Discourse Community

At first, I thought a discourse community is a group of people that share the same conversation about a topic and we, as writers, target this group in our writing. Even after reading the definition in the book, the meaning was not clear enough. Reading plenty of examples helped me have a better grasp on the meaning and implement it in my writing.
Discourse community is a group of people who use the same language and share the understanding of the special expressions of this language. The fans of a TV show can be an example of a discourse community. This group of fans shares the jokes, expressions, and ideas related to that TV show. Discourse community can be a physical or virtual community, but in order to any new person to join the community, he/she needs to understand and share the language, rules, and ideas of the community to fit.
With the technological advances we are witnessing, discourse community can stretch over the Internet to reach more members. Members of a discourse community can interact through new methods such as text messaging, e-mails, blogging, and conversation forums. Even within these communities, some terms might be interpreted differently depending on the community itself.