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Running Head: Analyzing Online Communities 1

This document analyzes the League of Legends online gaming community using John Swales' six characteristics of a discourse community. The author observes the League of Legends forums to see how players communicate and help each other, meeting all six of Swales' characteristics. This shows that the League of Legends community is a true discourse community. The author concludes that the community is very supportive and helpful due to its ability to meet Swales' framework, making it one of the largest communities in the world.

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94 views

Running Head: Analyzing Online Communities 1

This document analyzes the League of Legends online gaming community using John Swales' six characteristics of a discourse community. The author observes the League of Legends forums to see how players communicate and help each other, meeting all six of Swales' characteristics. This shows that the League of Legends community is a true discourse community. The author concludes that the community is very supportive and helpful due to its ability to meet Swales' framework, making it one of the largest communities in the world.

Uploaded by

api-385819822
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Running Head: ANALYZING ONLINE COMMUNITIES 1

Analyzing an Online Community.

Alexis Avila Hernandez

University of Texas at El Paso


ANALYZING ONLINE COMMUNITIES 2

Analyzing an Online Community.

A discourse community is the first of the two frames for analyzing how people use

communication in order to accomplish work together. The following essay will focus in the

League of Legends community (an online game community). The main purpose of choosing

this community is to analyze them and see how all players cooperate each others using

Swales six characteristics to complement the community, because of the use of the six

characteristics will make them a true community according with Swales.

Literature review.

Summarizing The Concept of Discourse Community by John Swales, he introduces

the concept of a discourse community and defining it with his six characteristics that are; the

main public goal, the mechanisms of communications of the people inside the communitys

members, using the mechanisms primarily to provide valuable information or a feedback,

using their own utilities, if they use Lexis and if the specific community has a threshold level

of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discoursal experience. All the

points mentioned before defining the six Swales characteristics that define a discourse

community. This relates with the League of Legends community because this online

community accomplishes with the six Swales characteristics. For example, the main goal of

the LoL community is to help with each others problems and promote fair gaming, besides

winning their games with teamwork and communication. They use their own game platform

in order to communicate their problems and solute with really amiable responses making the

game fair a reality.

Methods

I personally analyzed the platform where they communicate inside the game, because,

personally, I play this game a lot and usually responded to others opinions and problems

with the game and that made me win some insight inside the community. The most used
ANALYZING ONLINE COMMUNITIES 3

source it is the League of Legends platform where you can find everything about the game

and people can find a lot of active users that may help others if they need it. As the main

source of the game that active users use is the League of Legends website in order to

communicate to other players mainly by texts, messages, inside the game comments, and in

some little cases it may happen in social networks. A simple question or trouble can bring up

to 20 users helping with many solutions and tests that actually help the ( nesecitado ). I

analyzed many of the main problems that players had and also analyzed their responses,

everything in the same webpage, and most of them were clearly and fair, following the main

goal of the community true, following Swales.

Discussion

I analyzed many of the main problems that players had and also analyzed their

responses, everything in the same webpage, and most of them were clearly and fair,

following the main goal of the community true. The second point of Swales is the

mechanisms that they use to communicate. For example, as said before, they main ways to

communicate is the game website where they communicate each others by texts, comments,

images, and in some cases social media. The third point is the information and feedback, in

this online community, it is almost a hundred percent sure that you are going to get a

response for someone very amiable. For fourth point there is genres to further aims, this is

mainly about that the online community studies genre study where in the LoL community

does not seem to be a lot. In fifth point in lexis, lexis is really important in this group because

in the game exists a lot of acronyms that defines specific concepts and objects inside the

game, and if someone does not know the specific words that people usually uses, he or she

becomes some kind of useless to the discussion. Finally there is level of expertise, this one

complements this online community because there are many different types of groups inside

the game, some more important than others like the developers that knows everything about
ANALYZING ONLINE COMMUNITIES 4

the game, then is the expert players, and finally is the new players, that they are the most

likely to do questions because of their little knowledge of the game.

Conclusion

What you can learn about all this research and about the League of Legends online

community is that it is a really solid group where your comment can be really useful for

others and others really care about their public goal. The communication is really natural here,

you can talk to anyone at any time because the LoL community is world-wide, and you will

never get alone in a discussion. To conclude, this is a real online community because follows

and accomplishes perfectly all six Swales characteristics, making it very solid as said before

and it may be one of the biggest communities in the word thanks of its more than 100 million

players around the globe.


ANALYZING ONLINE COMMUNITIES 5

References

Kain, D., Wardle, E. (2015). Activity Theory: An Introduction for the Writing classroom. In E

Wardle & D Downs (Eds.), Writing about writing: A college reader (p. 277). Boston,

MA: Bedford/St. Martinss.

Forums. (n.d). Retrieved October 13, 2017, From

http://forums.na.leagueoflegends.com/board/
ANALYZING ONLINE COMMUNITIES 6
ANALYZING ONLINE COMMUNITIES 7

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