1.) A discourse community has a broadly agreed set of common public goals. Aka stay in the guidelines of what everyone else is talking about and you’re good. It could be anything. Politics, social events, paper airplanes, whatever catches your fancy. As long as you’re not saying, “Well I think “x” is the best presidential candidate because he is showing he knows what the people want. I was a dinosaur in a past life”, you should be okay. Stay on the topic, and if you have secret goals of your own like, “I want to sound smart so that girl over there thinks I’m smart”, then by all means, try to impress.
2.) A discourse community has mechanisms of intercommunication among its members. It’s a small world after all. Now that that song is stuck in your head, let me try and make a point. It’s saying that while there make a group of people who have never met before but all come from the same background in teachings or what have you are still connected by the fact that they are all going out with the same mission in mind. For me, this would be like when I was in high school and part of my youth group. We would go on mission trips to other cities and we even made it to Mexico one year. We helped build a second story on a church. There would be a group coming in after us to help finish the church. So while we never met, we still had the same goal, thus creating a community.
3.) A discourse community uses its participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information and feedback. This is saying that even though you may be part of a medical team, if you don’t stop the patient from bleeding out, you’re not really helping anyone. You have to put forth some effort to actually be apart of the community. This isn’t a “show up and you win!” type of deal. It’s time to nut up or shut up. This is like art critiques we have for class. If you’re not putting up work or speaking, why are you there?
4.) A discourse community utilizes and hence possesses one of more genres in the communicative furtherance of its aims. Be original. No one likes a tattletale…or people who can’t think of anything original. Okay that last part isn’t true. But don’t walk up to someone and takes their idea. Be cool. True originality is hard to come by in the art world, it’s okay to have been influenced by other artists, just don’t take the Mona Lisa and say you made it.
5.) In addition to owning genres, a discourse community has acquired some specific lexis. It’s like having your own decoder ring. You become comfortable with shortcuts or anagrams for words and while outsiders may not know what you’re getting at, the rest of your club does. A good group can do this. A great group can be understood by everyone…members and nonmembers alike. This is like when I try to explain to people some ways of setting up files on adobe illustrator or some other graphic software. I need to change my terminology to help make it simple for everyone.
6.) A discourse community has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discoursal expertise. Make way for the new guys and have a fond farewell for the old. Everyone is important in a group. The new are the future while the old are the past. You can’t have one without the other. And a good balance of the two insures you of having a long history. I can only think of family generations for an example. my grandfathers teaching my parents who then taught me, and I will teach the younger generation of my family to come. Circle of life.
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