A discourse community is basically a group of people that share mutual interests and beliefs. “It establishes limits and regularities...who may speak, what may be spoken, and how it is to be said; in addition prescribe what is true and false, what is reasonable and what foolish, and what is meant and what not.” (Porter, 39). For most writers, success will come only if their writing falls into the approved guidelines of their discourse community.
People are generally involved in a variety of discourse communities within their private, social, and professional lives. Some discourse communities are very formal with well established boundaries, while others may have a looser construction with greater freedom. Examples of discourse communities may include:
- Medicine
- Law
- Psychology
- Films (Movies)
- General Forums
- Technology
- Sociology
- Philosophy
- Chemistry
- Physics
- Mathematics
- Writing
- Rhetoric and Composition
Read more about this topic: Academic Writing
Famous quotes containing the words discourse and/or community:
“Every discourse is an approximate answer: but it is of small consequence, that we do not get it into verbs and nouns, whilst it abides for contemplation forever.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“As in political revolutions, so in paradigm choice—there is no standard higher than the assent of the relevant community. To discover how scientific revolutions are effected, we shall therefore have to examine not only the impact of nature and of logic, but also the techniques of persuasive argumentation effective within the quite special groups that constitute the community of scientists.”
—Thomas S. Kuhn (b. 1922)