ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the concept of discourse community to situate it within a discussion concerning English for Business Purposes (EBP) and its educational implications in the rapidly changing world of today. In the field of business, the members of a given community often spend their professional lives in different parts of the world. In the case of business people, they also usually work in different sectors of society. How can a professional world with such multilayered and complicated interconnections among individuals be given the label of a “community”? What educational implications can we draw from trying to conceptualize their community? This chapter first explores the concept in the field of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) and some related fields such as rhetoric, sociolinguistics, and systemic-functional linguistics. Next, this chapter examines a recent definition proposed by Vijay Bhatia and analyses the actual uses of the concept in the literature of EBP. Finally, a conceptualization of an international discourse community from a viewpoint of quality participation is proposed.
