oxford University Press, 1 Oct. 2003,

https://academic.oup.com/eltj/article/57/4/398/455342.

Devitt, Amy J. ProQuest, NCTE,

https://search-proquest-com.proxy.libraries.uc.edu/docview/236891787?https://

proxy.libraries.uc.edu/login?url=https://lion.chadwyck.com/&pq-origsite=summon.

“Discourse Community.” Discourse Community - an Overview | ScienceDirect Topics,

https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/computer-science/discourse-community.

Proxy Login,

https://www-jstor-org.proxy.libraries.uc.edu/stable/10.5951/teacchilmath.25.5.0298?pq-

origsite=summon&seq=2#metadata_info_tab_contents.

Swales, John. “The Concepts of Discourse Community .” Semanticscholar,

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/778e/5c87e6041903980d25449c9a2972947a351e.pdf.