Discourse Community Research Paper

Superior Essays
My discourse community is Christianity. My discourse community involves people who believe in God and follow the guidelines of the Bible. The people from this community are trying to enhance themselves by learning the Bible. An impeccable member attends church, strive for better lives, and aim to help others spread and disseminate words of wisdom. There are several reasons why Christianity is a discourse community. My discourse community has all of the six characteristics defined by John Swales. In my paper, I will describe how my discourse community meets all of Swales characteristics. The common goal of Christianity is to spread faith and good morals, and we give be inspiration. We try to be a good influence to the world and try to make …show more content…
The Bible is the most important genre that this discourse community uses. My discourse community can use scriptures that will be able to help them for the rest of their lives. The Bible help people get through hard times and most importantly, it helps people get through life. Prayers are also something that helps us work through our goals. We pray for people that seek help and we also pray for the church and other different things. Prayers are a call to help which helps us get through things because God answers all prayers. Sermons are also another important genre that helps us reach our goals. Sermons are a talk on a religious or moral subject. They are given through church services and are based on a passage from the Bible. It is a powerful tool to challenge a set of people who consider Christ and their need to be saved. Songs are also another type of genre. Praise and worship songs can help a person get through certain types of situations. Sometimes you are not able to go to church and worship music allows you to do that anytime anywhere. Songs are written of faith, scripture, and Christian inspiration. It makes us stay focused on the goals that we are trying to reach. It helps us focus on family, friends, God, and prayers. These types of genres help us reach our goals because our goal is to spread faith and good …show more content…
God was the one who created it, and he gave it to Jesus. Jesus has the most authority, but there are also other people who have authority also. The pastor has authority also. He is the main leader of the church. He is the one who teaches the word, guides us in the right direction, and keeps the church together as a whole. The Bible is not a person, but it also has power in my discourse community. The reason it has authority is because it tells us what to do to become saved. It also gives us scriptures that we are supposed to live by. Overall, Jesus has the most authority in my discourse community because he can do what nobody else is capable of, and no one has a problem with it. No one really has a problem with them having authority for tons of reasons.
If we do not accept the Bible as the authority in Christianity, then we are not listening to God. If we do not accept Jesus as the authority then we shouldn’t even be in this discourse community anyway. The only problems we have in the church when it comes to authority is the pastor. Some people in my discourse community have a problem with the pastor having authority. They might feel like he is not a good pastor, and he is not teaching us right. Sometimes, the pastors get ahead of themselves, and the people vote him out. If the pastor eaves, the deacons will take over, and preach until they find another

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    What Is Discourse Community? What is the meaning of a discourse community? A discourse community is a set of people who have a different way of communicating than others. Those groups of people usually have very similar values and assumptions as well as ways of communicating with each other about those goals.…

    • 866 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    First, a discourse community must have a set of public, common goals (Swales 471). The main goal in Journey is “to provide you with a holistic understanding and practice of Christianity that equips you for life in the real world after you graduate (“Vision”). Journey also has a vision of “Question. Explore. Transform (“Vision”).…

    • 1864 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    However, due to the strictly rules and monopoly power, this belief was protested by other reformed groups and abandoned by different beliefs as well (Fisher, 2014). Catholic church generally has one unify leader, the Pope, who decide mostly in the church daily activities and…

    • 416 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    A discourse community is something that I have been thankful to be apart of through out my high school career, and to this day. The Washington High School Soccer team all shares a common goal of wanting to win a West Virginia State Championship, and continue to be successful through out life, sharing means of communication through social media and email. During my upper classman of high school I got chance to be apart of family that was all held together by something that meant more than just a ball. My soccer team was a magnificent group of friends, and we are still very close thanks to this discourse community. Through the seasons and off seasons the team has never fallen apart and we still remember what made out team so good the chemistry.…

    • 1120 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In his article “What is literacy?”, James Paul Gee maintains that the definition of discourse: “a socially accepted association among the ways of using language, of thinking, and of acting that can be used to identify oneself as a member of a socially meaningful group or ‘social network’”. In the reading, discourse talk into production of goods in a society “dominant discourse” and assent to talk about those groups that have disagreement when using them as “dominant groups”. When people discuss something with other, they are not using their own ideas. At the same time, he goes on to explain that there are many points can make about discourse, such as the direction and significant in term. Important to realize, the author organizes discourse that…

    • 1239 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Discourse Community Essay

    • 481 Words
    • 2 Pages

    The community must be able to communicate with one another. It does that by providing information and feedback. Specific terminologies or “lexis”, as Swales calls it, must be learned. Finally, one must have a certain level of expertise in order to be a part of a discourse community. Discourse communities could vary from a college classroom to one’s home.…

    • 481 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Perspective A discourse community is a social group or can be anything that inquires shared values, practices, or can even share the same language. A speech community, however; is not the same thing as a discourse community. A speech community is a community that shares the knowledge of rules for the conduct and interpretation of speech. (WaWpg.219) Defining a discourse community can be hard due to the range of different types of discourse communities.…

    • 1580 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Great Essays

    Discourse communities exist all around us. From being involved in a Japanese biker gang to being a high school cheerleader, all of these groups are a perfect example of a discourse community. Almost every single person has been involved in this type of community whether they know it or not. A discourse community is a group of people who share a common goal and communicate about a specific topic. According to John Swales, he characterizes a discourse community as a group of individuals who broadly agree on a set of common public goals, have mechanisms of intercommunication among their members and use these mechanisms to provide information and feedback.…

    • 1364 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In "The Concept of a Discourse Community", John Swales (1990) aimed to define what a discourse community is; then he carefully deconstructs discourse community into six fundamental attributes that are important for recognizing a discourse community. Swales definition of a discourse community is a group that has objectives or purposes, and utilize communication to accomplish those objectives. The six essential characteristics that he claims to be the core of a discourse community are its goals, intercommunication, participation, genres, Lexis, and expertise. Swales made his interpretation of these attributes very clear; he explains that a discourse community has a concurred set of common public goals that all its participants attempt to attain. A discourse community has a mechanism of intercommunication for all its members.…

    • 731 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    This paper required a formal tone and only first person when discussing your relation the community. My purpose in this paper was to address how the International Thespian Society was a discourse community and explain how. My thesis statement gave me a lot to run with: “By the standards given by Swales, the International Thespian Society is a discourse community” (Bartley 9). For this paper, a lot more research was needed. I conducted interviews, recorded meetings, and collected all forms of genre I could.…

    • 925 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Great Essays

    Discourse Community

    • 2344 Words
    • 10 Pages

    A discourse community cannot be defined by words alone, it takes a set of specific characteristics that define each of the individuals that created a discourse community. They are what make a discourse community unique and separate from other communities. James Paul Gee’s definition of a discourse community is “A form of life that combines social languages, discourses, intertextuality, conversations, recognition, kits, and mapping” (Gee). According to Gee, these are the seven essential components that are needed to make up any intercommunication among members of a discourse community. A discourse community can be anything from a basketball team to a student organization or a regular classroom each and every member of the group may be coming…

    • 2344 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    From Swales, I learned that a discourse community is deemed distinct for the members share a goal, for how they utilizes specific genres and lexis, and how they provide a specific kind of information to a specific audience. From Johns' extension of Swales’ argument, I learned that discourse communities are distinct from one another because of how individuals of said community share genres, share practices and values, specific knowledge, specific vocabulary and concepts, as well as regulate and initiate new members into that community. This allowed me to define my current and…

    • 592 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    As a student pursuing a bachelor’s degree in social work, with the hope of obtaining a master’s degree in the same, I will move through multiple threshold concepts within my discourse community. I will analyze the ways in which social work is a discourse community and the influence my degree program at Washburn University will have on my future in social work. A threshold concept is an area in which one learns what they need to do in order to be part of a discourse community (Wardle and Downs, 2014, pp. 1-11). A discourse community is a community that shares common goals, beliefs, lexis, and genres (Swales, 1990, pp.…

    • 1949 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    To sum up Swales’ ideas, a discourse community must first have a shared common goal. Discourse communities have a successful form of communication and a way of exchanging information and feedback, such as…

    • 2404 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Sacred Rhetoric Summary

    • 1776 Words
    • 7 Pages

    Sacred Rhetoric by Michael Pasquarello emphasizes the importance of the ministry of preaching (1). Today’s preaching consists of devising new techniques or strategies for better communication, drawing crowds, and appealing to the post-modern society. Pasquarello’s aim is to look at preachers in the past whose emphasis with the authority and sufficiency of God’s Word. Preachers need to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ instead of trying to be relevant or successful. As Pasquarello states, “we reduce pastoral ministry to the acquisition of the latest ‘how to’ ideas and strategies, we quickly forget the mystery of divine revelation and the working of grace that are necessary to make sacred rhetoric truly sacred as…

    • 1776 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays