Running Head: Discourse Community Ethnography 1

Discourse Community Ethnography

Gino Salazar

The University of Texas at El Paso

RWS 1301

Dr. Vierra

September 27, 2018

Discourse Community Ethnography 2

Abstract

This paper has no abstract.

Discourse Community Ethnography 3

Discourse Community Ethnography

Students of UTEP form part of discourse community every day. Using Swale’s

characteristics, this class is a discourse community because it meets with all six characteristics,

the RWS 1301 is a group of students with a common goal that have a specific lexis, hierarchy,

genres and communication between its members. The students that form part of this community

also identified the characteristics one by one to help getting an abstract view of what a discourse

community is while being one and getting to identify one.

Literature Review

John Swales talked about discourse community and that a discourse has to have these six

characteristics, a base for a discourse community should have common public goals as well as

communication, also they need a hierarchy, a natural way of people passing away and opening

windows for new young people to proceed the other peer. In a discourse community people talk

a specific lexis, which in my class could be academic English, and in order to move forward in

the class we need tools, these tools are part of a characteristic of swale’s which are genres.

Genres help us with our assignments and are the base of our learning besides the professor.

Swales identified these characters universal for any kind of group, and it does not have to be

academic, they just have to meet the aspects. In the RWS 1301 one class there is a good amount

of writing and that is what the class is about, students learn about writing, there is a complex

concept about writing that has to do with the first thing about writing and its creation. Porter

(1986) talks about writing that is not created and that there is no original writing but only based

on another writing (p. 45). Also, is not called plagiarism and theoretically we as writers form part

of a discourse community where we write our own meaning when it comes to a topic, but never
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created, basically in other words “paraphrasing”. When we paraphrase we take ideas from other

academic paper, sources, surveys and our papers have to always be based on something. A text

depends always on another. When we think about intertextuality and its constraints make sense

for a lot of us, because when we write any paper we must do research or at least know what

we’re talking about and that information most of the time comes from another source and we just

interpret it in our own way.

Donna Kain and Elizabeth Wardle (2005) recognized writers composed an article

together in the journal Technical Communication Quarterly with the purpose of helping their

undergraduate students to learn the threshold concept. Activity theory is the behavior of people

in groups, language, writing and discourse. A characteristic of discourse community is a group of

people acting together to achieve a goal, and that is exactly or at least in the simplest form what

activity theory is. In the end activity theory is the whole sense or reason of why people do what

they do and act and engage to form part of something. And it is mostly universal, discourse

community does have limits; John Flowerdew and his article about a discourse community and

the complications of non-native English speakers where a group of Hong Kong students and their

difficulties in writing an article in an international refereed journal about they return from

doctoral studies in the united states. It is a good example of discourse community; the writing

and swale’s characteristics are represented in the article, they were a group with a common goal,

as well as the problems a writer faces when not being an anglophone student.

Methods

Primarily talk to the sources to get an idea of what discourse community is and how it

relates to us in class. These sources were the base of our writing and the reflection compose the
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most of our paper. Swale’s being the first one gave us a whole new concept or topic that we

learned (discourse community) and others like Kain and Wardle helped us to understand more

the constraints and real-life examples of discourse. Also, to one of the sources, E. Porter a

scavenger hunt and a search for info and feedback about discourse communities as well as

swales a big figure in the topic.

In class students gathered a bunch of pictures that represented the six characteristics of

swales. First, we had to understand these characteristics, then based off that we had to identify

them to complete the assignment and to show us that in effect the class was a discourse

community.

Observation on class, we related discourse community with our own class. We identify

the six characteristics of swales, and what a discourse community is. In class there’s a hierarchy,

from the very bottom of the pyramid there’s “us” the freshmen, with time we will escalate and

become more knowledgeable we as a group that share a common goal.

Discussion

The RWS 1301 class exhibits a common public goal. According to Swales, a discourse

community’s common public goal is a group of individuals bound by a common interest who

communicate through approved channels and whose discourse is regulated (p. 20). And as a

class the goal is to graduate; our presentation of the goal is a beautiful and well-earned diploma.

It is a representation of what students do as a class and what they want to accomplish in life.

Earning a degree is not just a paper it is a way to demonstrate that students are specialized in a

field, is who they are and who they want to be, which could be a mechanical engineer, a

forensics scientist or a doctor. It is also a standard; a higher level of education and living.
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The RWS 1301 class exhibits a discourse community according to swales a discourse

community has intercommunication and communicates and shares a language (p.221). In this

case, displayed verbal communication and messages to communicate. The communication which

could be verbal or through text messages is very important to the class and almost crucial, even

when the students are not in class, through the group chat they help each other with any

questions that they have and get through assignments faster. Communication it also maximizes

skills such as team work, nowadays, work, life and everything is about team work and as

students is vital that they know the importance of such factor and enforce it to succeed in

everything we want to do as leaders.

In the RWS 1301 class shows a hierarchy. According to swales students were thought by

someone of higher hierarchy (p.221) which is our professor that also gives us info and feedback,

we can ask him questions and he will give us his comment on assignment. It’s a system and a

cycle, as time passes we will go higher up and professionals like our professor will pass away.

Hierarchy is a ladder in which everyone, in this case freshmen, start from the bottom and every

step is a challenge to work the way up students have to put in the work and time. Also, time is a

big factor that will tell experience and level in the hierarchy.

The RWS 1301 class exhibits genres. We use blackboard, textbooks, e-books, notebooks

and all these tools to help us learn and complete with the assignments needed to pass the course.

These are the genres of our class and according to swales’ genres are how things get done, when

language is used to accomplish them (p.221). Blackboard and new online tool of this generation

in UTEP all classes in this university uses it to post everything a student has to do for every

assignment and the whole course. These tools have been changing through time, but they keep
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being what they are and still helping in this case students to pass the class and complete

assignments.

The class RWS 1301 exhibits specific lexis. According to swales’ a discourse community

has lexical items known to the wider speech communities in special and technical ways (p.222).

we use this specific lexis to communicate with our sources and complete the assignments. The

specific lexis that the class uses to communicate in writing is academic English to be more clear

and precise when communicating an idea, in that way people from higher hierarchy and

important figure can understand what a student is trying to communicate and maybe change an

idea or more in a bigger scale.

Conclusion

Students form part of discourse community every day. They are involved even when they

don’t know it, and as UTEP students we see these characteristics and more, we see every day

students of different ethnicities and background and we understand the constraints of discourse

community. We see what’s around us and beyond, and always come to an understanding.
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References

Porter J. E. Autumn 1986. “Intertextuality and the Discourse Community” Rhetoric Review, Vol.

5 no. 1, pp. 34-47.

Swales, John. “The Concept of Discourse Community.” Genre Analysis: English in Academic

and Research Settings. Boston: Cambridge UP, 1990. 21–32. Print.

Flowerdew, J. (2000). Discourse Community, Legitimate Peripheral Participation, and the

Nonnative-English-Speaking Scholar. TESOL Quarterly, 34(1), 127-150.

doi:10.2307/3588099