Swales' (1990) criteria to discourse communities

 Recognizing a discourse community

In the light of Swales’ (1990) criteria to recognise discourse communities, six main concepts may well serve to evaluate if a particular group of people belongs to a discourse community or not. These requirements are the ones described in the present work.

Swales (1990) supports that a discourse community shares some common goals. The members of a group prevail together in pursuit of agreed objectives. As Hoffman-Kip (2003) points out, the nature of human activities in cultural contexts are goal-oriented. Besides, the author supports the idea that “Over time, the group practices develop (…) normative ways of acting and belonging to the inquiry community. These practices reveal the values and expectations of the group.” (p. 4)

It can be said that a discourse community is mobilized by particular purposes shaped over time by its members. As Kelly-Kleese (2004) states, these groups consistently support the maintenance and promotion of the community purposes and mission.

Not only the pursuit of common goals but also the participation between members of a group and the exchange of information are fundamental factors to keep discourse communities alive. These two characteristics are directly interconnected. The former plays a positive role contributing towards satisfying needs. According to Wenzlaff and Waiseman (2004), participatory mechanisms foster collaboration, provide a powerful force for change, enhances opportunities for influencing decision-making processes and for connecting with colleagues. Participating in the discourse is a requirement usually expected in any culture as it is widely considered part of the conceptual scheme of the discourse community. However, quoting Kelly-Kleese (2001) communities "tend to minimize or exclude the participation of some people as they establish the dominance of others" (p. 3).

On the other hand, the exchange of information requires language as the primary medium of communication. Such characteristic is accurately described by the mentioned author who considers that a discourse community "is a group of people who share certain language-using practices... [that] can be seen as conventionalized" (p. 1) by social interactions within the group and in its dealings with outsiders. Members create policy and redefine language by sharing their knowledge and interpretations. Moreover, the author remarks that communities can be properly defined as a speech community rather than as a discourse community since much of the language is oral. Discourse communities are not isolated, as the author describes, they are flexible and allow for boundary crossing. Work on paragraph length.

Another important requirement of a discourse community is that it is characterized by community-specific genres. Members of a particular community do not just use but also contribute to create specific stylistic criteria for both oral and written texts. It is fundamental that these groups understand the conventions and standards by which their work will be evaluated. 

Swales describes that any discourse community should be characterized by a high specialised terminology and a high general level of expertise – two sound requirements which are tightly linked together. This first feature exhibits that members of certain community use words already known with community-specific meanings or that they coin new words.  Kelly-Kleese (2001) abides this idea that “The community college can be seen as adopting language that has been given particular meaning within the larger higher education community, meaning that is less applicable to its own community but is nonetheless consistently used”.

Rather than passively accepting predefined social realities, discourse communities members hold the ability to negotiate meanings and purposes. Such ability demands a high level of expertise of the language. The previously mentioned author describes this ability as what an individual must know in order to appropriately use language in specific discourse communities. “To put it another way, communicative competence implies that "individuals and groups with greater skill in using (and manipulating) the language system will exercise power in naming and thus controlling how others will view social reality".

To sum up, part of Kelly-Kleese work (2001) is cited, which clearly describes the six basic criteria necessary in order to recognise a discourse community as such. As highlighted before, these were identified by John Swales and analysed in this paper.

“The community college can be seen as a discourse community: 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)

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References

Hoffman-Kipp, P., Artiles, A. J., & Lopez Torres, I. (2003). Beyond reflection: teacher learning as praxis. Theory into Practice. Retrieved October 2007, from http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_mONQM/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

McLaughlin? & Talbert, 1993. (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

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_qa3960/is_200404/ai_n9349405