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:
“The first duty of a lecturer—to hand you after an hour’s discourse a nugget of pure truth to wrap up between the pages of your notebooks and keep on the mantlepiece for ever.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)
“The people needed to be rehoused, but I feel disgusted and depressed when I see how they have done it. It did not suit the planners to think how they might deal with the community, or the individuals that made up the community. All they could think was, “Sweep it away!” The bureaucrats put their heads together, and if anyone had told them, “A community is people,” they would not have known what they were on about.”
—May Hobbs (b. 1938)