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Victoria Moreno
Wilson
Writing 2
3 June 2016
WP2 Final Portfolio
Depression: the silent and invisible plague taking over the lives of many and
affecting even more. Todays youth is slowly slipping into the grips of major depression
disorder and severe anxiety or stress. This topic holds no boundaries or limitations and
can be discussed throughout many academic fields. As you and your fellow college
classmates begin to explore the many different academic discourses college has to offer,
keep in mind that along with each discourse, comes a discourse community that
withholds certain expectations, limits, and purposes unique to their own. To give you a
better idea of what this means, Ill break down an example of two distinct discourse
communities (psychology community and library science community) discussing one
shared topic: teenagers and depression, and give you a few key things you will need to
know to do well in each discipline.
When looking into articles or research regarding teen depression and anxiety or
stress, you should: first, determine what disciplines you are looking at, next, aim to
establish the discourses goals ,and finally, analyze the ways in which the academic
disciplines approach the topic. Psychologists view depression through the use of logic
and facts, reports of studies and findings, and ultimately a lack of emotion. They look at
the physical and mental distraught provoked onto a victim, along with the effects it has
on the victims functionality in life and simply experiment with their results to discover

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new findings. In counter, librarians approach depression with empathy, recognition of
past traumatic events, and the emotional toll they take on teen lives, along with providing
ways librarians specifically can help teens cope with depression, such as, create a library
that is safe and comfortable or reestablish library services, hours, and other routines.
Looking at Swales definition of a discourse community, A discourse community has a
broadly agreed set of common public goals (Swales 471), it should be clear to you what
the goals of each discipline described above are. The goals for each discourse
community are: to provide readers with logic and reason; versus emotion and
understanding, psychology vs. library science, respectively.
The library science discourse community does not have much factual knowledge
on depression in teenagers, thus in articles discussing this topic authors must include
definitions and provide information to the reader. In an article, Jami L. Jones, an assistant
professor in the Department of Library Science and Instructional Technology, structures
her article to serve the librarian audience. She begins the article with definitions of the
terms she discusses throughout the article. A reason she does this/ you should do this, is
not only to create a sense of communication to your audience, but also to keep them
engaged, comprehensive, and understanding of what you are expecting of them (if you
plan on proposing action). This is particularly important to this field of study because
they value educating their readers and providing opportunities for readers to take action.
Jones does this directly when she says, In a world that is becoming increasingly more
dangerous and stressful, there are ways librarians can help teens cope with trauma and
depression (Jones 32). Like this, you can either directly communicate with your readers

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or more subtly address them by bringing up ways to help with teens and depression and
not specifically ways librarians can help.
With the library science field taking a more emotional approach to depression in
teens, we see articles more often congruently discussed with other emotional upsets.
Joness article ties depression closely to trauma. On page 31 she says, Like trauma,
depression is expressed physically, emotionally, cognitively, and behaviorally (Jones
32). This further expresses the point of view this discourse sees and exemplifies the
emotionality you should consider adding to your papers or assignments in the course.
In contrast, psychologists perspectives stem from a more unemotional approach.
In Bernice Andrewss study, The relation of depression and anxiety to life-stress and
achievement in students he questions the connections between depression and stress
levels at the beginning and mid-entry of college. Through his research we see that
psychologists look for connections between depression and other various variables to
analyze and report, rather than to sympathize with the emotions placed on individuals
suffering as seen in the library science perspective. As you enter the field of psychology,
remain disconnected from your emotions and primarily focus on the studies and results.
In addition to the level of difference in emotion between the two genres,
Andrewss piece had entirely different vocabulary and structure. In the Methods
section Andrews states, We employed a longitudinal design (Andrews 511). The
term longitudinal design is not broken down or explained to the reader because it is
already assumed the reader is in the specified academic disciplinary field, thus should
already know the terms meaning. As Carroll reassures this with stating, Audience can
determine the type of language used, the formality of the discourse ( Carroll 49).

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Furthering this, the data found in the study is only examined and analyzed, but not
thoroughly explained, once again, because the reader should be knowledgeable in the
community. He wants his audience, psychologists, to further study this topic and
relationship to provide information to educational and health policies, whereas Jones in
the library science discourse community strived for her audience to make changes in their
lives to help the prevalence of depression in teens.
Academic disciplines have characteristics that are especially serving to their
specific audiences. Be conscientious of the assignments given to you and the discourse
community in which you were assigned them. Dirk discusses the idea of location of the
assignment, audience expectations, context used, differences in the papers, [all] based on
discourse. He says, Your goal is to recognize these shifts in location and to be aware of
how such shifts might affect your writing (Dirks 256). This recognition and
acknowledgement will help you to better understand the readings, lectures, and research
you encounter in each of your courses.
Psychologists see depression as a variable to a persons life and examines the
ways in which it can negatively affect them. They withdraw emotions and serve solely as
a relayer of research information to their discourse. The library science perspective takes
a dive into an emotional perspective and analyzes the struggles teens cope with, while
implementing new ways to help them. These two distinct academic discourses prove that
although you may not think a discourse community is concerned with a particular topic, it
can be in its own way. Knowledge of the expectations, limits, and purposes for whatever
academic course you are studying, will be of immense help. My advice to you would be
to listen to Carroll once more, the more we know about how to analyze situations and

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draw informed conclusions, the better we can become at making savvy judgments about
the people, situations, and media we encounter (Carroll 46). Learn these skills now and
forever appreciate them in your future!

Works Cited
Jones, Jami L. Freak Out or Melt Down: Teen Responses to Trauma and Depression.
(n.d.): n. pag. Web.

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Andrews, Bernice, and John M. Wilding. The Relation of Depression and Anxiety to
Life-stress and achievement in Students. British Journal of Psychology 95.4 (2004):
509-21. Web.
Lowe, Charles, and Pavel Zemliansky. Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing. West
Lafayette, IN: Parlor, 2010. Print.
Swales, John M. "The Concept of Discourse Community." Genre Analysis: English in
Academic and Research Settings. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1990. N. pag. Print.
Wardle, Elizabeth A., and Doug Downs. Writing about Writing: A College Reader.
Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2011. Print.

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