"Discourse Communities and Communication of Practice"

In the introduction to “Discourse Communities and Communities of Practice it is touched upon that this particular article is an extension of an ongoing conversation between John Swales and James Gee. In Summary this conversation is made up of Swales commenting that just because you are involved with a discourse community, doesn’t necessarily mean that you belong to that particular community. Gee on the other hand discusses that a person “from non-dominant home discourses can only join dominant ones through mushfake.”

            Ann M. Johns adds much to this conversation in this article. While both Gee and Swales failed to mention the conflict within the discourse communities. John brings up the notion that perhaps discourse communities is not the best term for describing the community, but Communities of Practice is better suitable. She claims this title is better equip for the term because” it refers to genres and lexis that hold communities together or separate them from one another.” A point that John touches on again and again is that students must be introduced to a wide range of  their own genres in the classroom. She says that is important to draw from our students own experiences and to have the students learn from each others different Communities of Practice.

 I found the most interesting part of John’s article was when she discusses the community conflicts. She lists the cost of affiliation, issues of authority, conventions and anticonventionalism, and dialogue and critique as some of the conflicts that can arise within a community. These conflicts are mostly affiliated with the academic communities and how students adjust to the academic Communities of Practice.  But Johns talks about more then just academic communities in the article. She discusses professional communities, which are discourse communities within the work force. She also discusses Social, Political, and Recreational Communties, which are communities that are developed within a certain group of interest. An example of a recreational community would be a cycling group. All of these groups are very different and Johns says that it is important for students to be familiar with because they must understand the importance of group practices.