Swales

 “A discourse community has a broadly agreed set of common goals”

This quote is pretty straight forward. Swales means that discourse communities have a specific set of “end games” to reach or at least a set of “check points” For each community, this can be different. The goals can be anything from changing to world or to simply winning the next game.

“A discourse community has mechanisms of intercommunication among its members”

This quote is slightly harder to decipher, but it means that each community has its own mean of communication be it forums, phone calls, or just a pregame lobby of a video game.

“A discourse community uses its participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information and feedback”

Everything is constantly changing, including discourse communities. You need a way to get out word of new changes. What was true once could be false soon. Earth is no longer flat nor is it the center of the universe. Who decides the change? People; people who notice problems, then find ways to fix them. This quote means that the communities use its participants to garner information for what changes would be welcome and what changes are not welcome.

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

This one is a doozey. Basically every group has their own ways of doing something. Gamers wouldn’t solve certain instances the same way action figure collectors would. It is all relative to the groups you are from or belong to. There is a proper and improper way to do something. Like with gaming, there is a proper strategy to winning in Runescape PvP and a wrong way.

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

Simply, there are people who know a lot about what the discourse community surrounds and can input relevant content and information towards conversation