Discourse Communities and Communities of Practice

      Both Swales and Gee during their articles gave their opinions on what discourse and discourse communities are. Swales’ idea of a discourse community and discourse was much lighter and open compared to Gee. Swales emphasized that a person can come and go from community to community without any trouble or major alteration to themselves as a person. Gee presents discourse and its communities as being harsh and critical. Unlike Swales, Gee believes that “floating” between discourses is an impossibility. If you are an outsider to a discourse community according to Gee you will either be rejected or have to “mushfake” to become accepted. Gee refers to these separations of acceptance and rejection as an individual dominant and nondominant home Discourses respectfully.

            Ann Johns adds to Swales and Gee’s discussion by presenting an angle to the topic not yet presented. Johns tells us that individuals are born into specific discourse communities that can not be chosen. These communities are what they are and can’t be avoided such as, families and culture.  Johns on the other hand states that an individual can choose what academic, interest group, belief, political, or profession community they prefer. Johns main purpose is to describe to us that individuals may be affiliated with many discourse communities but involved and interested in those groups at varying levels of importance.  She stresses that the basis and begin to all of these chosen communities is through the avenue of academia. Ann goes on to tell us that certain communities require a cost to be affiliated with them. By cost simply she is saying that each discourse community consumes an allotted amount of time in correlation to your dedication to that community. So if you were to look at Johns’ statements as an addition to Swales and Gee you could say that she agrees with Swales in a manner of speaking about being able to drift from community to community in cases such as: politics, profession, and others as stated before, but on the other hand there are some communities that can not be avoided and will be dominant to that individual such as, family and culture. Therefore, Johns seems to straddle between Gee and Swales, yet at the same time joining there ideas and thoughts.