Swales' 6 Characteristics of a Discourse Community

1. A discourse community has a broadly agreed set of common public goals

2. A discourse community uses its participatory mechanisms primarily to provide info and feedback

3. A discourse community has mechanisms of intercommunication among its members

4. A discourse community utilizes and hence possesses one or more genres in the communicative furtherance of its aims

5. In addition to owning genres, a discourse community has acquired a specific lexis

6. A discourse community has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discoursal expertise