Discourse Communities

Swales’ (1990) Delineation of Discourse Communities in Practice

For many years scholars have directed their efforts to identify the key features that define a discourse community as such.  It should come as no surprise that it was not until 1990 that those features became clearly delimited, thanks to Swales’ (1990) research in this field.  According to Swales (1990), there are six key characteristics that are necessary to identify a group of individuals as a discourse community.  The purpose of this paper is to examine four prescribed articles under the light of Swales’ theory as regards discourse community requirements.

As a first requirement, Swales (1990) postulates that, whether tacitly or explicitly, a discourse community pursues a set of common goals which are public.  In accord with this concept, Kelly-Kleese (2004) contends that the community college should be considered a discourse community in its own right because ¨Its members have, over time, developed a common discourse that involves shared knowledge, common purposes, common relationships, and similar attitudes and values¨ (p. 2).

Another important feature of discourse communities specified by Swales (1990) is that the group should have clear mechanisms of participation among its members with the aim of providing information and feedback.  In their study of cohort-based teacher graduate programs, Wenzlaff and Wieseman (2004) highlight the importance of group work to attain professional teacher development.  Furthermore, these authors support Soltis’  notion that learning and scholarship are the result of the interactions among the members of a group.  ¨It is important to note that this learning is not a unidirectional phenomenon.  The community, too, changes through the ideas and ways of thinking that its new members bring to the discourse.¨ (Putnam & Borko, 2000; as cited in Wenzlaff and Wieseman, 2004, p. 1).  This is why Wenzlaff and Wieseman (2004) stress the importance of a collaborative culture as a vital element of a discourse community. 

The fourth prerequisite points out the use of a specific genre among the members of

a given community.  It is to be noted that such members display a common communicative competence by developing their own genre and style.  Kelly-Kleese’s (2004) work intersects with Swales’ (1990) around this idea when she observes that ¨In order to have their work deemed worthy, community college faculty and administrators must understand the convention of writing and the standards by which their work will be judged¨ (p. 9).

            The development and use of highly specialized terminology constitutes the fifth

condition.  This concept is acknowledged by Kelly-Kleese (2001) when she describes the extent to which the community college adopts the specialized terminology (including abbreviations and acronyms) developed by the university discourse community.

            Swales (1990) discerns a high level of expertise as the sixth characteristic of a discourse community.  Its members redefine language and negotiate meanings and purposes. 

As noted by Kelly-Kleese (2001), ¨The power to name ¨what is¨ comes also from

one’s level of prestige  within the community¨ (p. 3).  Such prestige within the discourse

community results from the legitimation process that occurs by which ¨only those

qualified by some socially institutionalized agency may engage in such discourse and

be taken seriously¨ (Zito, 1984; as cited in Kelly-Kleese, 2001, p. 3).

In conclusion, the authors of the four articles were able to establish that the different groups they studied were actual discourse communities and it was Swales’ (1990) basic criteria which served as grounds for identifying them. 

References

Hoffman-Kipp, P.,  Artiles, A.J., & Lopez Torres, L. (2003).  Beyond Reflection: teacher learning as praxis.  Theory into Practice.  Retrieved October 2007, from http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0NQM/is_3_42/ai_108442653

Kelly-Kleese, C. (2001).  Editor’s Choice: An Open Memo to Community Collage Faculty and Administrators.  Community College Review.  Retrieved October 2007, from http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0HCZ/is_1_29/ai_77481463

Kelly-Kleese, C. (2004).  UCLA community collage review: community collage scholarship and discourse.  Community College Review.  Retrieved October 2007, from http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0HCZ/is_1_32/ai_n6361541

Swales, J. M. (1990).  Genre análisis: English in academia and research settings.  Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Wenzlaff, T. L., & Wieseman, K. C. (2004).  Teachers need teachers to grow.  Teacher Education Quarterly.  Retrieved October 2007, from http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3960/is_200404/ai_n9349405

Swales’ (1990) Delineation of Discourse Communities in Practice
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