RUNNING HEAD: DISCOURSE COMMUNITY ETHNOGRAPHY 1

Discourse Community Ethnography

Lageorgia Holmes
University of Texas at El Paso


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Abstract
In my English class we conducted a study involving discourse communities that were
related to our future career. In this study we chose classes or businesses that were related to
our career and we did a 2 hour observation on them to consider how do they communicate and
what do they use to communicate. The purpose of this study is to help others and myself
understand why the class or business I chose is a discourse community and why. After
completing this study I came to the conclusion that my discourse communities uses written and
verbal communication in order to achieve their goal but their written communication has little
to no structure.
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Discourse Communities

In everyday life you come into contact with a discourse community even if you are aware of it
or now. A discourse community is a group of people who share a set of discourses, understood
as basic values and assumptions. For example discourse communities can be sport teams,
fraternities, religious groups, college students in a certain major or even student groups. My
discourse community that I am focused on is accountant that I am now studying on to help me
and others understand the purpose and goals of this community.
Many people are unaware of what makes a discourse community a discourse community.
That is sometimes because they associate discourse communities only with academic standing
but it is much more than that. According to Swales, A discourse community has a broadly
agreed set of common public goals so as long as a group has a set goal that that makes them a
discourse community. Just having a goal isnt the only requirement to be considered a discourse
community you also have to use forms of communication in order to achieve those goals within
your discourse community. With knowing this I set to understand and know my appropriate
discourse community. This will enable me to learn more about my future career and help
others understand my discourse community.
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The first method I used to work toward my goal of writing about my community is by
finding an upper class discourse community that relates to my future career. The class I used for
this is management accounting 3314 in which focuses on economics, business law, statistics
and finance.I studied this class for 2 hours watching to see how they interact, how they write
and communicate. While observing this class I discovered that their writing has little to no
structure they really dont write out complete sentences because they work out a lot of
equations in which doesnt involve writing complete sentences.I also discovered that most
students in the class were writing down notes on paper instead of using a computer so I asked
one student why did he write instead of taking notes on the computer. He replied, It helps me
remember what I wrote when I physically write it rather than type it.
After observing the class for 2 hours I then interviewed a student from the class and the
teacher of the class. Within the interview I examined PowerPoints that the teacher used to
relate to the students in class.I also examined notes that the student took in class to see exactly
how he wrote down notes from the PowerPoints given. From looking at the notes I could see
that the student was an intermediate student because he had a lot of abbreviations written
down next to equations that he had work out.I asked the student why does he abbreviate so
much and he replied, Because most of the things that we do in this class were already taught
to us in the previous class so I am very familiar with the terms already. So most students in this
class should be already on the level to were they have mostly mastered these subjects in this
class.
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So from that observation I can come to the conclusion that the purpose of this discourse
community is to further practice and understand the systems of accounting which includes
using many formulas to understand and better businesses finance. With that statement you can
see that this is a discourse community because every student within this class is attending this
class in order to reach that same goal and their using written and verbal communication in
order to do so.To also help support my conclusion I asked the teacher in what way does she
communicate with the students and why and she said,I use PowerPoints in order for my
students to copy down any important notes that they may need but when I work out problems I
do so on the chalk board so that they can actually see what I am doing and how I am doing itI
also asked the teacher if she abbreviates and why and she answered Yes I abbreviate most of
the time because most of the students in here should have already completed Principles of
Accounting 1 and 11 so they should understand and know exactly what I am talking about when
I abbreviate any word on the board because most of this was introduced in the previous
classes. From observing this class I can also see that the teacher statement is true because
while I was observing he class I seen no full layout of names of the formulas I seen a lot of
abbreviations on the PowerPoints instead.
This form of communication helps the students achieve their goals in this class because it
helps them apply their advanced skills which work towards their goal of practicing and further
understanding the systems of accounting greatly. With abbreviating the name of the formulas
all the time challenges the students to know those formulas so that when they come to contact
with them they know exactly what to do. With all of this information you can see that this
accounting management class is greatly a discourse community because they have a common
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goal and they use written and verbal communication in order to achieve this goal within this
class.




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Reference Page
Swales,J. (1990). The concept of discourse community. Genre Analysis: English in Academic and
Research Settings, 21-32.