Orellano Carina
Draft 1
Towards
an Accurate Definition of a Discourse Community
According to Swales (1990),
in order to be regarded as members of a Discourse Community, its participants
should meet some requirements such as common goals, interactive mechanisms,
information exchange, community-specific genres, specialized terminology and a
high level of expertise.
The purpose of this paper is to analyze different articles and identify
evidence to support Swales' theory.
In
relation to the requirement of shared objectives and interests, Kelly-Kleese
(2001) states that the community college can be regarded as a discourse
community as its participants “have developed a common discourse that involves
shared knowledge, common purposes, common relationships and similar attitudes
and values”. (p.4)
As
regards the interactive mechanisms proposed by Swales, Kelly-Kleese (2001) also
states that “Participating in the discourse of their disciplines and of higher
education in general is an expectation of university faculty; it is part of the
conceptual scheme of their discourse community” (p.13)
In
relation to shared goals and information exchange, Hoffman-Kipp, Artiles and Lopez-Torres
(1990) sustain that “teachers interact with colleagues in goal-directed
activities goal-directed activities that require communication and the exchange
of ideas…” (p.13). They also suggest that “teacher reflection in social context
occurs as teachers engage in and share their reflections in diverse ways” (p.18)
Discourse communities develop through the use of community-specific
genres. In relation to this, Blanton, Simmons and Warner (2001) claim that
“journals or virtual systems of communication can be used to mediate teacher
learning so they can recall, share and respond to one another’s experiences (as
cited by Hoffman-Kipp, Artiles &Lopez-Torres, 2003, p. 20).
A
discourse community is characterized as utilizing specialized terminology.
Kelly–Kleese (2001) has suggested that the community members share their
knowledge and interpretations and hence, create policy and redefine language.
Besides, Wenzlaff and Wiezeman (2004) conducted a survey in order to obtain
information related to the learning processes and reported the results by means
of acronyms: “ teachers rated themselves using a Likert scale, ranging from absolutely
true (AT) to mostly true (MT)…” (p.20)
To conclude, the articles
analyzed provided arguments to support Swales (1990) theory. It can be
established that the author has provided an accurate definition of discourse
community. The six requirements help to analyze and determine whether a group
of people can be considered a discourse community or not.
References
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
Kelly-Kleese, C. (2004). UCLA community college
review: community college scholarship and discourse. Community College
Review. Retrieved October 2007, from
Pintos, V., & Crimi Y. (2012). Unit 1:
Building up a community of teachers and prospective researchers. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Retrieved August 2012
from EAP-CAECE.
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_n9349405
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