What is a discourse community?

Discourse community is described by many researchers and theorists such as Bizzel (1992, cited in Pintos, 2008) as a knowledge community; this is, certain values, aims, expectations and language-using practices that are socially constructed by people bounded together due to a set of conventions. Moreover, other factors like society, economy, geography and profession shape a discourse community.
In order to describe the characteristics of people who are part of a discourse community, Swales (1990) set up the following basis for acknowledgement:
Common goals: membership involves group objectives achievement and sharing interests. Interactions with the people in one's environment are major determinants of both what is learned and how learning takes place. The sociocentric view of knowledge and learning holds that what we take as knowledge and how we think and express ideas are the products of the interactions of groups of people over time (Soltis, 1981, cited in Wenzlaff & Wieseman, 2004). It is important to note that this learning is not a unidirectional phenomenon. The community, too, changes through the ideas and ways of thinking that new members bring to it (Putnam & Borko, 2000, cited in Wenzlaff & Wieseman, 2004).
Participatory mechanisms: members interact with each other. This process allows information to circulate within the community. Members also provide assessment, feedback. When discussing this issue, Wenzlaff and Wieseman (2004) explain:
During the first academic year of the two-year program, two faculties made site visits to the teachers' classrooms. The individual teachers facilitated the purpose and structure of the site visits. For example, the faculty observed the teachers implementing models of teaching and various assessment methods, and acted as coaches regarding teachers' research projects. Additionally, teachers engaged in professional discourse and group work through face-to-face study groups, electronic bulletin board discussions and electronic chat sessions (Context of the study section, para.6).
Information exchange, that takes place within the discourse community. At this respect, Porter (1992, cited in Kelly-Kleese, 2001) indicates that though discourse communities interact with each other, it is not possible to mark where a community ends and another one begins. Flexible boundaries enable discourse communities to interconnect with each other.
Community-Specific Genres, Swales (1990) states the idea of membership awareness and a given testimony provided by the members of a certain discourse community to prove it. According to Hoffman-Kipp, Artiles and Lopez Torres (2003), the fact that discourse community members share certain characteristics such as genre and conventions highly contributes to gather them together and nurtures a sense of collective identity. Hence, development of a social language, community specific, takes place.
Highly Specialized Terminology; the development of a social language within a discourse community (Hoffman-Kipp et al, 2003) derives into what Kelly-Kleese (2004) defines as speech community, that uses specific language in academic contexts.
High General Level of Expertise; discourse communities not only demand but support academic literacy as well. At this respect, members should attain professional development. For example, taking into consideration professional learning communities, Howley and Howley (2005) state that “grounded in management approaches such as Total Quality Management, some improvement strategies involve educators in the establishment of standards and benchmarks followed by an ongoing process of assessment and classroom-level reform”. (Data-based improvement section).
In conclusion, a discourse community is seen as a social construction -information exchange- that should meet certain requirements to be recognized as such. Moreover, it is also defined as a social mechanism that holds people together –via sharing common goals- for a certain period of time, which depends not only on the will of its members but on the influences of another discourse community as well. Case studies often provide useful information -participatory mechanisms- about a community, mainly because of the specific literate behaviors or skills -high level of expertise, highly specialized terminology- that members of discourse communities demonstrate.












References

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Pintos, V. (2008) Unit 1: Building up a community of teachers and prospective researchers. [PDF document]. Retrieved August 15, 2009, from http://caece.campusuniversidad.com.ar/mod/resource/view.php?id=2730

Swales, J. M. (1990). Genre analysis: English in academic and research
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