Ann Johns was a linguist who focused on the conflicts of academic discourse communities. John Swales, another linguist who pioneered the definitions of discourse communities, defines a discourse community as the following…
- Has broadly agreed set of common public goals
- Mechanisms of intercommunication among members (newsletters/journals)
- Utilizes one or more genres in the communicative furtherance of goals
- Uses participatory mechanisms to provide information and feedback
- Has specific lexis (language)
Johns explained that students who have on-campus experience realize that communities on campus are all different from each other. There are new sets of language to learn and items that take on new meanings. Working in a particular community makes you understand particular parts, what it takes to join, the culture involved, and not just meaningless information. Johns states that unlike the culture and family environment you are born into, which in its own right is a community, your academic communities are voluntary.
We are all a part of many discourse communities, sometimes without even realizing it. I am a part of many myself. My hometown could be considered a discourse community. We get newspapers as community communication, and there are words and places that I could say or reference to any random person, and no one but those who live in my hometown community would understand. Now, I am a part of the University of Mississippi discourse community. I receive campus-wide emails with information about events and there are places and phrases that are condensed in this community. I am a part of my church community. There are terms and practices and history that we have that to anyone else would be confusing. Among many others, I am also a choir singer and have been for years, and there are terms and unified goals that span across pretty much all singers. Finally, I am a part of my family discourse community. We have goals and communicate often with each other, and have names and information that we know, but not just anyone would know those things.