John Swales’ The Concept of Discourse Community
In John Swales’ The Concept of Discourse Community, Swales notes the ambiguity in defining what a “Discourse Community” is, and thus proposes six defining characteristics of this term. Numbers four and five are the ones that I personally find the most interesting, as they have to do with a Discourse community owning its own genre(s) as well as its own lexis. I find these two characteristics in particular to be most agreeable, as they further distinguish a Discourse community as similar in some respects to ‘language’, but all-in-all its own notion. In fact, I would say that Discourse communities form their own type of language and communication tactics– hence their possession and utilization of genres and lexis.
Ann M. Penrose and Cheryl Geisler’s Reading and Writing Without Authority
To tie this in with Ann M. Penrose and Cheryl Geisler’s Reading and Writing Without Authority, Janet– who represents the novice in the study– is seemingly unable to compete with Roger– the expert in the study– and his ability to not only understand the material given, but interact with it in a productive and progressive way. Janet was able to understand the material and learn from it, but she lacked the confidence necessary to effectively insert herself into the conversation with authority. Of course, Roger, being in the process of completing his doctoral work in philosophy, has much more experience in the subject that Janet, being a college freshman, but later in the study, Penrose and Geisler establish that knowledge was not the main issue, but rather in the author’s engagement with the knowledge, material, and other authors.
My Opinion
From these two papers, it seems to me that one’s progression within any given Discourse community is based less on their knowledge of the genres and lexis specific to that community, and more on the action of engagement with these genres and lexis. Active engagement and interaction with the knowledge acquired within a Discourse community will inevitably produce new knowledge, as “the development of knowledge” is a “communal and continual process”. This much is shown in Roger’s example as we see an expert not only agree, disagree, and compare, but also change his mind, develop new opinions influenced by the material, and insert himself into the conversation authoritatively.
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