A little help would be much appreciated

[Ms.D]

Hi guys!

I am new to this website, and I would really like your input with a project that I am doing for my university English class.

We have to write a paper on what makes a certain community a "discourse community" based on the six characteristics or criteria set by John Swales in "The Concept of Discourse Community".
The link below provides the six characteristics as set by Swales:

http://eng1020jankensfall2012.wordpress.com/2012/09/05/swales-6-characteristics-of-discourse-communities/

Here is how my class and I have paraphrased the criteria to ensure we understand it better:
1. Discourse communities share a central goal in which every member of the group strives for.

2. Members never have to meet face to face however, they communicate through forums and websites to discuss common interests.

3. If you are in a discourse community, you have to participate, contribute, and provide feedback to better the community and be considered"involved"

4. Discourse communities have multiple ways of group members to communicate with one another and these methods help the group reach their goals.

5. Lexis is the "jargon" within a community or language that outsiders might have trouble understanding.

6. There is a certain level of hierarchy (i.e. administrators), ratio of novices to experienced members that make it important to pass on the knowledge to the "newbies" (like myself! :laugh: )

I chose this particular community to do my research on (we will be working on our chosen community for the rest of the semester) because I love the ASOIAF books and GoT.

For this assignment, we have to analyze what makes a certain community a discourse community by implementing Swales' criteria. The criteria is pretty self explanatory, but since I am new to this site, I would like to ask you a question: Other than the love that you all share for the books and the series, for what other reasons have you joined this site. What is the overall goal this site sets out to achieve (there is A LOT going on)? I would really love your feedback on this. Sorry I threw so much information at you before asking you one question. :stunned:

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Best,

Ms.D

[Larry of the Lawn]

Check out the stickied PhD thread in Gen Chat, probabaly has a lot of useful stuff in one place.

[sologdin]

what other reasons have you joined this site.

i came for the n00b-pwning but, as a fellow fit for consanguinity, stayed for the desire of procreation.

[Zorral]

I came to discuss Vikings. :dunno:

[Eponine]

I don't know that there's any central goal, beyond being a place where fans of ASOIAF can discuss the books and show - not every member does that or even really cares that it's taking place elsewhere in the forums, but I imagine that pretty much everyone here thinks it's a good reason for the community to exist. A decade ago, the forum was more consolidated and if you were a member, you would be running into ASOIAF specific topics all the time. Now you can be a member and rarely encounter ASOIAF material at all if you don't choose to go to those discussions. There isn't really any mechanism where members are helping each other in reaching goals that I know of, except in very localized ways (reading challenge, fitness threads, mental health threads... all highly individualized instead of being a purpose for everyone).

[Ms.D]

Thank you guys for the feedback!
This is a great site with so many different people with different interests. :)