Running head: DISCOURSE COMMUNITY 1

Discourse Community Ethnography

Abstract

There is no abstract for this paper.

Discourse Community Ethnography

Discourse communities is everywhere around us, one instance could be school, classes

are discourse communities, sport teams, and study groups. For example, all these communities

share the same common goals, in their respective area.

Swales recognized the existence of specialized communities or groups within society.

But these discourse communities, which differ to speech communities, had never been defined.

Until it is understood how his definition works, there will be no difference between communities,

which would make the RWS 1301 class no different than a study group with your classmates.

Because of both groups have the same objectives which is studying content covered in class, but

also have differences such as the language, body language, and times. Applying Swales’s

characteristics to the RWS 1301 proves that it is a discourse community. A discourse community

allows people to learn about certain topic, helps you on finding people with the same interest as

you, and helps you to get knowledge from people who are prepared to teach and explain the best

way possible.

Literature Review

Writing has a pre-determined characteristic (some are: define topic, revise, research, pre-

determine questions) that you need to follow to write a good essay, research paper or whatever

assignment you need to do. But, has no order to follow these characteristics, you can start and try

to follow these characteristics, but you are going to fail at some point, because writing is a hard

process, you need to revise your work every time you write something, to make a better claim, to

look for mistakes, error on mechanics, the idea is not what you meant it, or other corrections you

want to make. At the end is your paper and you have to be confident on your work.
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Erik Borg (2004), uses an example of a group of people who recognizes the language of

English to differentiate from particular languages, these people read literature readings

to conceive the text, they also share their readings to understand it better. They share possible

ways to read the text and they find the best way to comprehend it more efficiently and faster. We

can say that this people are a discourse community concurring to Borg, because in this course

uses the characteristics Swales give us previously to identify a discourse community. For

example, they share a common goal, they read to understand the language. They

intercommunicate, share their opinions to find different ways to understand it. They use

feedback, likewise the previous point, they answer to each other finding better ways. They use

books as genre, and artifacts they probably use that we do not. They use a lexis that probably

don’t understand like literature. And last, they are a group of people with suitable degree of

relevant content. But do we really stay just in one discourse community?

Based on Gee’s article, he argues that nobody is a fully member of a single discourse,

they get influenced by other discourses that we are also involved in. A discourse are ways of

being in the world. They are forms of life which integrate acts, beliefs. Is also a sort of identity

key which complete person’s attitudes. The discourse defines people because there is so

much things to learn every day, also people are connected in some way. According to

Gee, discourse is not bodies of knowledge like physics. Therefore, you can learn or teach

someone a body of language.

In the other hand, Porter (2017) argue that, people need to be original. This is a hard part,

because humans are not original by nature. Humans copy and modify to create, to innovate, but

innovations come from coping other’s idea. People are imperfect by nature, not even close to

perfection, nobody knows everything in this

world, everybody shares information with others, learn from the people

around you! Society needs to search information to get knowledge. What

Porter dispute that giving credit to the people that helped you to get the knowledge is a way to let

the people know who the mentor of your research was. Porter also says that getting the idea of

the article and re-word it with your own words and give credit to greater thinkers that

investigated for you (page number). Writers always need to stand in shoulders of giants. In order

to increase your knowledge and to give relevant information of a topic.

Methods

Research methods used for this project included interviews, surveys and

observations. The information of this research paper was collected through interviews of

secondary sources as Swales (1990), Porter (2004), Gee (?), and Borg (2017). They provided

knowledge to write this research also included surveys to provide examples and give the practice

to memorize points of this topic, for example, Swale’s characteristics. The last method used to do

this research paper was observation. Looking for pictures and finding correlations based on

Swales, Borg, Porter, articles and thoughts.

Discussion

In This classroom shared common goals

Genre are examples of unique tools used in this discourse community, notes specifically

for RWS and others. The use of specialized vocabulary is important because the vocabulary is

different, more professional on writing and rhetoric

meanings are applied. Hierarchy is used to maintain control of the situations of the

discourse. The objective of graduating from college, and also, we share the common goal of
DISCOURSE COMMUNITY 6

passing the class. Intercommunication -We communicate to each other to share points of view

and work together to turn in better work.

According to Swales (1990), this class is a discourse community because we share

common goals. For example, we have the goal of passing this class. In this class we practice

intercommunication. We communicate in the classroom to share different points of views,

opinions or prospectives of various questions.

One example about intercommunication were when the professor asked questions about

the content covered in class.

Also, feedback is needed to make this discourse community work, because

communication is a very important factor when you are in a community, because you share

opinions to each other and we learn together.

A discourse community has to be prepared to learn or to try to achieve the goal you have

in the course, an example can be the Power Point you use to teach, books or other materials you

use in order to achieve the goal.

Specialized vocabulary is needed because we use words with too many

different meanings, but we use specific meanings for the moment or the day. We

always must have a hierarchy in order to maintain the order in the discourse community. In this

discourse have a hierarchy of Students, regular students, then followed by scholars, and then the

professor. All the characteristics that Swales shared to us is to give us an idea of how a discourse

community is described.

Conclusion
The RWS 1301 class is a discourse community, as defined by Swales’s characteristics.

But not only the class, but also many other groups out of school, that share same objectives and

work together to accomplish the goal marked. Differing significantly from speech communities,
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especially by the existence of common public goals. But in the same way discourse communities

are different for the simple reason of following different languages but keeping the same base.

This research provides the opportunity to examine other groups as to their contributions to

society. Swale’s characteristics can be a valuable tool for examining how communication works

within groups.
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References
Borg, E. (2003). Discourse community. ELT Journal, 57(4), 398-400.

Gee, J. (1989), Literacy, Discourse, and Linguistic: Introduction. Journal of Education, vol. 171,

no. 1, p. 5-17.

Porter, J. E. (1986), Intertextuality and the Discourse Community. Rhetoric Review, vol 5, no. 1,

Autumn p. 34-47

What is a discourse community?: ENC1102-13Fall 0027. (2018). Retrieved from

https://webcourses.ucf.edu/courses/984277/pages/what-is-a-discourse-community.