Reflections on the concept of discourse community

This article reflects upon my thirty-year intermittent involvement with the concept of discourse community. It opens with a personal history of that involvement, focusing on a study of the communities in a single, small university building. It then moves to the way the concept has become co-opted by those who teach university-level writing in the United States. Then, three types of discourse community are introduced: local, focal, and “folocal”, this last having characteristics of the first two. Active academics are typically members of “folocal” communities, as they attempt to balance the demands of their local situation (teaching, administration) and the demands of active scholarship (presenting, publishing). In the second half of the paper, the original criteria as given in Genre Analysis (1990) are modified, extended, and brought more up to date, followed by some concluding observations.