After finishing reading the articles on discourse and discourse communities, one thing is clear; discourse is a topic to argue over. Between Swales, Gee, and Mirabelli, discourse is covered pretty thoroughly. From the readings, it is clear Gee, Swales, and Mirabelli all take a slightly different stand on discourse and its meaning. Discourse is the group in which a person belongs to. In my case, my discourse would be college students working to get their degree. While Gee stated in the article that if a person was not born into the discourse community, then there would be no way for that person to be fully accepted into it. I disagree with Gee on this statement because I have proven him wrong in my own life. Just because a person is part of a discourse, doesn’t mean they don’t have the opportunity to join another. As people grow up, they have the opportunity to change discourses multiple times during their life due to subtle changes within the person.
Swales believed there were 6 different aspects to discourses, but I only agree with 4 such aspects. I believe by choosing our discourses, we are aligning ourselves with others who share the same beliefs and interests as us. Discourse brings people together who previously did not know each other through the sheer power of shared interests. I agree with Mirabelli and his thoughts about communication through a discourse. Inside the discourse, there are certain terms that people get to know what they mean, but outsiders would have no clue what the meaning was. By using specialized language, discourses are harder to join and make it so only people who strongly wish to join have the ability to do so. By studying discourse, much can be learned about how people communicate and learn new information. This knowledge of discourse would benefit anyone studying reading and writing because they would be better at recognizing communication from the texts.
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