Discourse Community essays

In her article “language and culture”, Claire Kramsch talked about ‘discourse community’ and ‘discourse accent’. What do you understand about those two terms? Please explain and give an example from our own culture!

Discourse is a conversation or more extended and more formal discussion of our ideas in either speech or writing. A community is a group of people connected for a common goal or purpose. So then a discourse community is a group of people who share a set of discourses and have goals and purposes, and use communication to achieve these goals. A discourse community is a social group that is involved in discourse. An example of a discourse community can be those workers who enter the larger or smaller discourse community of their employer and depending on the size and focus of the institution. For example, in a hospital, a nurse might belong to the discourse community of the hospital, the nursing staff, and the Emergency Department.

Most people are familiar with the American accent, the British accent, the Canadian accent, the Australian accent, and others. However, the term ‘accent’ really refers only to pronunciation. There are different pronunciations, different vocabularies, different phrases and different grammatical rules that have been documented. These are what are known as ‘dialects.” A dialect of a language is different from another dialect of the same language, however, it is still understandable, while different languages cannot be understood by people who don’t share a language. Just as some people speak a language with a dialect, other people also speak another dialect of the same language. Discourse accent is recognized by its language features such as syntax, phonology, grammar, and vocabulary. Discourse accent is also known as topic choices, style of talking, and particular speech acts. For instance, Bahasa Aceh has some different dialects and accents but they still understand it although they are different.