Post 10: The Concept of Discourse Community

The discourse community I have decided to take a look at is a fraternity/sororities. Fraternities are groups of college students that form there own discourse community. All the guys in a fraternity all fallow the same basic set of rules created by the founders of that fraternity, most of the rules include doing community service hours and hanging out with brothers. Intercommunication occurs through carious methods some of these would include: email, Facebook, newsletters, chapter meeting, phone, and by online discussions. The reason for such a wide array mechanisms for intercommunication is because fraternities have alumni. As a person joins a frat he is the low man on the totem pole. As they get older they become upperclassmen and then move on to alumni status. This progression is exactly what John Swales explains in his article "The Concept of Discourse Community", this progression would be considered the threshold level of members for a discourse community. The lexis for a fraternity is a little more complicated, but we can consider the slang used by college students would be roughly the same as those students in the discourse community. Minute differences can be observed in the discourse community because these people form their own friendships and come up with new slang words all the time. A fraternity allows the members to participate in meetings and events, these meetings convey information to the individuals about the week and other important details about the brotherhood. Finally, the genre would be the restrictions that a fraternity needs to abide by. These restrictions could be handed down from the university or the national chapter of that fraternity.