Swales article Link:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1scUQ9fny8FJH9CJnwmzjJD73QtqNJLzk/view?usp=sharing

After reading the Swales article, the PowerPoint on Discourse Communities and "Business Management as a Discourse Community,"identify a business discourse community (DC) that you are a part.

Discuss how your selected DC fits into the 8 criteria Swales describes.

Is it a local, focal, or folocal DC?

Why are you categorizing it as such?

Sample Response:

Since I am going to start a new job in the next week, I'm going to relate one of my old jobs to Swales' article. In particular, I used to work in retail (selling video games) at a mall near to where I live.

1.A DC has a broadly agreed set of goals:

The company I worked for had an overall set of goals centered around a "Circle of Life" which included getting reservations, selling new items, taking items in trade, and then selling pre-owned items. The overall idea was to have transactions with customers throughout the life of the game, from before it is release (reservations), to when they've traded it back to the store which can then sell it to someone else (pre-owned sales). Another overall goal was to provide good customer service, although this was largely communicated by our store manager more so than the upper management.

2.A DC has mechanisms of intercommunication among its members:

As a store, we were able to communicate with each other through phone, email, or text primarily. Of course, our most common form of communication was in-person. The other forms of communication were largely used for scheduling purposes.

3.A DC uses its participatory mechanisms to provide information and feedback:

Throughout the day, our progress towards "Circle of Life" goals was tracked through each transaction we handled. At the end of the month, each employee's number (percentages of each category, including things like reservations and warranties) was tallied up. This gave each of us areas to work on and improve for the following period.

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

For scheduling, a bi-weekly spreadsheet was displayed in the backroom. If there were particular days in the future we were unavailable to work, we were instructed to leave notes / post-it notes in the backroom as well for the manager to handle. For meetings, the genre used to schedule was a mass-email from the district manager. Meetings themselves were conducted through a business-centric video-conference software loaded onto a tablet.

5.In addition to owning genres, it has acquired some specific lexis:

Most of the lexis used at my job involved inventory management. For example, each type of video game system was given a unique number, new games for that system had a different number, used had another, and so on. Other items such as accessories, toys, or phones also had their own category numbers given. When it came time to keep track of the inventory, we had "Category Counts" where we would have to ring up each item in an individual category. Regarding sales, we often referred to our progress in percentages. For example, if I was at 25% for replacement plans for the day, it meant on of my transactions, I was able to sell a warranty to the customer.

6.A DC has a threshold of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discoursal expertise:

There was definitely a hierarchy at the company I worked at. At the bottom were "G.A.s," or guest advisers, who were entry level hires. Then were "S.G.A.s," or senior guest advisers, who had keys to the store and were able to open / close on their own. After that were assistant manager, manager, district manager, regional manager, and so on up to the top of the company. For the most part, G.A.s came and went on a regular basis, whereas at the S.G.A. level and higher employees would stay for longer periods of time and build up a knowledge base of how to run the store. At the assistant manager level and higher it was relatively rare for employees to quit.

7.A DC develops a sense of "silential relations":

For most day to day operations, there was definitely a sense of "silential relations." For example, straightening out shelves or organizing inventory was straightforward. Taking care of incoming shipment and outgoing deliveries was also fairly easy and didn't require much verbal communication. Even when it came to dealing with customers, very little really had to be said, and more often than not, we would take turns dealing with customers when business was slow.

8.A DC develops horizons of expectation:

Having worked at this store for a period of about 3 years, there was certainly a "horizon of expectation" regarding the everyday work. Being that it was retail, what one could expect did vary throughout the year, generally getting more hectic towards the end of the year (staring late October). It was a consensus among the employees at my store that taking in trades was generally a pain, you were bound to have all sorts of customers (great or perhaps not so great), and that inventory would generally show up at the most inconvenient time. On the other hand, at the times when more than one employee was in the store, things did tend to go quite smoothly, so long as everyone stayed busy while on-shift.

Considering that the store I worked for was part of a corporation, I would categorize it as being "folocal." We had certain ways of doing things at our store, and ways of communication that may not have been necessarily in line witheveryother store in the company, but at the same time still worked towards goals that the company had for everyone. Additionally, having talked to a number of other people who worked at this company, we still had quite a few shared experiences in the work and types of challenges we faced performing our jobs.

Kindly answer in detail