Genre is very important when it comes to discourse communities. Genre serves the convention of discourse communities and it the means of communication that achieve the proposes of a particular discourse community. The discourse community in which will be discussed is Moldovian Baptist Church or MBC. From MBC three main genres of the discourse community will be analyzed and show how those conventions and language elements serve the MBC as a discourse community and achieve its main purpose. MBC is a discourse community that uses MBC choir, sermon, and youth to achieve the goals and proposes of MBC through the uses of language elements.
Moldovian Baptist Church is a discourse community because it falls into the definition and categories according
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For the first listed genre MBC choir, it uses singing and religious lyrics to minister the word of God. One, by singing they can capture the attention of the audiences and the lyrics have deep or simple meanings about God. Having multiple members means there is a wide variety of listeners in audience that can listen to the lyrics song by the choir and then can pass them on further or put them to their own hearts. This applies similarly to the MBC sermons in which that genre has many subunits that communicate to achieve the goal. The subunits are prayer, reading from the scripture, and analyzing a verse or many for the audience to learn something new or to assign an important point that they can utilize in their lives. These features communicate to a main point of the genre: sermon. This genre is related to the convention of a church in which it preaches the word of God. The third discourse community is MBC youth, now this is a very important genre with in a church because it organized evangelical events, it organizes service programs on special biblical days, and it keeps the younger generation involved in church. Now MBC youth is a genre and its subunits (many forms of communication) are listed above, they represent many features if the discourse of church and the genre of youth group because that is what’s expected for …show more content…
The first genre: choir has many feature as described. Those feature help achieve the goal of the choir to communicate across God’s message through choral song and music. These feature not only grab the attention of the audience (members) but also send a message about God which is the main goal of the discourse community. MBC sermons also use the many features of the genre and they are very important for delivering the main messages to the members. The features of a sermon are prayer, reciting verses, and analyzing the verses. These feature are necessary to communicate to the members the ministry. The third genre is MBC youth, with the features: Organizing service programs, evangelical events, and involving the youth generation in church activities. These feature are important to the members because it involves the youth in church causing more members to join when ready, and they evangelize to the public causing more potential members to join. By both communicating the word of God and assuring the future generation of members the youth group sustains the memberships in the discourse community
A discourse community has mechanisms of communication amongst their members. A discourse community uses its sharing mechanisms mainly to provide information and feedback. A discourse community applies and holds one or more genres in the communicative progress of its goals. In addition to holding genres, a discourse community has to obtain some specific lexis. Lexis is the total stock of words in a language. A discourse community has a level of members with a proper degree of appropriate content and discoursal expertise, ranging from a novice to an expert. I will further explain each characteristic and how it relates to the dance
A type of music which was and is part of many today is soul. It is said that the church is its home. The term soul first applied in the late 1950...
Discourse communities are groups of people with a unique point of view. There are many discourse communities around your everyday life. These communities are part of the entire human environment. Many discourse communities are distinctly large due to all the societies wanting the same things. My discourse communities are mostly Facebook.
Music is a form of art which blends melodies with words to produce a piece that communicates with people’s thoughts and emotions, by stimulating their senses and thus extracting responses. Gospel, a distinctive genre of music, makes use of sounds and words to praise and worship God. It is also used to teach the teachings of God in an entertaining and captivating manner. Gospel music not only fills people’s hearts with hope and joy, but also relieves their stress and comforts them. One of the most influential figures who has played a major role in the flourishing of gospel music is James Edward Cleveland. Cleveland was an accomplished vocalist, performer, composer, producer, philanthropist, preacher, choral director and pianist; hence earning titles such as: “Crown Prince of Gospel” and “King of Gospel Music.”
In an age when culture continues to lower standards of intellect, Marva Dawn makes compelling observations and suggestions for the Church to rethink its strategy on impacting society. How do we evangelize without weakening the message of what we are communicating? The majority of her text focuses on the worship environment generally, but later she focuses on music, preaching, and liturgy specifically. According to Dawn, a gathering of believers should emphasize God as the subject and object of worship, challenge each individual to grow in godly character, and accentuate the community of believers (not only in the room, but throughout history as well). Through this grid, she encourages leaders and participants to evaluate each worship element.
In the Swales document we looked at in class, a discourse community has a set of common goals (Discourse Community). In high school basketball, the goal is to win the state championship. Also, a discourse community uses a specific jargon (Discourse Community). We see this in the rules and how some players and coaches communicate. Finally, a discourse community has its new members learn from experienced members (Discourse Community). This is evident when we talk about learning the fundamentals from the coaches. High school basketball can be a very diverse discourse community because while every team has different ways of doing things, they all have the same end goal of being the state champions. Basketball has always
Discourse communities play a big role in life and how humans interact in general. A discourse community refers to a group of people who have language, life patterns, culture, and communication in common with each other. The idea of a discourse community has also been used to bring people of different orientations together, like family members, students, or committees. All of these types of people might have different standards of living, like their level of income, education, and work abilities. Discourse community can also refer to a speech community, because the main feature of a discourse community is communication. A discourse community can include groups of different regional areas that may or may not share norms and living patterns
There were several new concepts that were introduced to me this semester including the topic of genre. I found out that it was more than a classificatory tool. According to Bawarshi and Reiff, genre has changed into “a shaper of texts, meanings, and social actions”. In other words, genres are used to change and influence social interactions and to produce meaning-
Football is a discourse community I am involved in where the members have similar goals and expectations. As in, what Swales describes a discourse community as groups that have goals or purposes, and use communication to achieve these goals”. In his article “The Concept of Discourse Community” (Swales 466-479) Swales argues for a fresh conceptualization of discourse community, especially as a distinct entity from the similar sociolinguistic concept of speech community, and building upon the foundations of that argument defines discourse community in his own. In the Conceptualization of Discourse Community he talks about the six defining characteristics of a discourse community. The discourse community I am part of is playing and coaching football.
My discourse community is Christianity. My discourse community involves people who believe in God and lives up to the guidelines of the Bible. The people from this community are trying to enhance themselves by learning the Bible. An impeccable member attends church, strive for better lives, and aim to help others spread and disseminate words of wisdom. There are several reasons why Christianity is a discourse community. My discourse community has all of the six characteristics defined by John Swales. In my paper, I will describe how my discourse community meets all of Swales characteristics.
Gospel music is mostly American music reflected by significant songs. Gospel music was created as a type of Christian worship and spiritual singing which is associated with African-American worship1. Executed by soloists, choirs and groups with vocals and harmony within the churches. There are two main types of gospel music: Urban Gospel started around 1899 had its roots mostly in spirituals songs sung by the slaves in the south around the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries which is associated with the Black churches. Southern Gospel started around 1910 which is associated with the white churches. While over the history of Gospel music there are now several different kinds of Gospel music such as, Christian Country, Contemporary Christian, Hip-Hop, Traditional and Progressive Southern Gospel. . “Recent studies by Professor Willie Ruff, an Afro-American ethno-musicologist at Yale University, conclude that African American Gospel singing was in fact was encouraged by Scottish Gaelic speaking settlers from North Uis”. , African America singing adopted the call and response which is thought to be the first type of congregation singing.2
To examine various discourses, it is crucial that the idea of discourse and the way in which discourses operate is clear. A discourse is a language, or more precisely, a way of representation and expression. These "ways of talking, thinking, or representing a particular subject or topic produce meaningful knowledge about the subject" (Hall 205). Therefore, the importance of discourses lies in this "meaningful knowledge," which reflects a group’s ideolo...
In his article “The Concept of Discourse Community,” John Swales describes a discourse community as a group of people that “have a broadly agreed set of common goals, contain certain mechanisms of intercommunication among its members, have acquired a specific lexis, and have a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content discoursal expertise” (Swales #). An example of such a discourse community is the legal profession. The legal profession has the common goal of understanding and applying general principles to particular factual situations. In doing so, lawyers use language, concepts, and methods that are unique to their community. In order to become a recognized member of the legal community, a person must graduate from law school and pass the bar exam thereby demonstrating an in depth knowledge concerning all areas of the law and the specialized rules, methods, and jargon used by lawyers to communicate about legal principles.
Music is an important aspect of every society. Music can tell stories, release emotions, build bridges and break down barriers, but above all music is entertaining. There are various forms of music but not many have as rich a history as gospel music. The importance of gospel music has been relevant in American music for more than a century and its importance to society is still relevant to this day (See Appendix A). Gospel music helped slaves escape to freedom and paved the way for other styles of music. It promotes a spirit of hope and provided an outlet to worship God. So how exactly has Gospel music impacted today’s society?
This type of music is a genre of American protestant music, rooted in the religious revivals of the 19th century, which developed in different directions within different races. Gospel music is ecstatic choral singing during church services, with high flying sopranos over instrumentals and the congregation joining. Sippie Wallace is an African American known for her gospel singing and blues (Kerman, 2012).” Gospel music came about during the same time as blues and ragtime. Some of you may not know the term ragtime, like you know blues. Ragtime is similar to jazz, which was a style of piano playing developed by African Americans in the early 1900s. Referring back to gospel, this genre used various instruments. For example, tambourine, organ, piano, drums, bass guitar are widely used in gospel songs and are widely contributed to Christian worship as a whole. In the beginning, gospel was generally directed by African Americans but now the genre has become