Swales Dialectic Journal

Dialectic Journal – Swales (WAW, 464-78)

“A discourse community has a broadly agreed set of common public goals.” (471)

“The goals are public, because spies may join speech and discourse communities for hidden purposes of subversion, while more ordinary people may join organizations with private hopes of commercial or romantic advancement.” (471)

“A discourse community has mechanisms of intercommunication among its members.” (471)

“A discourse community uses its participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information and feedback.” (472)

“A discourse community utilizes and hence possesses one or more genres in the communicative furtherance of its aims.” (472)

“Discoursal expectations are created by the genres that articulate the operations of the discourse community.” (472)

“In addition to owning genres, a discourse community has acquired some specific lexis.” (473)

“The inbuilt dynamic towards an increasingly shared and specialized terminology is realized through the development of community-specific abbreviations and acronyms.” (473)

“A discourse community has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and Discoursal expertise.” (473)

“Survival of the community depends on a reasonable ratio between novices and experts.” (473)

“The members of the discourse community [HKSC] have, superficially at least, nothing in common except their shared hobby interest.” (474)