1. Swales says that speech communities are centripetal, meaning that they tend to engage people into the general structure. Discourse communities are centrifugal, suggesting that they tend to separate people based on occupation and speciality-interest grouping.
2. Swales provides six defining characteristics to identify with a discourse community. The first being that a discourse community has a broadly agreed set of common public goals. Second, a discourse community has mechanisms of intercommunication among its members. Third, a discourse community uses its participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information and feedback. Fourth, a discourse community utilizes and hence possesses one or more genres in the communicative furtherance of its aims. Fifth, a discourse community has acquired some specific lexis. Finally, a discourse community has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discoursal expertise.
3. Swales explains that although discourse communities can be beneficial, they can also contain contradictions within the community itself. Isolation between the different discourse communities that an individual can be involved in can cause tension and separation within discourse communities. Swales states that as discourse communities evolve, they can lose or gain consensus and although they are to be a place for members to come together, they can be so divided to the point of breaking.

Discourse Communities and The Rhetorical Situation

1. Swales see’s the gap in the conversation that he is participating in as having no set definition or qualifications for discourse communities and for how people can identify with them. Swales also aims to differentiate between speech communities and discourse communities, providing clear examples of why the two are very different.
2. I believe that this piece fills the gap that it was intending to fill. Swales provides his readers with six characteristics that a discourse community should exemplify, where these characteristics can also aid in people’s ability to identify with different discourse communities. Swales offers a definition to his readers for discourse communities, but he also states that there can be conflict and contradictions within a discourse community so people are not entirely disappointed if they were to expect too much. Finally, Swales supplies his readers with clear definitions to separate speech communities and discourse communities.
3. I think this essay was directed toward an academic or business professional audience. This essay would be exceptionally helpful with students and being able to identify as members with different discourse communities, academic and outside of schooling. Also, Swales states that discourse communities do not only have to be seen in an academic light, which is why I believe it can be aimed at a business professional audience. This piece was written very formally, but Swales also says that he hopes that discourse communities can be seen as somewhat apart from reality, which is why I believe he is targeting business professionals, so they can have somewhere to fit in other than the workplace.
4. The danger of a piece like this, people can easily disagree or be offended that Swales came up with a set definition for discourse communities, and how different they really are from speech communities. Also, Swales states that there can be a lot of conflict, contradiction, and isolation within discourse communities, so people can simply find a way to disagree with his statements made on discourse communities.