Discourse Community
Not all communities are discourse communities. According
to Swales (1990), there is a list of six specific criteria for determining if a
community is in fact a discourse community.
In the first place, a discourse community has a broadly
agreed set of common goals. Every discourse community has ideas or goals set
forth to be accomplished. The cohort program exemplifies this characteristic.
As Putnam & Borko (2000) stated:
The program aimed to: provide teachers with the
confidence to connect what they do in their classrooms to research-informed
practices; immerse teachers in a collaborative culture that allowed them to
learn from one another as colleagues; consider teacher input in course content
and structure design.
(As cited in Wenzlaff
& Wieseman, 2004, para. 2).
Thus, they [teachers]
were "a team working toward the same goal," one teacher stated (as cited
in Wenzlaff & Wieseman, 2004, The Cohort Becomes a Collaborative Culture
section, para. 3). According to Kutz (1997):
The community college can be seen as a subset
of this larger discourse community and also as a discourse community in its own
right. Its members have, over time, developed a common discourse that involves
shared knowledge, common purposes, common relationships, and similar attitudes
and values. (As cited in Kelly-Kleese, 2004, The Community College as a
Discourse Community section, para. 2).
In the second place, there must be participatory mechanisms
to provide information and feedback. Teacher reflection and learning emerge in
social practice. Through the use of a cohort-based program, according to Mycue
(2001), “group work may be a key to meaningful, effective, sustained
professional development and a necessary component of adult learning” (as cited
in Wenzlaff & Wieseman, 2004, Teacher Learning in a Collaborative Culture
section, para. 4). “One of the important aspects that the professors learned
when teaching in the cohort was to be constantly in step with the teachers. […]
Not only did teachers grow and learn as professionals, the professors as teachers
also grew professionally” (Wenzlaff & Wieseman, 2004, Context of the Study,
para. 8). According to Hoffman-Kipp, Artiles & Lopez Torres (2003), the nature
of human activity in cultural contexts supports learning environments where
people collaborate, provide solutions to problems, and rely on more experienced
members of the activity system. “… [T]eachers
are participating in the construction of knowledge as well as crafting
identities.” (Hoffman-Kipp, Artiles & Lopez Torres, 2003, Teacher
reflection and learning emerge in social practice section, para. 2).
In the third place, the community members have to be
intercommunicated, so there must be information exchange. Teachers interact
with their colleagues in activities that require communication and exchange of
ideas where reflection is not kept in the mind of the individual but is distributed through the social activity
of the school community. (Hoffman-Kipp, Artiles & Lopez Torres, 2003).
In the fourth place, the community must be defined by a
genre; there must be a community-specific genre. A discourse community utilizes
and hence possesses one or more genres in the communicative furtherance of its
aims. As Kutz (1997) stated, “communicative competence is described as what one
must know in order to use language appropriately in particular discourse
communities.” (as cited in Kelly-Kleese, 2001, Communicative Competence and
Boundaries section, para. 1). According to Cole (1999), “culture itself
mediates human actions in the sense that it is a system of shared meanings or
social inheritances embodied in the artifacts of a given social structure.” (As
cited in Hoffman-Kipp, Artiles & Lopez Torres, 2003, Teacher reflection and
learning are culturally mediated section, para. 1).
In
the fifth place, information should be exchanged through a highly specialized
terminology. Every discourse community has its own specific lexis. According to
Kutz (1997) “…discourse communities share understandings about how to
communicate knowledge and achieve shared purposes, and they exhibit a flow of
discourse that has a particular structure and style.” (as cited in Kelly-Kleese,
2004, The Community College as a Discourse Community section, para. 2).
Last but not least, the community members should achieve
a high general level of expertise. The community members have a suitable degree
of discoursal expertise. Every community has experienced members and less
experienced members. Survival of the community depends on a reasonable ration
between novices and experts.
In conclusion, a discourse community is a group of
communicators with common goals. As McLaughlin & Talbert (1993) asserted, it
“cannot exist in the absence of a collaborative culture and an environment that
supports risk-taking and reflection.” (As cited in Wenzlaff & Wieseman, 2004,
Summary and Implications section, para. 2).
References
Kelly-Kleese, C. (2004). UCLA community college review: community
college scholarship
and discourse. Community
College Review. Retrieved October 2007, fromhttp://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, fromhttp://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3960/is_200404/ai_n9349405
