Tessa Wright

Prof. Melton
ENGL 5
24 February 2016
Dialectical Journal 6: Schmidt
Schmidt, Gary D. and William J. Vande Kopple. Communities of Discourse: The Rhetoric of
Disciplines. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1993. Print.
Our basic claim in this book is that, as you survey the various academic programs available to
you , what you are seeing are the products of many different discourse communities at work. (1)
The thing that Schmidt spends 3 pages talking about is discourse communities. What
exactly is a discourse community? Its a group of people who share ways to claim, organize,
communicate, and evaluate meanings. (1) After my first time reading this, this definition
seemed nebulous. Does this mean that the group of people all share the same perspective on
meanings? It seems like a homogenous group of people discussing the same meanings wouldnt
be very riveting. As he continued, it seemed like maybe discourse communities (DCs) are
different colleges: college of arts and letter, college of engineering, etc. But then I started to think
that perhaps I was thinking of DCs too literally. Maybe the members of the community dont
have to know each other but just share similar beliefs. Could Christianity be a DC? By the
middle of page 3, I had a better definition. I have concluded that according to Schmidt, a DC is a
group of people who share a similar passion, and can engage in discourse to exercise that
passion.
Once I made that realization, it was easier to see why he began the article with a warm
acknowledgement to his audience of undeclared college students. His point seems to be that if
these students look for various communities and invest some time into them, they may ignite
their passion in one community, and then will be able to easily choose a major that encompasses
that discourse community.
In my own continuous struggle to choose a major, I was drawn in by the opening
paragraphs. I know the anxiety, the pressure, the uncertainty of not knowing my major. Because I
didnt understand precisely what a DC was, there was a disconnect for me between the opening
paragraphs and the rest of the chapter. However, after reflection, I understand the importance of
pursuing discourse communities. Discourse communities that I am interested in are studies on
body image and gothic literature. If these are my interests then degrees in either psychology or
english would be the most fitting for me. Different majors and paths of study are collections of
communities of people who are passionate about researching and discussing different areas
within that subject.