Running Page: DISCOURSE COMMUNITIES: MATH MAJOR

DISCOURSE COMMUNITIES: EDUCATION MAJOR

Rebeca A. Bordier

University of Texas at El Paso

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DISCOURSE COMMUNITES: MATH MAJOR

Introduction

A discourse community consists in a group of people that work together to achieve a

common goal. I chose EPISD as my discourse community, because this school district works

together to give better education to kids. I interviewed a math teacher at Jefferson High School,

Claudia Torres, and had her explain how Swales and Porters ideologies work through her

everyday life and how this discourse community (EPISD) works. I will be talking about how

Swales six rules to describing a discourse community fall into place in this particular discourse

community.

Literature Review

Swales describes a discourse community as followed, A discourse community is a

group of individuals bound by a common interest who communicate through approved channels

and whose discourse is regulated (Porter, 1986, p. 400). Swales claims that there are six

characteristics that a discourse community must fallow in order to be a discourse community.

They are listed like this, 1. A discourse community has a broadly agreed set of common public

goals.2. A discourse community has mechanisms of intercommunication among its members.3.

A discourse community uses its participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information and

feedback.4. A discourse community utilizes and hence possesses one or more genres in the

communicative furtherance of its aims. 5. In addition to owning genres, a discourse community

has acquired some specific lexis.6. A discourse community has a threshold level of members

with a suitable degree of relevant content and discoursal expertise (Swales, 1990, p..220-222).

Porter has a similar definition to what Swales said, and it reads like this, A discourse

community is a group of individuals bound by a common interest who communicate through

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approved channels and whose discourse is regulated (Porter, pg. 400). These definitions are

very similar as you can see, you would thing that is the same definition but in their own words.

This is a concept that Porter calls intertextuality, his says, This is the principle we know as

intertextuality, the principle that all writing and speech indeed, all signs arise from a single

network (pg. 396). What this means is that an idea isnt completely yours. The idea even at its

simplest form came from something else. For example, the idea of discourse communities, there

are many authors that write their own definitions on this subject based on other authors and so

on.

Methods

As a primary source of research I interviewed Mrs. Torres, as I stated before, I asked

what where her everyday tasks and how the district works. She says she gets special topics that

she has to teach the kids, different rules that she has to follow as well as other things that come

with the job. She says it is a hard job, with a lot of work that she has to do at home, but it

certainly pays off and at the end its all for the kids. Mrs. Torres explained to me that there are a

lot of requirements to be certified as a teacher. There are many tests that they have to pass, have

good character, and an even better attitude. I used a webpage called, digitalarchives.wa.gov to

have some background before asking questions about the district. This website tells you how a

school district works and based on this research I found that it works like this from top to

bottom: School Board, which is a group of people elected by voters to set goals, conduct

strategic planning, hire and oversee the superintendent, adopt the school district budget and

create policy. The superintendents, hired by the school board to manage the school district. The

principal, which reports to the superintendent, manages staff and student body and day-to-day

operations of the school. And finally teachers which report to the principal and teach the kids. I
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told Mrs. Torres and she told me that this was basically what it was and that it is very effective in

achieving their goal which is providing a safe environment for the kids and for them to learn all

the concepts.

Discussion

So how exactly do Swales and Porter fit into the EPISD community? Lets break it down.

Swales first characteristic says A discourse community has a broadly agreed set of common

public goals, The public goal in the school district is to provide a better education and a safe

environment for the kids. The second: A discourse community has mechanisms of

intercommunication among its members, where in EPISD they communicate by meetings,

emails, and trainings, according to Mrs. Torres. Three, A discourse community uses its

participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information and feedback, In the district,

teachers are required to give out exams every so often so that way the district can see how

students are doing, also teachers need to input at least 3 grades per week into the system. For

number four, A discourse community utilizes and hence possesses one or more genres in the

communicative furtherance of its aim, a genre in this school district would be: different subjects

that the teachers have to give. Five, In addition to owning genres, a discourse community has

acquired some specific lexis, lexis are words that other people might not understand if they

arent involved in what you are, for example in dance the term pli, or within the school, TEFL

which means Teaching English as a Foreign Language. And last for the Swales test, A

discourse community has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content

and discoursal expertise, in this case: The school board, the superintendents, the schools, the

principals, the teachers, and the students.

CONCLUSION
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In conclusion, from this project, I learned that there are various ways that a school district

can be a discourse community, People had a common goal and they achieved it by making

school districts to help kids get a good education. Even though it is not clear at first how this

would classify as a discourse community, the Swales test helps us understand and prove for

ourselves that school districts are indeed a discourse community and people work together to

keep this community alive. There are many communication methods in a school district but the

most common ones are email, and conferences. Even with people who arent really part of the

school district, like the parents of the kids.

References

Swales, John M. The Concept of Discourse Community. Genre Analysis: English in

Academic and Research Settings. Cambridge [England: Cambridge UP 1990. Print

Porter, J. E. (1992). Audience and rhetoric: an archaeological composition of the

discourse community. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.