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Chen Lexi

Professor Marie

Ling12-MW11:00 A.M.

19 February 2019

How does The Bottom Line function as a discourse community?

Sociability is wired into humans’ DNA. Individuals with shared interest form into a

group. Gradually it has agreed goals, and members develop specific ways of

communication to reach the expectation. This group is called a discourse community, and

some characteristics are established within it. To start with, the group must have agreed

goals. Moreover, intercommunication occurs through certain medium. In addition, various

styles of contents and specific lexis are employed by the members. Last, each member has

different levels of expertise and positions. These features are defined by the linguistics

John Swales and have to be contained in the organization. There is an example of discourse

community on campus. The Bottom Line is a student-run and student-fund newspaper at

UCSB. With the aims of informing students updated information, different approaches to

intercommunicate, the uses of diverse writing styles and specific terms, and the distinct

positions assigned to members, The Bottom Line meets Swales’ definitions of a discourse

community. As a discourse community, The Bottom Line, or TBL, achieves its targets of

spreading the timely information to individuals.

According to Swales, common goals in a discourse community are public, and

“community members may join the organization with private hopes of commercial or
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romantic advancement.” (471). In other words, while the public expectation of organization

is known to members, personal motivation might not match to the big goal in the group.

For example, from the email, which introduces that TBL is an organization focusing on

producing news and provides an opportunity to learn photography, I knew their mission.

Because I was interested in learning taking pictures, I finally decided to take part in the

community. However, the deviation of personal original motivation from the group’s goals

does not reject the commitment to reaching common purposes. After getting trained by the

staff, I could dedicate my photography skills to delivering more information around the

campus to individuals in the future. Therefore, with the publicity of emails, TBL produces

better and more news to further its aims with assistances of newcomers.

In a discourse community, members must interact with each other by some

mechanisms and provide feedback through them (Swales 471-472). According to Annette

Ding, one of the news editors in TBL, members frequently use scheduled meetings, slack

and Google Doc to communicate with each other. The content is mainly about how to better

the quality of newspaper articles but vary slightly in different medium. One example about

intercommunication is Monday meeting in person conducted between the editorial board.

At the meeting, there are the editor in chief and the content editor, and section editors. The

editor in chief passes the reader feedback to the editors of individual sections. For the

content editors, they “sometimes just comment on the state of the writers” (Ding). Some

section editors might suggest new ideas to others’ sections, since they might not be aware

of some latest news. In addition, reviewing the papers and giving suggestions between the
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section editors occurs. Accordingly, this meeting provides the feedback from students and

other colleagues to section editors, helping them better the quality of newspaper articles.

Another tool used by section editors is Slack, an application for team communication.

The content is about submitting the articles and new topics to the content editors before the

end of Monday scheduled meeting. In slack, the editors might share their struggles with

each other and get some suggestions on the new ideas for the papers. Therefore, since the

news might change in the last minute, communication in Slack helps them get latest

information and develops a better quality of drafts. Last medium is shared Google Docs,

an application to keep every change in files immediately, making section editors receive

revision on their writing easily. In sum, the editors facilitate the progress of getting

feedbacks on writings by utilizing these three ways, improving their articles.

A discourse community also applies distinct genres to reach its purposes (Swales

472). Genre is featured as the style of contents, usually being written. The newspaper

published by TBL includes six sections: News, Features, Arts and Entertainment, Science

and Tech, Opinions, Photo and Video (The Bottom Line). In this way, each writer has

different requirements for writing articles in specific sections. For instance, Features and

Arts and Entertainment allow to involve emotion for describing a vivid picture to readers

(Ding). Conversely, when writing a news story, writers must have a lot of “guidelines to

be objective” (Ding). Annette usually uses concise sentences and describes “someone

said”, instead of “someone angrily declared” (Ding). Therefore, a news writer is merely

telling the truth to his readers without any emotional interpretation. Similarly, Science
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and Technology articles should not infer any intention by applying objective tones to

narrate the events. A related example of writing a scientific article is Hope Jahren’s

dissertation paper. Even though Jahren describes her struggles with getting grant to do

research projects in some sections of Lab Girl, she maintains objective in her dissertation

paper, since it is about science. Therefore, the collection of accurate data and the

unbiased interpretations are cores of her paper. For instance, after deciding her thesis, she

collects data by using X-ray exposure and “get the readout”, indicating that “this mineral

is opal” (Jahren 70). Next, she incorporates the data, rather than personal statements, in

the paper. Therefore, writers convey the most accurate message to the readers by

maintaining objective on collecting information source and getting interpretations.

According to Swales, a discourse community has particular lexis (473). In TBL, the

most frequently used words are pitches and pieces. A pitch means that a general topic of

an event. The improbability held in Embarcadero Hall at Friday 8:00 p.m. is a good

example. Usually, the pitches are collected by each section editor and sent out by the

editor in chief to every staff on Tuesday. In Tuesday staff meeting, members choose the

pitches they want to cover and talk with the related section editors to get some ideas on

writing articles or doing photography. Once a pitch is being written, it is referred to as a

piece, or story. For instance, an article describing the improbability can be a piece. These

stories are not always published on the newspaper due to the limited space. However,

every story is on TBL’s website. Accordingly, the application of pitches and stories in

TBL makes the steps in writing articles clearer and communication among members
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more fluently.

The last features of a discourse community are people with different levels of

expertise having distinct positions and changing membership (Swales 473). In TBL, the

community consists of the editorial board, staff and contributing writers. The editorial

board is made up all the permanent staff. There are manager editors, specific content

editors and the reporter (The Bottom Line). Among the manager editors, the editor in

chief has the most power, who handles the “larger issues about the newspaper as a whole,

like the design and format of our newspaper and the creation of new positions” (Ding).

The other two main positions are managing editor and executive content editors. The

content editor manages the content, including articles, photos, videos, special projects,

corrections, and social media (The Bottom Line). Managing editors are the one who

manages advertising, and the operations of the paper, like payment to writers (The

Bottom Line). Every specific section editor only manages one section, like photography,

and sometimes guides staff to write a story required to submit no later than Monday to

the content editor. Also, there are some national beat reporters who stick to the national

news related to UCSB and editors who focus on the design of the newspaper. Not only

there are differences in the positions of the editorial board but between staffs. People who

first join the TBL are contributing writers, required to write at least one article per quarter

and being paid 13 dollars per article. After reaching 5 papers per quarter, a contributing

writer can be a staff and earn 15 dollars per article. Staff can later apply to be a specific

section editor. When an editor gets some leadership experiences, he can be considered as
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a senior member and has the chance to be one of the manager editors. The requirements

for application are basically the same, except that executive content has to be a former

section editor (Ding). Even though a clear distinction between members in the TBL, there

is no strict threshold for people to have membership. As long as one is driven by his

interest to join the club, he or she will not be rejected. In addition, graduation from UCSB

makes members quit the membership. Therefore, different positions in TBL make the

organization more united and publication more smoothly.

In a word, TBL is a discourse community because it is dedicated informing

ongoing issues to students through different writing genres. Inside the community, different

positions of members and various medium assist the efficiency of communication to better

reach its aims. Therefore, when collaborating to target the big goals in the community,

members learn valuable experiences. An analysis about a program training student to

produce online journals confirms the benefits of working together to learn journalism

writing. According to Dorothy Ni Uigin, Noelle Hiigns and Belinda McHale, participated

students in MA, a one-year program, enhance their academic writing skills while exploring

the realities of journalism (Uigin et al. 61). To be specific, participants not only need to

write academic articles, but have the power to name the journal and contact with peer-

reviewers and publishers to publish their articles. In this way, while learning journalism

writing, students are ahead of their peers when they gain more insight into the workplace

of journalism during the interaction with staff in this field.

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Works Cited

THE BOTTOM LINE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SANTA BARBARA. The bottom

line, https://thebottomline.as.ucsb.edu/about. Accessed 19 Feb. 2019.

Swales, John. “The Concept of Discourse Community.” Writing about Writing: A College

Reader, edited by Elizabeth Wardle and Doug Downs, Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2011, pp.

466-479. Originally published in Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research

Settings, Cambridge University Press, 1990, pp. 21-32.

Jahren, Hope. Lab Girl. 1st ed., Vintage, 2017.

Ní Uigín, Dorothy, et al. “The Benefits of Student-Led, Peer-Reviewed Journals in
Enhancing Students' Engagement with the Academy.” Research in Education, vol. 93,
no. 1, 2015, pp. 60–65. DOI: 10.7227/RIE.0010. Accessed 26 February 2019.
Ding, Annette. Personal interview. 19 Feb. 2019