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Discourse Community Ethnography

Roberto Rubio

The University of Texas at El Paso

RWS 1301

Dr. Vierra

September 27, 2018

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Abstract
This paper has no abstract
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Discourse Community Ethnography

Using Swale’s characteristics, this class is a discourse community.

Literature Review

Swales, Porter, Borg are all great authors who give great wisdom and

knowledge on discourse communities. No matter their differences everyones main idea is

simple, they each have their own unique and different way of defining a discourse

community for us. Like Porter talked about in textuality while Kain and Wardle talked

about their activity theory.

According to Swales a discourse community has 6 characteristics. The

characteristics are; a common public goal, intercommunication, info and feedback, genre,

vocabulary, and a hierarchy. An example of a common public goal is getting a diploma, and

another example of intercommunication is a phone. Info and feedback would be exactly

what Mr. Vierra is teaching us. Swales explained to us what genre meant for a discourse

community which was tools, a good example would be like word or PowerPoint. His six

definitions were clear and straight forward. The last 2 characteristics are vocabulary and a

hierarchy which he explains to us why they are so big in a discourse community.

Kain & Wardle give us a tool that’ll help us work together, because they

think the activity theory is just a academic discussion. They simply gave us Swales

characteristics but just in different. Maybe that is why Mr. Vierra wants us to work together

on research projects. Since it makes us a community with a public academic goal. It has six

systems starting with the Ongoing which is the study of looking at systems over time. Then

there’s object-directed, historically conditioned, dialectally-structured, tool mediated and

human interaction. They show us this small diagram to show us what it’s based on, it forms
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the shape of a triangle and has different labels. For example on of them is Tools, another is

subject, rules, community, division of labor, and motives. This is a back bone to a group.

According to Porter discourse communities no matter how much they try not to

plagiarize, they will always at some point “plagiarize”. It doesn’t mean that they stole

something from someone or that they copied them but more based on intertextuality. Which

he explains that those words may not define a specific object but the words may have

relations with other texts. (545) James E. Porter even asks these questions which support

his claim, “to what extent is the writer’s product itself a part of a larger community writing

process?”. In my opinion I think that by that he means that whatever you’re writing about

you may not be plagiarizing but it may be related to something someone already wrote. I

think a good example of that is the bible because yeah It may not be plagiarized but if you

think about it how many other books are there of someone divine? And how do we know

which one came first? They may not say the exact same thing but they both talk about a

higher divine person.

According to Borg members of a discourse community all share a similar goal and

they all assist each other reach it. Swale’s gave us as similar example to Borg’s the

difference is that Borg says that membership of a discourse community is a matter of

choice. Borg tells us that Swales and Porter no matter how good they explain to us

discourse communities, none of them explained to us how big or small these communities

actually are. They also don’t inform us if speech is needed for a community. The biggest

point Borg brought up was to ask yourself if there is a purpose for a discourse community.

Methods
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We have three methods that we used for researching our discourse community

which are interviews, surveys and observations. We first interviewed our sources by asking

certain questions while searching for a article. Then we also interviewed our teacher which

ended with him answering every question we had. We also tried to know everything that he

knew about discourse communities which gave us another perspective on discourse

communities.

Last week we had to find twenty-one artifacts and then fit them under a category.

That fits into surveyed because we were basically finding images that had to be fit into one

of the characteristics swales gave us. For surveys we basically surveyed every research data

base we laid our eyes on even if they didn’t give us what we needed we still asked them a

question and we always got a response.

In my 1301 class we learned that we have to be very observant because you may

always miss something even if you think its small, it will always be worth something.

Being observant made me also use some research databases that aren’t common but are

really helpful. Our observations made us compare everyone’s definition of a discourse

community. It helped us make a comparison and learn from everyone’s different

discussion.

Discussion
Swales, Porter, Borg are all great authors who made me discover that a

discourse community revolves around this one main characteristic known as an academic

evaluation, Porter showed us by informing us of intertextuality, Kain&Wardle’s activity

theory, and Borg explains a academic discourse community.

Dr.Vierra’s class is a discourse community, it shares a public goal. My evidence

comes from not only statistics but also logic because why else are we in school, to fail? We
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don’t pay nine hundred dollars for a class then just decide to fail it at some point we are all

trying to pass. Which gives us our characteristic of a common public goal.

Dr. Vierra professes with intercommunication, because everything we have done is

online. Like using our laptop which is already a form of intercommunication but not only

that he also uses OneDrive with us so we can always be a click away from communicating.

This class has been 99% of just intercommunication, which is good because it fits in with

today’s society.

Our brain is receiving info and giving feedback because of Dr. Vierra which

demonstrates this class as a discourse community. The way it works is that when Mr.

Vierra professes we receive info and when he asks us questions we give him feedback to

show that we are learning.

On our fourth characteristic that Swales shared with us is genre. Every second of

every day in this class, we always use Microsoft word or PowerPoint or any other

application that helps us. Another way of proving that our classroom fits into a discourse

community because it doesn’t only have 1 genre it has endless amounts of genres.

Vocabulary is a bit tricky because not every class asks of you what this one does

even if it is the college level, but a good example of vocabulary used in this class that

makes us a discourse community is Academic English. Because we all have to use it every

day in our after class activities given to us by Mr. Vierra. That way he can prepare us on

how to look more professional when writing. Looking more professional will help us in the

future when we are trying to get a job that requires high academic standards.

The king of the classroom also known as Mr. Vierra is always telling us what to do.

This little example shows us our final characteristic given to us by Swales which is

hierarchy. Mr. Vierra is obviously not a king but he definitely has more power than us. For
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example he can determine whether how much work we have to do and if whether we’ll pass

this class and of course if you don’t listen to a king’s orders you will likely be decapitated

or in our case we will fail.

Conclusion
So what we learned about discourse communities and why this classroom is a

discourse community. Swales, Porter, Kain & Wardle, and Borg all gave us similar reasons

on what makes something a discourse community. Especially why a discourse community

and every single characteristic fits into a classroom or almost anything in life. 6 of Swales

examples were given in how they were used in class and why we are a discourse

community.
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References
Borg, E. (2003). Discourse community. ELT journal, 57(4), 398-400.

Leitch, V. B. (1982). Deconstructive criticism: An advanced introduction Columbia

University Press.

Kain, D., & Wardle, E. (2014). Activity theory: An introduction for the writing

classroom. Wardle and Downs, 273-283.

Porter, J. E. (1986). Intertextuality and the discourse community. Rhetoric review, 5(1),

34-47.

Swales, J. (2014). The concept of discourse community. Wardle and Downs, 215-28.