RUNNING HEAD: THE POTTERMORE DISCOURSE COMMUNITY 1

The Pottermore Discourse Community

Delainey D. Thurman
University of Texas at El Paso
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Introduction
According to the definition from the Oxford Dictionary, a discourse community is; A

group of people sharing a common and distinct mode of communication or discourse,

especially within a particular domain of intellectual or social activity. This means, in

simpler terms, that a group of people who like or participate in the same thing or idea,

and get together and talk about said thing, making a community. The discourse

community I chose to analyze, is one that is particularly popular, a website called

Pottermore. I chose this online community to analyze, not only because I am a huge fan

of Harry Potter, but because it is a great example of what a discourse community is.

There is a general idea/thing, in this case Harry Potter, that the online community

members on Pottermore discuss and further analyze/discover within the website. There is

more than one idea of what a discourse community should entail, however, and I will be

discussing these different ideas within this paper. For example, Swales definition of a

discourse community includes six different things, and these will be discussed and

contrasted against the ideas of James Porter, about what a discourse community should

be. I will also be analyzing just how good of a discourse community Pottermore is, by

comparing and contrasting it against the ideas of the people aforementioned. Both of the

ideas about discourse communities are correct in their own way, and neither is wrong, but

it is good to compare them and see just how a regular community lines up against the

ideas of professors and theorists, to see if it is in fact a legitimate discourse community.

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Discussion

John Swales ideas, as I mentioned above, include six key elements, in order:

1. A discourse community has a broadly agreed set of common public goals.

This is to say that, to expand on the list above, a discourse community has a general

common goal. All the members are generally there for the same reason, and they all

seem to be aiming for the same end game. For example, members of a baseball team

generally have one goal; win the game.

2. A discourse community has mechanisms of intercommunication among its

members.

If you are a part of a group, you will have some form of communication with the other

members, because obviously, in order to discuss and participate in the community,

you would need to speak to other members about the ideas youre sharing. For

example, members of a workplace will use walkie-talkies to communicate about the

stores sales, customers, and sale updates, which is all centered around the store.

3. A discourse community uses its participatory mechanisms primarily to provide

information and feedback.

The discourse community is communicated to in some way, be it banners posted on

the website, flyers handed out to the members, a playbook tacked up on the wall in the

locker room, these are all ways that the community is communicating. The members

of the community participate in it by reading these banners, emails, magazines, et

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cetera. If you dont read the latest news posted on the website, or do not open the

letter from the organization, you are not participating in the community.

4. A discourse community utilizes and hence possesses one or more genres in the

communicative furtherance of its aims.

This one is easily explained by an example; if you are a part of the Doctor Who fan

club, Whovians, if you will, you would not jump on the forum and start talking about

The Simpsons, would you? No. And this is because the community generally has an

unspoken rule(s) about things that shouldnt have to be explained, like not speaking

about the Teletubbies in the groupchat for Sesame Street.

5. In addition to owning genres, a discourse community has acquired some specific

lexis.

In the simplest terms, a lexis is sort of like a secret language within the community.

For example, some phrases members of a I Love Abbreviating Club might use the

acronyms to discuss things like lol or gtg. The people within the community

know what these phrases mean, and members outside of the community may not.

6. A discourse community has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree

of relevant content and discoursal expertise.

This one speaks for itself; Members who know more, are higher up on the pyramid of

superiority, and the less a member knows, the lower they are on the food chain.
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The next idea I will discuss, is by James Porter, and his is a looser definition of

discourse community. With Porter's ideas, he says that a discourse community has a

more relaxed definition, with less rules attached to the title. Rather than having a set

list of rules about what should and shouldnt be, there is more like loose suggestions

about what should be, but maybe isnt, a discourse community. There are still a few

rules that must apply to any discourse community in order to keep it as an actual

community, such as; conversations and input about the subject the discourse

community is about, and little else besides that. There is also a general public goal for

the discourse community in both ideas, which is stated in the rules of both Porter and

Swales. The further aim, public goals, and common interest ideas are shared

throughout both peoples ideas, again. Which of course should be obvious because the

discourse communities are founded for people who share the same ideas, which

therefore means they would generally have the same ideas about the same kinds of

future projects and goals for their groups.

Pottermore, in comparison to these definitions, is easy to analyze. The public goal,

which is common in both of Swales and Porters ideas, of Pottermore is to get the fans

of J.K. Rowling's works to experience more of that world she created, and kind of

experience and enter it in their own way, and to talk to and meet people who also like

her works. The intercommunication in Pottermore happens mostly through posts on

the website from J.K. Rowling herself, and there is communication between the

houses, that members are sorted into, which is comprised of the members of the
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community. When it comes to the information and feedback of the community, J.K.

Rowling's posts on her website allows the members of the discourse community, on

Pottermore, to communicate back with her, and give her input on her works, and

suggest things to add to the website that would improve it. She also uses her platform

at the head of this website by encouraging the members to contribute to the charities

she has donated to, or helping out certain group of people that she suggests they do.

Pottermore is not a charity, and nor is it a donation place, but J.K. Rowling uses her

audience, her fans, to help out other people, which is one of the central themes of

Harry Potter, her work, and a generally unspoken public goal of the website. The way

that she communicates, that I mentioned above, are posts on the website that all

members can see, and there are also emails available, if the members decide to sign

up for them, which is participating in the culture. Pottermore does not have a lexis,

unless you count the spells as a language, because Harry Potter is all in English and

there is no hidden code names for anything. Finally, unless the members specifically

ask each other how many of the books theyve read, or how many of the movies

theyve watched, no one knows how much any of the other members know. The only

person who is undoubtedly above everyone else is J.K. Rowling herself, and this goes

without saying because the website exists because of her, and is centered around her

works.

In conclusion, Pottermore is a discourse community, because it almost entirely

lines up with the definitions of Porter and Swales, without meeting either of them
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100%. While analyzing the Pottermore community, which I myself have already been

a part of for a few years, I learned a lot about what the community has to offer, and

how it is structured within its core. For example, I did not know that Pottermore had

intercommunication between its members, within their houses, or with J.K. Rowling

herself. After fully analyzing Pottermore, however, and contrasting against the

definitions of what a discourse community is widely known as, and discovering that

every community has its own way of being a community.

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References

Swales, John. The Concept of Discourse Community. Genre Analysis:

English in Academic and Research Settings. Boston: Cambridge UP, 1990. 21-

32. Print.

Rowling, J.K. (2012). Writing by J.K. Rowling. Retrieved October 16, 2017,

from https://www.pottermore.com/writing-by-jk-rowling

Porter, James E. Rhetoric Review, Vol. 5, No. 1. (Autumn, 1986), pp. 34-47