Discourse Communities

Swales’ Discourse Community

The aim of this paper is to provide evidence to support Swales’ (1990) view of a discourse community.  According to Swales, a Discourse Community (DC) is defined as a group of people whose “members develop and use systems of speech and writing and are sometimes quite specific to that community´s needs and goals” (as cited in Ferris and Hedgcock, 1998, p. 5).  Discourse communities have common characteristics. Their members have common aims and exchange information and knowledge through participatory mechanisms. They also use specific terminology and adhere to a specific genre.

Kelly-Kleese (2011) contends that a community college can be considered a discourse community since it meets the criteria outlined by Swales (1990):

Its members have, over time, developed a common discourse that involves shared knowledge, common purposes, common relationships, similar attitudes and values, shared understandings about how to communicate their knowledge and achieve their shared purposes, and a flow of discourse that has a particular structure and style (p. 1).

Similarly, Hoffman Kipp, Artiles and Lopez-Torres (2003) support Swales’ (1990) definition of a discourse community and focus on the importance of participatory mechanisms and common goals, as “[t]eachers interact with colleagues in goal-directed activities that require communication and the exchange of ideas [which are] "distributed" through sign systems and artifacts that are embedded in the social activity of the school community” (p. 3).

The communities mentioned above illustrate Swales’ definition of a discourse community, since the writers constitute examples of members of different discourse communities that not only communicate and share knowledge through a writing system but also have common goals and a common and specific discourse.

References.

Ferris, D. & Hedgcock, J. S. (1998). Teaching ESL Composition: Purpose, Process and Practice. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc. Mahwah: NJ

Hoffman-Kipp, P., Artiles, A. J., & Lopez Torres, L. (2003). Beyond reflection: teacher learning as praxis. Theory into Practice. Retrieved October 2011, 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 2011, 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.