1. A discourse community has a broadly agreed set of common public goals
The common public goals are known intentions amongst a community, whether it be said/written or just automatically known. It's what the discourse community plans to do and strive for. It's almost like their own known agenda amongst themselves where other communities do not know about. An example of this for me would be, being apart of my sorority's executive council. Each position has an electronic handbook online describing all the measures each position should take regarding what they are in charge of. It also comes with a set of policies and rules that must be heavily followed for the safety of the chapter.
2. A discourse community has mechanisms of intercommunication among its members
Swales describes a language known to just a discourse community and its specific members. It's a way they communicate with one another, that outside sources may not understand. The best example of this for me is definitely ballet. I wrote about this a lot in my literacy narrative. We have a lot of slang and formal terms that others don't understand.
3. A discourse community uses its participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information and feedback
To me, Swales is expressing that the way to receive feedback about ones' discourse community has to come from outside sources or members within itself. Outside sources I think point out bring a sense of reality to a group and being a member of a community helps you strive to better yourselves or maybe even other people you're intending to help. Working at Victoria's Secret is a very challenging social environment, where sales goals are pushed and each customer is required to have the best customer service they've ever had and to expect it each time they enter the store. As employees we are trained all the time on tactics and made aware of our sales data monthly and how we can change some things about it.
4. A discourse community utilizes and hence possesses one or more genres in the communicative furtherance of its aims
Swales is trying to communicate that within every discourse community there are roles and functions that must be worked out. These roles are constantly changing to keep the community progressing. I think the best example for this is family. Everyone has one, and roles constantly begin to change. When I was younger it was me and my four boy older cousins. Now the youngest are my cousins kids and everyone is waiting on me to get married. It's a scary thought, but exciting also.
5. In addition to owning genres, a discourse community has acquired some specific lexis
This is a little more challenging to understand, but what I think Swales tries to convery is the specific terms and way of talking to one another in a discourse community can vary from group to group. At work at VS, we use terms to communicate to each other that customers usually don't understand. Limited Brands in general is a very term specific business, so knowing the terms is key to success. It sort of allows us to be like a secret society and create our own unique success apart from other companies. Words and phrases such as BWC, CSL, excellent customer service, brand ambassador...all may leave some confused.
6. A discourse community has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discoursal expertise
Lastly, Swales touches base on the natural hierarchy that takes place in a discourse community. People sit on different levels of importance and leadership, whether they be elected or it's a natural sense of entitlement, we always have leaders. At school here, students are overseen by professors who are overseen by their boss, who are overseen by a more specific boss and then overseen by the dean or president. Yet it's interesting because within smaller discourse communities such as sororities, fraternities, groups on campus, we hold each other accountable and form our own leadership positions amongst each other.
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