Discourse Community: Taylor Swift - Essay Example

Dis Community: Taylor Swift Human beings are social living beings and hence they always for groups and societies thatare cohesively joined together by commonness of behaviors, interest and destiny among other aspects. In this case, the group comprises a discourse community. One such person who has a well established discourse community is Taylor Swift. Taylor Swift is an American song writer and a performing artist who has achieved incredible goals in her music career. She is a well established musician with a huge fan base. She attracts a lot of attention from people of all walks of life. She has been able to establish much following due to her popular music. Through various platforms such as facebook and tweeter, Taylor Swift interacts actively with her fans in a system that appears to be a family. Her fan community comprises of fans that are characterized by a feeling of camaraderie and empathy with others who share a common interest. In this case, the fan community is interested even in minor details of the celebrity of their fandom and hence spend a significant amount of energy and time involving with their interest in most cases as a part of a social network. Accordingly, the article will explain the six characteristics of a discourse community as described by Professor John Swales. Taylor Swift’s fun base has demonstrated each of the six characteristics and hence can be classified as a discourse community. A fan community demonstrates a commonness of goals and objectives. According the Professor John Swales, “discourse community is characterized by the commonness of goal and objectives”(Swales 471). Taylor’s fans are engaged in each and every activity that she engages in. He declares that the community has set and agreed upon a set of common objectives that keeps the community aligned together. The fan community shares the experience the Taylor awesome talent in music. The fan are engaged on a fan page, though having minimal numbers of fans gives the platform to those who have joined share more about Taylor. There are updates on Taylor too such as latest events that Taylor is attending or planning to attend, her trends in fashion through a gallery of photos and some of her music that have remained in the global billboard making her one of the youngest musician to top for close to four years consecutively. In terms of a common goal, Taylor’s fans are mostly upcoming musicians and other lover of Americans music. They engage each others on various platforms where they share opinions regarding various singles and albums released by musicians. The common goal for Taylor’s discourse community is to reap maximum entertainment from different shows that she carries out. A fan community is characterized by effective communication among the members. Professor John Swales declares that a discourse community “has systems of intercommunication among its members” (Swales 471). As such, there should exist a platform with which members raise various issues that relate to the discourse community. Each and every member of the discourse community should engage with others so as to be updated on various engagements as per a given period. Intercommunication is thus highly encouraged and each member is required to get in touch with others all times. Taylor’s fan base meets the characteristic aforementioned. Taylor Swift engages with her fans trough the popular sites such as Taylor Swift Community domain. The domain has numerous articles photos and print work by Taylor outlining her major events such as concerts. For instance, the global tour 1989 never misses to hit headlines and is the main agenda the fan community here also engaged in describing her music career as illustrious. The articles are very interactive giving many and interesting details about Taylor’s daily errands. The website provides a platform whereby the fans keep engaging about Taylor Swift events such as concerts and videos she releases. The site was primarily created to help the fans to have their say and share with the rest of Taylor and these popular events. (Primary) A highly effective feedback mechanism is an essential component of a fan community. According to Professor Swales “a discourse community makes the use of participatory mechanism fundamentally to provide feedback and information”(Swales 472). The significant of the feedback mechanism is to enable members participates in various events though giving feedbacks, comments, remarks and other forms of reactions. The discourse community formed around Taylor meets participatory mechanism characteristic as there exists an elaborate mechanism though which the fans share information and ideas. The most common form of feedback is conversed through Taylor Swift Fan Club Official (Websitetaylorswiftfanclubofficial.webs.com/). The site gives access to many discussions from the fan and other features. Members joining the free community have access to posted topics about Taylor, communicate privately with other members of the Taylor’s community and respond to polls, view images and videos of Taylor and access many other feature posted on the site. This fan community helps the fan share experiences and lover for this pop star musician Taylor. It allows that interactive segment whereby the fan can share the experiences they had about Taylor’s concerted, latest music videos, and trending fashion. A unique genre that brings the fan together is an important aspect of a fan community. In this case, the celebrity’s following should adopt his or her way of life so as to be fully identifiable with the entire community. Professor John Swales adds that “utilizes and hence possesses one or more genres in the communicative furtherance of its aims” (Swales 472). The fan community of Taylor demonstrates this characteristic by interacting based on the topics shared among the community using a wide variety of communication types. The fan community “My Rearview Mirror” like many numerous fan communities provides an opportunity for Taylor’s fan to identify with her music and share life experiences. The phrase “My Rearview Mirror” is used to depict a situation where Taylor’s fan checks on her back to correct and give recommendations on each and every performance. In one of the posts, a female teen shares her romantic experiences and how they have been shaped by Taylor’s romantic lyrics. Just like many of her fans, they view her music as the model how the worlds revolve particularly in the matter of the love, which apparently seem to be like Taylor’s favorite subject. All her music has a tinge of love, romance and somewhat the young kind of love everyone has when growing up. A discourse community also unique vocabularies and tone it uses. In this case, the unique vocabularies are majorly coined from statements made by the celebrty behind the discourse community. The following of a given discourse community emulates the vocabulary and hence it is commonly used in the engagement among the members. In the lonmg run, the discourse community establishes specifics jagons that are commonly used and popular among its members. Swales supports the argumemt by stating that a discourse community “has a specific lexis” (Swales 473). The fan community of Taylor has a certain language among its members that outside members would not understand. These jargons are specific and unique to only the community. Members who do not know the meaning of the words that relate to the topic or individuals are not important to the rest of the community. When they begin to lose their importance in the community, they exit because they are unable to contribute or understand. Members of the community may understand the meaning of the lexis after they are repeated. The existence of specific and unique vocabularies in the fan community of Taylor shows that it fits Swales’ characteristic of a discourse group. Examples of jargons include "bodega" which means “our friends’’ and “baditude,’ which means “bad attitude.” It is also crucial for a fan community to have a threshold level of membership. According to Professor John Swales, a discourse community “has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant constant and discourse expertise”(Swales 473). This implies that it is constantly changing such that new members are always joining while others are leaving. Taylor Swift is a group that keeps Taylor’s fan posted on issue happening in her life. In particular, the administrator added beautiful photos of Taylor Swift on May 15th, the Rock in Rio, Las Vegas performance By indicating that the discourse community has a threshold of membership, it means that the administrator’s of various fan platforms only allow a closed membership entry. Not every person is allowed to join the group. Further, the membership is limited to administrator’s approval and can be rejected or withdrawn without giving any explanations to the members. A good example of the site with closed membership is the Taylor Swift’s Fan Club Official (Websitetaylorswiftfanclubofficial.webs.com/). In this fan page, only members are allowed to write comments and participate in the debate. This is also the case with the facebook page where all “likes” must get approval. Conclusion In conlusion, it is arguably that the fan base formed by Taylor has unique characteristics that are upheld by professor John Swales in his literal work. According to the various sources that the article has exploited, it is very clear that a person has the capability of bringing people together to form a society that is defined by the six characteristics that SWALE has described. Work Cited Taylor Swift. Taylor Swift. 29 May 2015. 29 May 2015 . Taylor Swift Online. Taylor Swift Online. 23 November 2014. 29 May 2015 . ihearttaylor.net, I Love Taylor Swift. 16 May 2015. 29 May 2015 . Taylor Swift Indian Fan Club. Taylor Swift Indian Fan Club. 28 May 2015. 29 May 2015 . Taylorfan.com. Huge Domains. 27 April 2015. 29 May 2015 . Steam Group. Taylor Swift Fan Club. 28 April 2015. 29 May 2015 . The world WarCraft. Taylor Swift Fan Club. 28 May 2015. 29 May 2015 . Taylor Swift Fan Club. Taylor Swift Fan Club: Officail Website. 27 May 2015. 29 May 2015 . Fan Buff. Fan Buff: Taylor Swift Fan Club. 15 May 2015. 29 May 2015 . Taylor Swift Web. (2015, May 27). Taylor Swift Web. Retrieved May 29, 2015, from TaySwift.com: http://www.taylorswiftweb.net/ Read More