Esmerlin Diaz

September 20, 2017

RWS 1301

Discourse Community

The class Rhetoric and Writing Studies does, in fact, refer to the 6 Swales Characteristics,

therefore it is a fact that this class meets the characteristics that are needed to compose a

discourse community

John Swales (1980), best known for his work on the genre, developed six defining

characteristics to identify a discourse and a discourse community, a discourse community is a

group of individuals that share a common interest. A discourse is a process of communicating

through languages. According to him common public goals, Intercommunication mechanisms,

lopped inter-communication, dedicated genres, specialized vocabulary and self-sustaining

hierarchy, are common factors that should be shared to make any discourse community work

successfully, and this are in fact successfully shared in the Rhetoric and Writing Studies class

because of this it can be proven that this class in a discourse community.

A discourse community starts by sharing the same common goals. Goals are something that

is usually personal, but in the RWS class, the students share the same common goal this are very

specified and are set to be successful. Some of the goals that are shared in the RWS class are,

obtaining acknowledge about the specific topic that are mention in this class, for example,

rhetoric as well as understanding more about research. Creativity and success are also goals that

are shared, Creativity is used while writing or coming up with ideas, But success in the main

goal that is shared because this class is composed to lead students to the next step which is

graduation.
 This class uses mechanisms that are helpful to the students as well as instructors, in this

case, the mechanism used in the RWS class is Intercommunication Mechanism, this mechanism

helps the students stay in contact with the instructor, also be up to date with everything that has

been talked about in the classrooms. Some of the tools that are used to successfully use

Intercommunication Mechanisms are Blackboard, Email, Group meeting, face to face interaction

as well as the journals which purpose is to annotate anything that is being taught in class. All of

this intercommunication mechanisms make learning and communicating much easier for the

students and instructors.

According to swales Communicating in a discourse community is very important therefore

he mentions Looped Intercommunication in his six characteristics. Looped intercommunication

refers to getting feedback and being involved inside and outside of the classroom. Lopped

intercommunication is often practiced in the RWS class because is a way of viewing classmates

views of points and sharing ideas, Lopped Intercommunication is also a tool to adopt new

findings this can be adapted either by a discussion with classmates or feedback from the

professor, is also used when proofreading a paper. In the book Writing and Publishing Research

In Kinesiology, Health, and Sports science the Author Timothy Bathurst refers to looped

intercommunication though reviewing writing and getting feedback from peers before updating

a paper or publishing a book he mentions that sometimes you might not like the feedback but

that is the beauty of letting someone else review your paper or book, he also mentions that

sometimes others can find errors that you as the writer were not able to find in the writing,

therefore, is a good idea to always accept their judgment.

a discourse community uses some worlds, characters, or form of vocabulary that is used

only in the certain community, because of this Swale decided to include Specialized Vocabulary
as one of his six characteristics. In the RWS class many of this specialized vocabularies are used

within the classroom, this are vocabularies that have been introduced mainly by the instructor

and are usually adapted to the classroom, for example, Rhetoric, Expository, Constance as well

as Expository, this are words that are used commonly in the RWS discourse community and are

specify directly to the classroom. According to the journals written in this class, all of the

vocabulary mention refer to what RWS is and what the idealization is.

Categorizing and specifying were also added in the Swales Characteristics through

dedicated Genres, dedicated genres are commonly used in the RWS class on a day to day basis

this is done by using materials that are specialized to the class, some examples of this are the

journals which helps annotate the acknowledge that has been adapted specifically to the class,

the journal can also be classified as a primary source of the material that is review in the class,

also the syllabus which clarify any information regarding the class, and any information

necessary to make the discourse community work successfully, lastly the Norton Field Guide and

Understanding Rhetoric And Writing Studies Handbook, which are the books used to guide the

RWS class and understand what the main focus of the class is.

In a discourse community having a self-sustaining hierarchy is important, this is the only

way that it is guaranteed the discourse community keeps on going through generations, self-

sustaining means that the community can have interchangeable roles, for example, a person who

is now attending the class or who attended the class in previous years could in fact replace the

instructor at any point, if this person has the sufficient acknowledge about the class to lead it and

controls the discourse community successfully to continue into other generations.

 In Conclusion, the RWS class certainly meets and idealizes all of the characteristics

mention in the six Swales characteristics, these characteristics explain perfectly the RWS class

and illustrates the idealizations Swales has when explaining what a discourse community is

according to him. Now is proven that the RWS class is a discourse community because it was

shown that within the class Common Public goals, Intercommunication Mechanisms, lopped

intercommunication, specialized vocabulary and self-sustaining hierarchy are put to use every

time the class meets and due to these characteristics the class is able to ream organized and work

successfully.
 Reference

Baghurst, T. M., & DeFreitas, J. (2017). Writing and publishing research in kinesiology, health,

and sport science. London : Routledge, 2017.

Swales, J. (1990). The concept of discourse community. Genre analysis: English in academic

and research settings, 21-32.

Esmerlin Diaz Viloria. Rethoric and Writing Studies journal