Evidence to Support Swales’ (1990)Theory of Discourse Community

          Swales (1990) defines what a discourse community is and proposes six characteristics for identifying one. The aim of this paper is to define what a discourse community is by presenting cites  from different authors evidencing and supporting Swales’ (1990) ideas.

          The first and second characteristics have to do with having an agreed set of common public goals and a mechanism of intercommunication among its members. Regarding these characteristic, Hoffman, Artile and Lopez Torres, L (2003) stated that “Teachers interact with colleagues in goal-directed activities that require communication and the exchange of ideas […]” (Hoffman et al., 2003)

          The third characteristic is about information exchanges and feedback. This  can be evidenced by the following idea presented by 4th grade teacher “Not only impart learning to teacher but learn and accept information from them as well as very often we can learn from each other” (as cited in Wenzlaff & Wieseman, 2004).

          Swales (1990) states that discourse communities should also have community-specific genres with highly specialized terminology. Regarding these features Kelly-Kleese, (2001) states the following: “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”

          The last characteristic, concerning the level of expertise the members of a discourse community, is evidenced by the following statement by Boyer (1987), “While not all [faculty members] are or should be publishing researchers, they, nonetheless, should be first rate scholars” (as cited in Kelly-Kleese, 2004)

          To conclude, the cites from authors like Boyer (1987), Hoffman, Artile, Lopez Torres (2003) or Kelly-Kleese (2004) mentioned above show that the six characteristics mentioned by Swales (1990), may  refer to a discourse community. These principles are reflected on most academic articles.

     References

Hoffman-Kipp, P., Artile, 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

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