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Chase Romanillos
Professor Stuart Dees
ENC 1102
28 January 2015
A discourse community, as defined by researcher John Swales, is a community of
individuals who share common goals, interests, and ideas. More specifically, Swales identified
six characteristics that these discourse communities share: common goals, genres, a shared lexis,
varying levels of member expertise, participatory mechanisms, and methods of communication. I
have chosen to analyze the video-gaming community and identify how it meets the
characteristics set forth by Swales. Due to the broad nature of the general gaming community, I
will focus on a specific game franchise’s fan base: Creative Assembly’s Total War series.
In 2000, the game developer Creative Assembly released the first game in the series:
Shogun Total War. Like the rest of the series, the gameplay is centered on a combination of turnbased campaigns and real-time strategy battles. The historical premise has varied between titles
and spanned eras from feudal Japan, the Roman Empire, medieval Europe, and the age of
colonialism. Over time the series has gained popularity and as a result a sizeable community of
fans has formed.
While the Total War community has no officially stated goal due to its nature as a
community of fans, the general consensus between members is to support and share an
appreciation for the games while also providing feedback to the developers on the quality of their
releases. After browsing several forums, I’ve observed that the intention of many posts and
discussions have always revolved around either connecting with other players through questions
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and discussion about aspects of the game (whether the subject is about a user’s favorite faction or
help with in-game strategies) or directing feedback towards the developers about the state of
their games (be it praise or criticism). Ultimately, the goals of the community appear to be
generally known and, although implied, are still understood.
The use of genres in discourse communities is defined by Swales as a way of furthering
the community’s aims. The Total War community certainly provides numerous genres to fulfill
this purpose: popular online forums such as Total War Center allow members to discuss the
various issues within the community while also getting updates and information from other
users, Creative Assembly’s social networking pages are another direct source of information
about the series, and even resources such as Total War wikis and game manuals are there for
community members. The use of these genres also appear to go hand in hand with Swales’
criteria that requires a discourse community to have participatory mechanisms and methods of
communication between members. Much like the menu example from Tony Mirabelli’s article
“Learning to Serve: The Language and Literacy of Food Service Workers” where restaurant staff
use the menu to communicate with customers and achieve their goal of selling food, Creative
Assembly often utilizes the community’s genres to communicate with and obtain feedback from
their fan base. The official Total War forums on Total War Center and Steam allow players from
anywhere in the world to participate in discussions and inject their own ideas, assistance, or
opinions into conversations. This close interaction between community members allows for
developers and players alike to have a consistent flow of information between them and achieve
the group’s goals.
Like all other discourse communities, there does indeed exist a shared lexis within the
Total War community. Gamers in general already have a wide range of common slang terms.
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While language like “noob”, “OP”, “AFK” are widespread across various gaming communities,
Total War also has its own specific lexical terms. Acronyms like “M2TW”, “CA” or “RTW”
may not be understood by non-members, but to the community they are common and mean
“Medieval 2 Total War”, “Creative Assembly”, and “Rome Total War”. The use of this lexis is
generally to make communication easier and does not necessarily include only acronyms.
The final characteristic of a discourse community is varying levels of discoursal expertise
amongst members. This is common in the Total War community since it is based around a game
that some players may have more skill at playing than others. More officially, forums tend to
appoint more experienced member of the community to thread moderator positions and Creative
Assembly’s game developers themselves take active roles, often explaining game mechanics,
features, etc.
Seeing that each of the qualifications for Swales’ definition of a discourse community are
met, the Total War community can be seen as a discourse community. Even so, one could look
closer into the community and find that many groups exist within it. “Modding” is a practice in
the community where users modify the game files to create customized aspects (new soldier
units, custom maps, etc.) and it has grown in popularity, especially due to Creative Assembly’s
allowance and encouragement, creating a new sub-group of modders. Even further, fans of
particular titles can even be seen as sub-communities. Regardless, the whole Total War fan base
as a whole meets Swales’ criteria and can be classified as a discourse community itself.
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Works Cited
Mirabelli, Tony. “Learning to Serve: The Language and Literacy of Food Service Workers.”
Writing About Writing: A College Reader. 2nd ed. Ed. Elizabeth Wardle, Doug Downs.
Boston/New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2011. E-Pages. Web.
Swales, John. “The Concept of Discourse Community.” Writing About Writing: A College
Reader. 2nd ed. Ed. Elizabeth Wardle, Doug Downs. Boston/New York: Bedford/St.
Martin’s, 2011. 215-229. Print.