Discourse communities

Requisites of discourse communities.

With the view to describing a discourse community, Swales (1990) establishes a list of requirements that a discourse community should meet. Those are: Common goals, participatory mechanisms, information exchange, community-specific genres, highly specialized terminology and high general level of expertise. This aim of this paper is to provide evidence in a bid to support Swales idea(1990) .

Kelly-Kleese (2001) identifies the common goals a discourse community may have; she claims that a discourse community involves shared knowledge, common purposes and common relationships, among others. Hoffman-Kipp, Artiles, Lopez-Torres (2003) state that technical and political content should be included in the  vision of critical reflection.

Participatory mechanisms and exchange of information are vital for a discourse community. This idea is reinforced by Wenzlaff and Wieseman (2004) when they state that “a discourse community cannot exist in the absence of a collaborative culture and an environment that supports risk-taking (McLaughlin & Talbert, 1993) and reflection” (p. 9). Kellly-Kleese (2004) also asserts that “by redefining community college scholarship to include the knowledge gained and shared in the classroom, community college professionals will be better able to assert their knowledge and power within higher education” (p. 1). This statement also shows the importance of the interchange of ideas when carrying an investigation.

The use of specific genres in a discourse community can be seen when Kelly-Kleese (2001) asserts that “The community college can be seen as adopting language that has been given particular meaning within the larger higher education community, meaning that is less applicable to its own community but is nonetheless consistently used” (p.2).

In conclusion, taking into account the papers published by the four authors cited, it can be claimed that the set of characteristics that has been provided by Swales (1990) characterizes a certain discourse community.

Reference

Hoffman-Kipp, P., Artiles, A. J., & Lopez Torres, L. (2003). Beyond reflection: Teacher learning as praxis. Theory into Practice. Retrieved October 2007, from

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0NQM/is_3_42/ai_108442653

Kelly-Kleese, C. (2001). Editor’s choice: An open memo to community college faculty and administrators. Community College Review. Retrieved October 2007, from http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0HCZ/is_1_29/ai_77481463

Swales, J. M. (1990). Genre analysis: English in academic and research settings. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Wenzlaff, T. L., & Wieseman, K. C. (2004). Teachers need teachers to grow. Teacher Education Quarterly. Retrieved October 2007, from http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3960/is_200404/ai_n934940