intro & synthesis for proj 3

Stereotypes. They are everywhere we look around. No matter how much someone says, “I don’t place others into a specific stereotype,” the concept is still present. What about sorority girls? What is your first instinct about them as a whole? I am sure that most of you, like most people, automatically thought: fake, snotty, and wealthy. Many people would not consider them to be a discourse community, which is a group of people with a common goal. When one looks into what a sorority’s standards are based on, they may think twice about how they judge sororities and how they can relate the topic of “discourse community.”

            The actual term “discourse community” has several meanings to different scholars, and with those different meanings comes different aspects of the word. For example, Professor James Paul Gee does not refer coined the term Discourse, which has very similar concepts as a discourse community, but with a different name. Also, Elizabeth Wardle believes discourse communities should be considered activity systems because the members are constantly learning new ways to interact and communicate with fellow members. Unlike these two scholars, in his article, The Concept of Discourse Community,” John Swales discusses, what he believes to be the six characteristics of an actual discourse community.

Swales argues that a discourse community must meet every standard that he lists in order to be considered a discourse community. He directly tells readers: “I would now like to propose six defining characteristic that will be necessary and sufficient for identifying a group of individuals as a discourse community” (471). His six characteristics are as follows: a discourse community must have a broad set of public goals and objectives, it needs to have several mechanisms to allow intercommunication among the members, the mechanisms must allow members to receive information and give feedback, the discourse community must have one or more genres (topics and form that it uses), the DC must provide a lexis (vocabulary and language that every member can identify with), and new members must be allowed to enter, while old ones are still present in the discourse community. Swales distinctly explains his ideas regarding discourse communities to his audience. He focuses on the presumption that all discourse communities have his six characteristics.

Unlike Swales, Gee has a much broader sense of the term. He explains how there are four different types of Discourses. A primary Discourse, which occurs early in life and consists of home life and being with one’s family. A secondary Discourse, which is made up of public institutions, such as churches, schools, or other organizations. He also discusses the idea of dominant and non-dominant Discourse. He believes that dominant Discourses “... are secondary Discourses the mastery of which... brings with it the acquisition of social ‘goods’” (485), and that non-dominant Discourses “... are secondary Discourses the mastery of which brings solidarity with a particular social network” (485). Gee points out that different Discourses bring new knowledge to the people involved.

Similar to Swales, Gee does believe that language is an important aspect in literacy skills and social aspects. Although Swales believes each discourse community should have a distinct lexis, Gee emphasizes the language should be about what people, but about how they say it. To add to his idea, he informs readers that “it is not just how you say it, but what you are and do when you say it” (483). Gee is emphasizing the idea that language is not just grammar, but a way of life. Language can be misinterpreted by members outside of the Discourse. In the article “Materiality and Genre in the Study of Discourse Communities,” Amy J. Devitt writes about miscommunication among, what she refers to as specialists and nonspecialists. Specialists are members of a certain discourse community that are familiar with the genre, and nonspecialists are outsiders that try to understand the discourse community’s genre, but are not given enough information to comprehend the language. Devitt states, “Part of the difficulty when specialized communities write to nonspecialists users lies in technical language, a difficulty commonly... addressed through defining key terms...” (101). She wants specialists to realize that they must be able to fully communicate with nonspecialists to prevent confusion and misinterpretations.

In her article, “Identity, Authority, and Learning to Write in New Workplaces,” Elizabeth Wardle gives a crucial example of how miscommunication can ultimately affect one’s ability to survive in his or her workplace. Her idea of creating an identity and authority can be compared to Swales forth and fifth characteristics of a discourse community, which discuss genre and lexis. Wardle’s believes that authority “is bestowed by institutions, can be easily withdrawn by [members], and must be maintained through appropriate expressions of authority” (525-526). Also, authority can be withdrawn at any time. In her article, Wardle gives an example of how a man named Allen misunderstood his authority within the activity system and ended up leaving his job. The main reason for his misinterpretation of the position was because Allen never adapted to the group’s genre and language. He commonly used emails to get ahold of fellow workers, and he was unaware that they simply ignored the emails. Since they never responded, Allen thought he had much more power than what was actually the case. Similar to Devitt’s ideas, Wardle proved that miscommunication will cause confusion and ultimately affect a person’s life.