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Chaiwat Grayson
ENC 1101
November 10, 2014
Chaiwat@knights.ucf.edu
Discourse Community
The authors in the book Writing About Writing all talk about the same
consistent thing; writing. Their enjoyment of writing and the fact that they took their
time to create articles in order to improve others writing puts them in a discourse
community together. By James E. Porters definition, a discourse community is a
group of individuals bound by a common interest who communicate through
approved channels and whose discourse is regulated (Porter 91). Throughout the
year, this English class has gave us the pleasure to read multiple excerpts from
different authors and all of them have made me realize what it takes to be in the
discourse community of people who study writing. I will be analysing how effective
this book has introduced the reader to people who study writing. This book compiles
writings from Swales, Gee and Mirabelli who are leading researchers and writers on
the topic of writing and describing discourse communities.

According to John Swales, Professor of linguistics and co-director of the

Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English at the University of Michigan, he
speaks about six characteristics of discourse communities and how important they are
that they are included. He identifies them by mentioning that a discourse community
has a broadly agreed set of common public goals (Swales 471). By reading this it
made me realize that I already am a part of the discourse community because our
English class is centrifugal and I joined by choice to better my writing. The goals for
everybody in this community is to constantly learn about ways to improve our writing
and with me being in this English class, that is exactly what Im doing. Not only did

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we study works of people in this discourse but also we mush faked our way through
an assignment where we studied our own writing.

This applies to me when I am working in a digital creative agency and how we

already know the values and goals in the work place. We always understand the full
scope of a project, the needs for different clients and their products. The broad set of
goals in marketing, production and solutions combine to make sense of the overall
digital strategy.

By doing this, we all have a way of intercommunication. James Paul Gee,

professor of literacy studies at Arizona State University, states in his work Literary
Discourse Linguistics that being able to learn your way into a discourse is very
challenging. (Gee 89). In the ENC1101 course we help each other in understanding a
discourse community. We did this by commenting on discussion boards and posting
our reflections and responding to others. We used a website called Webcourses as a
mechanism of intercommunication to stimulate feedback from reading works of
specialists in discourse and writing. This was a great tool for communicating our
thoughts and understanding other peoples opinions. We also did Peer Reviews to
provide information on essays, I was able to send and receive information through
text, email and Facebook to stay in contact with my classmates who I paired off with.
To further understand this course we used a Think Aloud Protocol (Perl, 617)
assignment with other classmates to understand our writing and to analyse our
findings. Since this was the first attempt at understanding the process James Paul Gee
would have said that we were mush faking our way through the studies allowing us to
build upon the understanding of this discourse.

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For the students in the class it isnt just each other and the professor, its also
the people and the authors who we read about who taught us the keys to being in the
discourse community. Authors get their writings published into articles, which then
get published into textbooks for students, and they help us become humans who study
writing.

Tony Mirabelli, philosophy professor at the University of California Berkley

mentions in his reading Learning To Serve: The Language and Literacy of Food
Service Workers that we must have control of the language, thinking, and of acting
that can be used to identify oneself as a member of a socially meaningful group or
social network (Mirabelli 93). This is noticeable when we talk about genres and
specific lexis when interacting with each other in a discourse. Terms like mushfaking, intertextuality, lexis and other jargon were not apparent to me if it was not for
the fact that members who study writing all understood these terms. People who are in
this discourse study writing and practice terms like these in their everyday
interactions.

In order to be a member of a graphic design club we have to acquire certain

behaviours, talks and beliefs that are congruent with the people we are surrounded by.
I however have not got used to this and sometimes have to mush-fake it to represent
myself as part of that discourse community.

The last characteristic of an existing discourse community is as stated by

Swales, A discourse community has a threshold level of members with a suitable

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degree of relevant content and discoursal expertise (Swales, 222). This is present in
Writing about Writing when viewing different credentials of the writers such as James
Paul Gee who has received his B.A. in philosophy from University of California at
Santa Barbara, and both his M.A and Ph.D. in linguistics from Stanford University.
Distinguishing a members expertise in the discourse well in the textbook giving the
authors credibility. This applies with clubs at UCF and how they have certain labels
for people with different expertise such as President, Vice President, Treasure,
Recorder, Warden, Historian and Public Relations Chair to acknowledge
specialization.

In a discourse community, members often come into the community as

novices and leave by death or other less involuntary ways according to Swales
(Swales 222). This textbook has provided a key into entering the discourse
community by providing us with knowledge about writing and has to some extent
increase my level of threshold where I must soon leave this discourse once leaving
this class. This is true with the Asian Student Association ASA here at UCF. We
have a set number of positions with titles and once you gain a position you cannot
apply for that position again leaving in an involuntary way. New members fluctuate
into the discourse community as novices and hopefully pass that threshold of
membership to leave as experts in the knowledge of Asian culture.

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As a nineteen-year-old learning about discourse communities, I would never
had understood what a discourse was if it wasnt for the fact that Writing about
Writing. This book had taught me a humongous amount of tools to add into my kit. I
am learning my passion of graphic design and videography and the knowledge gained
from discourse has given me food for thought about when it comes down to working
in a digital creative agency and being integrated into the digital field of art. Once I
graduate I will understand the importance and how to comprehend specific lexis of a
community and the ability to adjust my behaviours, attitudes and gestures to a desired
community. Once I enter into the design world I will mush fake my path everyday
with lots of creativity and dedication until I finally become accepted into the
community of the digital art.

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Works Cited:
Gee, James P. Literacy, Discourse, and Linguistics: Introduction. Journal of
Education 171.1 (1989): 5-17. Print.
Perl, Sondra. "The Composing Processes of Unskilled College Writers." Writing
About Writing: A College Reader. Eds. Wardle and Downs. 2nd ed. Boston:
Bedford/St. Martins, 2011. 317-336. Print.
Mirabelli, Tony. Learning to Serve: The Language and Literacy of Food Service
Workers. What They Dont Learn in School. Ed. Jabari Mahiri. New York:
Peter Lang, 2004. 143-62 Print.

Rose, Mike. "Rigid Rules, Inflexible Plans, and the Stifling of Language: A
Cognitivist Analysis of Writers Block." 1980. Writing About Writing. By
Elizabeth Wardle and Doug Downs. 2nd ed. Boston: Leasa Burton, 2014. 52731. Print.
Swales, John. "The Concept of Discourse Community." 1990. Writing About Writing.
By Elizabeth Wardle and Doug Downs. 2nd ed. Boston: Wardle and Downs,
2014. 215-27. Print.
Webcourses@UCF. Web.