After reading Swale’s piece and reviewing his characteristics of discourse communities I was able to identify several that I am a part of. One of these is my extended family on my dad’s side of the family as it meets Swale’s characteristics.  This group has the common goal of staying in touch and letting member know of important events in each other’s lives.  We use Facebook messenger as a method of intercommunication as we can reach everyone at one time. We all use the same method and casual tone.  We all participate in decisions for major family functions and give feedback on time and location and also are there to offer support through hard times and good times. We have used several genres to accomplish this. General posts/messages for updates verses a voting poll to help make decisions. This discourse community also has specific lexis that was developed. There is shorthand for certain events and nicknames for group members that are specific to this community. All family members both young and old are present and represented so there is a good ratio of elder family members to the younger generations.

I have also been in some discourse communities that did not function as well as the examples of my family. I started a new job within the last year and my team has weekly meetings. Each week we are supposed to type of some information regarding a few topics that we have suggestions or questions on to share with everyone. When I first started I was not yet comfortable with everyone or the procedures so felt very uncomfortable doing this. I did not have anything to add at first so didn’t really feel like I was relevant to the group. Once I was fully trained and became more familiar this process got easier.

images (5)