Running head: DISCOURSE COMMUNITY ETHNOGRAPHY 1

Discourse Community Ethnography

Abigail Padilla

University of Texas at El Paso

RWS 1301

Dr. Vierra

October 8, 2019
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Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to determine whether the class of RWS 1301 is a discourse

community. This class conducted a series of methods to research the characteristics of a

discourse community, defined by Swales (1990), to determine if the class is a discourse

community. In the community, we are all working to accomplish the shared common goals,

exhibit intercommunication, demonstrate the use of participatory mechanisms, have genres, use

specialized language, and exhibits a hierarchy. The class of Rhetoric and Composition I is in fact

a discourse community because it follows the characteristics as described by Swales.

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Discourse Community Ethnography

Take a good look around. The world isn’t just filled with people, or rather groups of

people. Now look inside a student’s world in a university. Classrooms aren’t just filled with

students. Take a closer look. Within the university are many classrooms that have their own

discourse community. A classroom exhibits instructors and students discussing topics of issue,

learning concepts, or simply formulating new knowledge for the sake of higher education. The

diversity of discourse communities depends upon the traditions that the classroom holds. We

must determine whether the classrooms are a discourse community by beginning to examine our

own classroom first for the presence of the six characteristics, as defined by Swales (1990), to

prove that the RWS 1301 class is a discourse community. The fitting of the characteristics is not

the only requirement needed to determine if the classroom is a discourse community because the

community must exhibit the working and sharing of a common public goal. The RWS 1301 class

is in fact a discourse community defined by Swales.

Literature Review

Discourse communities are complex, diverse, and separate people into groups and recruit

them by meeting the qualifications. According to Swales (1990), there are six ways to identify

the individuals in a discourse community: a discourse community has a set of public rules and

goals, uses intercommunication among members, provides feedback and information to its

members, obtains one or more genres in communication, acquired a higher level of language and

terminology, and has a certain level of expertise that members are required to have (p. 222). This

implies that discourse communities are a complex community that requires a certain level of

knowledge and expertise to be a part of the group.

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A discourse community uses a broader formulation of intertext. According to Porter

(1986), a discourse community is a group of individuals who share a common interest in

communicating through approved channels (p. 38). Moreover, discourse communities share

beliefs about what is appropriate for discussion, what functions are performed, what represents

evidence and what practices are followed (p. 39). This implies that a discourse community

shapes the meaning of a text by referring to another work within the text, which is a broad

formulation, and are made to influence the reader by adding the use of ethos.

Dialogue and critique are encouraged in discourse communities that are beginning to

thrive because that is how the communities evolve. According to Johns (2017), a discourse

community uses dialogue to make disagreements about research approaches, make

argumentation, make theories, and topics for study (p. 337). Furthermore, critiques are the

evaluations of many new volumes of books and published articles. This implies that discourse

communities encourage the use of dialogue and a variety of critique because both contribute to

how the community can grow and expand.

Method

In the RWS 1301 class, we used the interview method and observation method to

determine if this class is a discourse community. For the interview method, the individuals of the

community had to find a variety of articles, created by different authors, that provided more and

different examples of a discourse community. The sources used by these individuals were mostly

scholarly secondary sources because they were scholarly sections of a book. Furthermore, the

class conducted an activity that required searching for artifacts that relate to the six

characteristics of a discourse community as a method of a class observation. This activity falls

under the level of a mixture of both the primary source and secondary source because some of
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the observations were made from eye-witness account and the other observations were done

using secondary sources.

Discussion

Common Goals

This class exhibits the sharing of common and public goals that are tacit. Swales (1990)

defined common goals as the action sharing common goals (p. 471). In the RWS 1301 class,

there is a common goal shared by the members in the community. The shared goals of our RWS

1301 discourse community class is passing the class because it affects the GPA of the members

in the community. Furthermore, Porter (1986) argued that a discourse community is a group of

people who have similar views and similar goals (p. 548). This implies that the RWS 1301 class

works toward the same goal. Moreover, the class had another shared common goal which was to

expand our knowledge about writing to enhance education in the college level such as improving

how to expand simple phrases to make the paper more appropriate for the readers to read,

providing more detail to the claim, and using sources to back up the claim made by the writer in

essays and in other writing assignments. This implies that in order to pass the course, students

must first learn how to write properly to receive good grades which then enables students to pass

the course with a high GPA of the class, which is the common goal of the class.

Intercommunication

Intercommunication is used in RWS 1301 class which makes it a discourse community.

According to Swales (1990), intercommunication involved the act of communicating among its

members of the discourse community using meetings, telecommunication, newsletters,

communications, correspondence, and even more (p. 472). The RWS 1301 class uses certain

types of intercommunication to communicate with its members of the community. Examples of

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the use of intercommunication that is used in the RWS 1301 discourse community is emailing

between members of the community, phone messaging between the classmates of the

community, and use Blackboard to submit assignments in to the professor and to communicate

with the professor as well. Furthermore, Bizzell (1982) described a discourse community to be a

group of individuals that have a common interest in communicating through approved channels

(p. 38). This implies that discourse communities exhibit intercommunication to be known as a

discourse community. Intercommunication is necessary in the class because it allows for a

member to communicate with another member within the discourse community. This implies

that the class exhibits intercommunication which allows it to be qualified to be considered as a

discourse community.

Participatory Mechanisms

The RWS 1301 class is a discourse community that uses participatory mechanisms.

According to Swales (1990), the use of participatory mechanisms is to provide information and

feedback to the members of the community (p. 472). To improve the writing skills of an

individual, they must put forth effort and engage in the course. The use of a rubric is an example

of a mechanism that exhibits participatory mechanism in the RWS 1301 discourse community

because it provides information and feedback to its members. After the example provided, RWS

1301 meets the criteria needed for this characteristic and is considered a discourse community.

Another use is visiting the writing center and/or professor for them to provide feedback and

information about the assignment. This implies that this class is a discourse community because

it involves members among the community to be provided with information and respond with

feedback.
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Genres

The RWS 1301 class exhibits the use of genre which makes it a discourse community.

According to Swales (1990), a genre is used in the communicative furtherance of the

community’s aims and expectations (p. 472). The RWS 1301 class uses several genres to meet

the discoursal expectations created by the genres. The topics that students use in the community,

and the way that they implement the use of the topics help to determine the type of genre the

group uses (p. 222). Using the textbooks required for the class are examples in which the

community exhibits the use of genres in the class. These examples are important because they

can collaborate and share opinions to get a specific claim. Other examples may include the

UTEP library, PowerPoint, and the composition notebooks used by the students to take notes.

This implies that this class is a discourse community because it uses several types of genre to

complete assignments and to meet the expectations that the genre sets for the community.

Specialized Language

Specialized language is used in the RWS 1301 class. According to Swales (1990),

specialized language, also known as “specific lexis”, are words or discussions that the

community possesses and can be only understood by the members within the community

because not many other communities utilize the same specialized language as others (p. 473).

The RWS 1301 class utilizes a specialized language to communicate with vocabulary that only

the members of the community may understand. Furthermore, Bizzell (1982) argued that a key

point of a discourse community must be the vocabulary implemented in their conversations,

making it an important characteristic in the discourse community (p. 192). This implies that

vocabulary is implemented in the writing assignments in order to make the paper a more

scholarly paper. The syllabus is used as an example as a specialized language used in the RWS
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1301 discourse community class because no other course or classroom would be able to

understand what the students must do in the class because the other course would not understand

the words used or the discussions in the syllabus. This implies that the RWS 1301 course is a

discourse community because it uses a syllabus and specialized vocabulary to communicate with

the students within the community.

Hierarchy

The RWS 1301 class has levels of hierarchy. According to Swales (1990), the last

characteristic that a discourse community has is a “threshold level of members” (p. 473). Every

discourse community must have a ladder system such as a pyramid with different levels and rank

in the community because the survival of the community is depended on the ratio of novices and

the experts of the community (p. 473). An example of hierarchy in the RWS 1301 class would be

one of student to teacher or the hierarchy of freshmen to senior. In the characteristic of hierarchy,

you enter as a beginner and as you gain more and more knowledge, you excel to becoming an

expert of some sort. Students for example, enter college as freshmen with minimal knowledge

and as they gain information, they excel slowly to becoming a senior. One enters college without

enough knowledge but with the right practices, students advance in their studies and master their

major. This implies that the RWS 1301 course is a discourse community because it has levels of

hierarchy in the community.

Analysis

The findings in the research conducted lined up with the reading. The RWS 1301 class

exhibits all characteristics that a discourse community possesses. Swales (1990) describes

necessary and sufficient characteristics that a discourse community must have in order to be able

to identify if the group is a discourse community (p. 471).

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Conclusion

After careful examination, the class of RWS 1301 is in fact a discourse community. It

possesses all the needs and characteristics that Swales (1990) described along with examples

being provided. An important part of meeting all the criteria is communication because that is

what is needed in the processes of all the characteristics in order for communities to be

successful. This implies that discourse communities would not thrive to the achieve goals of the

course if the characteristics were non-existent in them.

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References

Johns, A. M. (2017). Discourse communities and communities of practice. In E. Wardle, & D.

Downs (Eds.), Writing about writing (pp. 319-42). Boston: Bedford/St.: Martin's.

Retrieved from https://learn-us-east-1-prod-fleet01-xythos.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/.

Porter, J. E. (1986). Intertextuality and the discourse community. Rhetoric Review, 5(1), 34.

Retrieved from http://0-

search.ebscohost.com.lib.utep.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsjsr&AN=edsjsr.466015

&site=eds-live&scope=site.

Swales, J. (2011). Genre analysis: English in academic and research settings. In E. Wardle, & D.

Downs (Eds.), Writing about writing [The Concept of Discourse Community] (pp. 21-

32). Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's. Retrieved

from http://journals.openedition.org/asp/4774.
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