Evidence Underpinning Swales’ Conceptualization of Discourse Community
Swales (1990) maintains that, for procedural purposes, it
is necessary to define the term discourse community and even better to offer a
set of criteria sufficiently narrow in order to eliminate many of the marginal,
blurred and controversial contenders . Therefore, he proposes six
characteristics that will be sufficient to identify a group of individuals as a
discourse community. After analyzing different sources, it could be said that these
defining features are displayed throughout various articles.
To begin with, the fact, that a discourse community has
common public goals, has been supported by Kutz.(1997) He claims that the
members of a discourse community have developed a common discourse that
involves common purposes and shared understandings about how to communicate
their knowledge and achieve their shared purposes .
Besides
this, a discourse community has mechanisms of intercommunication among its
members. Hoffman-Kipp, Artiles and Lopez-Torres (2003) share the view that “teachers
interact with colleagues in goal-directed activities that require communication
and the exchange of ideas” (p3). For instance, the writers’ article points out
the importance of a team discussing their beliefs and practices within the
routines of their daily work.
Furthermore,
a discourse community relies on participatory mechanisms to provide information
and feedback .Wenzlaff and Wieseman(2004) demonstrate that a collaborative
culture of teachers, from different levels of schooling and content areas, can
help each other to broaden their perspectives about teaching and learning and
educational systems. This is possible due to the various tools that are used to
communicate, for example, they have to write assignments, reflecting on their
"doing."
In addition to this, a
discourse community holds one or more genres. It is of major importance to
define the term genre. Swales (1990) explains that genres are types of texts which
developed in response to rhetorical needs. This is illustrated by the fact that
Kelly Kleese (2004)states that community college discourse most often takes the
form of oral dialogue or text such as
e-mail, electronic mailing lists, and discussion forums on the Web.
Another
important characteristic is the one that depicts a discourse community as
having some specific lexis. For instance, in the university discourse community
, the term nontraditional is widely used to describe traditional students
(Kelly-Kleese,2001).
Finally,
a discourse community has members with a suitable degree of relevant content
and discoursal expertise. In this light, Wenzlaff and Wieseman (2004) conclude
that “for the learning to have long-standing impact, teachers need teachers to
grow with in a discourse community”(p.9).
On
the whole, it may be concluded that the writers of the articles analised the
concept developed by Swales(1990). This theory portrays discourse community as
a group of people who share goals, mechanisms, genres, specialized terminology
and high general level of expertise .
References
Swales, J. M. (1990). Genre analysis: English in academic and
research settings.
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University
Press.
Kelly-Kleese, C. (2004). UCLA
community college review: community college
scholarship and discourse. Community College Review. Retrieved October
2007,
Wenzlaff, T. L., & Wieseman, K.
C. (2004). Teachers need teachers to grow.
Teacher Education Quarterly. Retrieved October
2007, from
Kelly-Kleese, C. (2001). Editor’s
choice: An open memo to Community College
Faculty and Administrators. Community College Review. Retrieved October
2007,
Hoffman-Kipp,
P., Artiles, A. J., & Lopez Torres, L. (2003). Beyond
reflection:
teacher learning as praxis. Theory
into Practice. Retrieved October 2007, from
Kutz, E. (1997). Language and
literacy: Studying discourse in communities and
classrooms. Portsmouth, NH:
Boynton/Cook Publishers.
