Reflection: Swales and Gee

In Literacy, Discourse, and Linguistics: Introduction, James Paul Gee defines discourses in two different forms, dominant and non-dominant discourses. Dominant discourses are secondary discourses that at some point bring along the acquisition of “prizes”. While non-dominant discourses are discourses that bring along “solidarity” with a certain social network or group. When looked at as a discourse community, the League of Legends club constitutes a dominant discourse, for which recognition and victories serve as the “prizes.”

The primary difference between Gee and Swales’ argument is that Gee argues strongly that one cannot partially embrace or belong to a discourse community; they are either full-fledged members of the community or not a part of the community at all. From what I have learned about discourse communities so far in this course, as well as what I have learned about the League of Legends club, I do not agree with this. As there can be members of a discourse communities that are simply less involved in the community.

The way in which the League of Legend club operates is a direct representation of a discourse community that consists almost entirely of ‘partial members’ or members who are not full-fledged, in that they come to every meeting and are involved in every aspects of the club existence. When we interviewed the President and Vice President of the League of Legends club, we found out that the club has over two hundred members. But upon examining the room where the meeting was held, there were naught but thirty people in the room, yet the President still considered two hundred people to be part of the discourse community. This fact shows that members of the community can be partially involved members that come to meetings whenever they have time, simply to play the game with their friends. They need not be officers that come to every meeting to be considered members of the League of Legends discourse community.