The main point of "The Concept of Discourse Community" by John Swales is that Swales is

trying to define "discourse community". He starts by talking about the speech community and
how speech is an important aspect of a discourse community. The members of a discourse
community need to know how to communicate in both writing and speech. He goes on as a
discourse community needs to prioritize the idea of socialization within the community. Swales
defines discourse community using six characteristics. It includes a discourse community that
has a broadly agreed set of common public goals. A discourse community has mechanisms of
intercommunication among its members. A discourse community uses its participatory
mechanisms primarily to provide information and feedback. A discourse community utilizes and
hence possesses one or more genres in the communicative furtherance of its aims. In addition to
owning genres, a discourse community has acquired some specific lexis.

A discourse community is simply a group comprising people that share basic values and
assumptions (discourses) and also ways of changing ideas about the goals that have been set by
them. He goes further to give some characteristics of the Discourse community which include;
discourse community always agrees on a wide range of goals they want to achieve. The different
ways of communicating between themselves and their mode of providing various information are
through participation.

Now in a discourse community, the way of communicating in a group in terms of language will
always show moral and good social behavior, A discourse is a way to preserving and opening up
the knowledge of the group involved and through this, new members will be added in the group.
Discourse is more of relating knowledge or cognition of the knowledge of people in that group.

In the beginning, speech communities were believed to be well organized mostly the way they
used to converse and use the same language rules. Here we see, Swales, pointing out the major
differences between a speech community, and a discourse community.

A discourse community has a major-specific set of reasons, rules, and characteristics that always
help them in defining their group. For them to have unique ways of communicating which are
the main ways of distinguishing them and defining each member of a specific community. We
also see that each member has to share a common goal and also must have a specific set of
norms, values, or beliefs.

A discourse community mostly makes use of its participatory mechanisms majorly to provide
and passing out information and feedbacks. As we see in the context, Each member uses specific
mechanisms to communicate information and giving feedback to each other. These may include
suitability of topics, the forms, functions, and aligning of discourse elements. Their roles and
texts play in the operation of the discourse community. As we see In the case study that
"community-specific abbreviations and acronyms." Every community has its abbreviations of
words and phrases that when used, a community can always understand.
A discourse community has a certain level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content
and discourse experts. To be a member of the discourse community, one must have a decent
amount of relevant information to share and must have a certain level of skills.

A discourse community has a set of rules, priorities, and objectives that a person must follow to
be a part of that community. Swales here gives the differences between a speech community and
a discourse community. The main difference appears to be that a speech community is a much
broader community that shares language rules and a discourse community have a set of goals
they want to achieve which assist in the development of characteristics required to be a part of
any discourse community.

There are three types of Discourse communities, this includes, Local discourse communities,
Focal discourse communities, and Focal discourse communities.

For the focal discourse community, there are essentially three subtypes, are Residential,
Vocational, and occupational, and mostly apply to the university context. Focal communities are
the opposite in most ways. They might be informal groupings or more formal ones with a
particular set of rules, elections and sometimes to join you must have a paid membership. The
third is this Folocal community which has characteristics of both local and focal discourse
community.

In the academic world, discourse communities are usually defined by field and subfield. That
means that the discourse community of geology represents the common scholarly conversation
that takes place among geologists. If an audiologist entered into their conversation. many of the
terms and concepts would likely be unfamiliar, and a geologist would have the same problems in
a conversation about audiology. Getting a grasp on your academic discourse community and its
conventions is the first step to becoming a successful researcher in your field.

We see also Swales describing different activities of Universities in his opening paragraphs just
to show that this department can be a discourse community. Since in the departments they have
to use a common language that they have to understand each other. The main point that he is
making here, is that most of these departments have got their own rules of working and
organizing themselves for their ways.

From that, we can say that these departments work as discourse communities since they use the
same language, they have their own set of rules, and have set aside their own goals to achieve.

Discourse communities are changing over time since many people are lacking a set of rules to
govern them. There has been the eruption of different many languages which make people to not
to understand each other. The sense of unity has also diminished. Many people have lacked unity
among themselves. The ability to understand each other has become a big problem hence
hindering them to make a discourse community.
Every discourse community also has its own rules about what can be said and how it can be said.
If you want to join a discourse community, you need to learn their rules. You will also need to
learn their lingo (lexis) and their expectations around communication. Who will teach you?
Those in the group who are "old-timers" with a lot of experience and expertise. Without
"experts" to guide beginners, the discourse community would fail. But it would also fail without
beginners because, without them, the community has no future n the academic world, discourse
communities are usually defined by field and subfield. That means that the discourse community
of geology represents the common scholarly conversation that takes place among geologists. If
an audiologist entered into their conversation (or picked up one of their journals), many of the
terms and concepts would likely be unfamiliar, and a geologist would have the same problems in
a conversation about audiology. Getting a grasp on your academic discourse community and its
conventions is the first step to becoming a successful researcher in your field.