Identifying Discourse Community Components

                    The purpose of this paper is to find evidence in four different articles to support Swales’ (1990) theory in relation to the six characteristics that define a Discourse Community.  Swales states that for a group of people to be considered an academic community, the following requirements should be met: common goals as the group should achieve certain objectives and have specific interests; participatory mechanisms to provide information and feedback; information exchange, which implies that the members of the group should be intercommunicated to survive as such; common-specific genres that define different associations of members; highly specialized terminology, by means of the use of abbreviations and acronyms and finally, high general level of expertise in the sense that the group should achieve a certain level of knowledge.  

                   The four articles show that each of the communities has specific goals to achieve. In the case of Wenzlaff and Wieseman (2004), they specify that the main purpose of their study was to provide teachers with the confidence to connect what they do in the classrooms to research-informed practices.  Hoffman-Kipp, Articles and Lopez-Torres (2003) acknowledge that the purpose of their study “is to outline a vision of teacher reflection that is constitutive of teacher learning as praxis” (para. 5).  As regards participatory mechanisms, Kelly-Kleese (2004) refers to the discourse of community college scholars as taking the form of  “oral discussion or text in arenas such as e-mail, electronic mailing lists, and discussion forums on the Web” (para. 30).

                   With reference to information exchange, team teaching and collaborative planning demand teachers to discuss their beliefs and practices within the routines of their daily work (Hoffman-Kipp et al., 2003.) Each of the communities makes use of academic writing. Kelly-Kleese (2001, 2004) uses block quotations to directly cite other authors. Furthermore, she introduces her paper (2001) with an abstract. Specialized vocabulary is also used in the papers. Kelly-Kleese (2004) names an organization, followed by its abbreviation: “American Association for Higher Education (AAHE)” (para. 25). Hoffman-Kipp et al. (2003) refer to Vygotsky’s (1978) Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) (para. 17). Lastly, each group shows different levels of expertise. As Wenzlaff and Weiseman (2004) describe:

          Seventy-six percent of the teachers in this cohort teach in rural, small schools; the remainder teaches in urban schools. The teachers hold positions at every level of education from kindergarten to high school and range from two to twenty years of teaching experience (para. 9).

          The four articles under analysis share the six characteristics postulated by Swales (1990). All of them have their own purposes according to the specific discourse community to which they belong. They have different as well as varied participatory mechanisms, ranging from face-to-face to electronic intercommunication, including time and regulations related to information exchange. The four communities share the genre of academic writing, regulated by stylistic conventions. They are characterized by the use of specific lexis or jargon, contributing to the papers’ formal register, and also by the different levels of expertise, which are clearly specified.

                                                                            References

Hoffman-Kipp, P., Articles, 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

 Kelly-Kleese, C. (2004). UCLA community college review: community college    

 scholarship  and discourse. Community College Review. Retrieved October 2007, from http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0HCZ/is_1_32/ai_n6361541

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_qa200404/ai_n9349405