Swales:
After finding Café Mom as a group to analyze, we are analyzing this social network referring to John Swales article: The Concept of Discourse Community and we will relate five of his main six characteristics to Café Mom with an exception to “lexis” because we don’t see it applied in this community Discourse. The first element that Swales talks about is that every group must have an aim that they try to approach (the goal of the discourse), and we see that goal that Café Mom is seeking is that they want all mothers to share their own experience within this community and help each other to solve problems and kind of benefit the new mothers that are new to motherhood as well as any other mother. Mainly, experienced mothers help other mothers how to deal with their children and how to cope with their problems, how to take care of the household and generally, how to better her family. For example, a mother might be experienced with a type of problems with her children and she might be an expert in coping with this kind of issues, she can write about how to deal with that particular type of problems on Café Mom so other mothers can get benefits from what she wrote and apply it with their children. Relating the community to the second characteristic of Swales, which is every group must have a mean to communicate through, we see the members of this discourse have the website as a place to gather on and to communicate through; also, they have a page on the website that says “groups and conversations” where they can have their own chat and conversations and share their photos. Also, they can plan to hang out and meet in person.
We can see the third characteristic that Swales addresses, participation, in this Discourse as the mothers participate to help each other by writing on the website and reading blogs and watching videos that is shared by other mothers of the group members or the admin of the website. For example, a mother shared her experience with her child and his fear of the dentist then she gives tips other mothers in how to make your child not afraid of doctors. The fourth characteristic, the language and the text they use is a written/read language because all the text is written on the website. They only can use the spoken language if they hang out and meet or upload videos.
In this discourse, we couldn’t find the fifth element of Swales which is lexis, maybe because there are a lot of mothers that explore the website without getting memberships .We can see the sixth characteristic in Café Mom as they leave their knowledge and experience on the website whether they’re still involved or not. New members can explore whatever is written by other members by reading their blogs and articles and gain the experience. Posts and blogs on Cage Mom last for long time that other members can explore whenever they want. Also, it will be easy to new members to find information that are posted and shared by old members.
By: Abdulelah Bajbair
We can see the third characteristic that Swales addresses, participation, in this Discourse as the mothers participate to help each other by writing on the website and reading blogs and watching videos that is shared by other mothers of the group members or the admin of the website. For example, a mother shared her experience with her child and his fear of the dentist then she gives tips other mothers in how to make your child not afraid of doctors. The fourth characteristic, the language and the text they use is a written/read language because all the text is written on the website. They only can use the spoken language if they hang out and meet or upload videos.
In this discourse, we couldn’t find the fifth element of Swales which is lexis, maybe because there are a lot of mothers that explore the website without getting memberships .We can see the sixth characteristic in Café Mom as they leave their knowledge and experience on the website whether they’re still involved or not. New members can explore whatever is written by other members by reading their blogs and articles and gain the experience. Posts and blogs on Cage Mom last for long time that other members can explore whenever they want. Also, it will be easy to new members to find information that are posted and shared by old members.
By: Abdulelah Bajbair