The Importance of Understanding Discourse Communities

         As the emerging profession of physician assistants becomes more essential to the field of medicine, it is important to recognize this profession as a discourse community unto itself. According to John Swales’ definition of a discourse community, it is important for discourse communities to express their purpose and goals both clearly and effectively. In order to understand the importance of this discourse community objective, one must be able to comprehend the idea of a discourse community as a whole. This can be achieved by examining John Swales’ categories of a true discourse community, which can be found by clicking on the following link: 

https://writing.opencourse.stedwards.edu/sites/default/files/Swales_disccomm.pdf

        The first, and arguably the most important, characteristic of a discourse community is that it must have a “broadly agreed set of common public goals” (Swales). Without goals, a discourse community cannot exist because the discourse community lacks purpose. Without purpose, discourse communities would find it extremely difficult to gain members because people have an inner drive to achieve goals that must be satiated; otherwise, they will lose interest.