Discourse Community: Industrial Engineering University of Arkansas - Research Paper Example

Diego Zegada Luis Marin ENGL 1023 12/11 Essay # 4: Disciplinary Analysis Like it or not we all belong to a number of different communities. All it takes for a group to be considered a discourse community is for them to meet Swales six characteristics. This paper will concentrate on proving that the Industrial Engineering community at the University of Arkansas contains all the elements described by Swales and further analyzing the group to prove its status as a discourse community. John Swales gives a definition of a discourse community in "The Concept of Discourse Community". In this piece, he states the six essential characteristics for a group to be considered a discourse community. The first characteristic of a discourse community according to Swales is that the group should have a "broadly agreed set of common public goals" (Swales). The goals might be formally inscribed in documents and kept private, or they might be public goals. People may join speech and discourse communities for many reasons such as personal interest, professional settings or other personal matters. The second characteristic that Swales mentions is that "a discourse community has mechanisms of intercommunication among its members."(Swales) This characteristic will change depending on the community that is being analyzed. The third characteristic of a discourse community "uses its participatory mechanism primarily to provide information and feedback" (Swales). This means that participation in a community is really important because not choosing to participate in any decision-making processes might make it easy for the whole group to exclude your individual input. The information that is being exchanged in a discourse community allows feedback to be exchanged successfully. Swales fourth characteristic states that a "discourse community utilizes and hence possesses one or more genres in the communicative furtherance of its aims" (Swales). It is one of the many goals of discourse communities to improve the expectations of the group. These expectations may refer to every single gesture of the community such as topics, form, function and duties. The fifth nature of a discourse community is that" they must have not only acquired genres, but discourse communities must also have acquired some specific lexis". Generating personal lexis for the community improves the communication between members. The sixth characteristic of a discourse community is that it should have "a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discoursal expertise" (Swales). The number of people who constitute a discourse community may change depending on the circumstances and the nature of the group, but the most important thing is that there is always a reasonable number of members in a discourse community to facilitate a reasonable level of communication and feedback. This aspect is usually realized through new admission of new members into the group In "Intertextuality and the Discourse Community" by Gee, Covino & Jolliffe, and Wardler, defines discourse community a little different. The author defines it as "a group of individuals bound by a common interest who communicate through approved channels and whose discourse is regulated" (Gee, Covino & Jolliffe, and Wardler, 400). He calls the approved channels "forums," where each forum has a defined history and laws controlling the appropriateness to which members are obliged to adhere. For this assignment, I decided to analyze the Industrial Engineering community at the University of Arkansas because I have been involved with it the last three years. Currently I am a cursing my third and last year as an Industrial engineering student at the University of Arkansas. I started as a sophomore in industrial engineering before gaining interest in Industrial Engineering at the University of Arkansas. Later on, I decided to join the Industrial Engineering and became its member three years ago. During my admission into the course, I experienced a normal experience as a normal college student would experience during the student. The firs few days of my admission into the Industrial Engineering course at the University of Arkansas was full of a lot of expectation and excitement. In my first few day, I spend a lot of time interacting with the instructors and fellow students to try to gain more understanding of the course and the community at large. I spend a lot of time collecting data relating to the discourse community through continued interaction with the students and instructors of the industrial engineering of university of Arkansas. This data was very important for my stay for the rest of my time as a member of the Industrial Engineering discourse community at the University Of Arkansas. Later, I used the knowledge I collected to position myself as one of the most valuable and knowledgeable member of the discourse community. None the less, my colleagues were very friendly and social, a character that made it very easy for me to collect data and information relating to the Industrial Engineering course from them. Also, I obtained additional information and data that relates to the Industrial Engineering of the University of Arkansas from documents that were readily available. Such documents include the industrial engineering handbook, research papers that were available in the industrial engineering catalogue and other information that were readily available for my perusal. The information I obtained was very important and relevant to improving my knowledge as a member of the industrial engineering of the University of Arkansas. To complete my evaluation, I took about a month to gather all my observations and information of this discourse community. This time was split in meeting with the other Industrial Engineering students and instructors. The meeting gave me a lot of more information that was necessary for any member of the industrial engineering of the University of Arkansas. As such, I was in a position to learn all the key features that the Industrial Engineering of the University of Arkansas identifies itself with. Thus, I came to get an ample time to learn their mode of communication, lexis, feedback, common goals and what makes them unique from other groups but similar within themselves. As well, I got an opportunity to learn their set of rule and regulations as a new member of the Industrial Engineering of the University of Arkansas. The Industrial Engineering community in the University of Arkansas is an example of a discourse community that meets the six criteria defined by Swales. First of all, they do have a "broadly agreed on a set of common public goals"; the Industrial Engineering community in the University of Arkansas has three common goals that are observed by all of its members. Listed in the Industrial Engineering Handbook the goals are as follows: “1. successfully applied core industrial engineering knowledge and skills for industrial or public sector organizations. 2. Successfully pursued advanced professional degrees, graduate studies in industrial engineering, professional training, or engineering certification3. Demonstrated professional and intellectual growth as managers and leaders in industrial engineering, society, and their communities.” (Department of Industrial Engineering University of Arkansas, 5) Another reason to believe this is a discourse community is because it does "have mechanisms of intercommunication among their members". The mechanism of intercommunication among members of the Industrial Engineering University of Arkansas include the use of lectures by instructors to pass knowledge to the students. Also, the discourse community use email to pass information to instructors, undergraduate students and graduate students on issue regarding appointments and other relevant information to the discourse community (Gibadi, 45). The members of this particular discourse community use a grading system to give feedback. In this system students are given tests and homework which are later graded to provide the students feedback on their performance. Additionally, the students fill evaluation forms so that the instructors can get a feedback how effective the teaching was to the students. This is accordance with Swale’s third criteria that a discourse community has mechanisms primarily provide information and feedback. Moreover, there are different genres such as lab reports, journal articles, presentations and reports as the means of communication in furtherance of its aim. This method was used by my partner and me for us to communicate our creative ideas in regards to how we wanted the industrial engineering to look like. (Avakian, 48). There should be a specific lexis acquired in a discourse community and this group there was a variety of Lexis going around. For example, the Industrial Engineers talked with each other using terms exclusive to the Industrial Engineering field community that required experience the field to understand fully. Among the lexis were us of terms such as INEG to refer to industrial engineering, the name blackboard to refer to website where the student communicate. Additionally, the members use the term Bell to refer to engineering building (Davy & Davy, 89). All these lexis were unique to this discourse community and I had never heard about them but the industrial engineers understood them. Swales also said that the last characteristic was that "a discourse community has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discoursal expertise" and this community certainly had a level of instructors and the student. For instance, the instructors were required to have PhD and in-depth knowledge in industrial engineering while the graduate student were required to have undergraduate degree to the group In conclusion, the community that was born out of the gathering of different instructors and students to form the Industrial Engineering University of Arkansas discourse community. Their possession of all the six characteristics as proposed by Swale proves that they are a discourse community, and an effective one at that. By analyzing what Swales meant in his literature piece where he outlined the criteria necessary to form a discourse community and applying the data gathered by my observation, this paper efficiently discussed the characteristics that classify this group as a discourse community. Works Cited Avakian, Arlene V, and Barbara Haber. How Engineers aid in the Industrial Engineering Field Massachusetts, Mass: University of Massachusetts Press, 2005. Print. Davy, Humphry, and John Davy.  in the Industrial Engineering Field Davy. London: Smith, Elder, 1839. Print. Gee, Covino & Jolliffe, and Wardle. Intersexuality and the Discourse Community. Writing about Writing. (2011). Boston: Bedford St. Martins. Gibaldi, Joseph. Industrial Community University of Arkansa. , 2008. Print. Swales, J. The Concept of Discourse Community. Writing about Writing (1990). Boston: Bedford St. Martins. Read More