Discourse Community and its requirements

Knowledge community, speech community, social mechanism, people with certain values, aims and expectations, transmition of information and feedback are some characteristics that theorists as well as researchers use to describe a Discourse community. Herzberg (1996) defines a discourse community as “a means of maintaining and extending a group´s knowledge and of initiating new members into the group” (as cited in Pintos and Crimi, 2010, p. 13).

 Swales (1990) establishes some basis criteria to recognize as well as to check whether a particular group of people belongs to an academic discourse community or not (as cited in Pintos and Crimi, 2010, p.13)

• Common goals
• Participatory mechanisms
• Information exchange
• Community-specific genres
• Highly specialized terminology
• High general level of expertise

The following paper offers an analysis of different sources that evidence and support Swales´ (1990) theory on discourse community.

Discourse Community implies an activity system similar to Engestrom´s (1999) which integrates reflection and action. This activity system “incorporates the productive and communicative aspects of people conduct” (Engestrom et al.,1999 as cited in Hoffman-Kipp, Altiles & Lopez Torres, 2003, p. 4).

In addition to that “consciousness alone in teachers´ reflection is not efficient. It must coexist with meaningful praxis, that is union of reflection and action.” (Hoffman-Kipp et al.,p.1). This implies teachers´ integration in different activities which are oriented to a particular goal. This interaction implies not only communication but also an exchange of ideas, materials, theory and pedagogy in a collaborative environment. “Power of universal scholars focuses on sharing their knowledge, findings and interpretations.” (Kelly-Klesse 2001,p. 3). The members must “keep them up to date so as to maintain vitality in a community” (Kelly-Kleese 2004, p.3). Communicative competence is important, that is the knowledge in order to use the language appropriately in a particular discourse. For that reason, such members tend to “minimize or exclude the participation of some people” (Kelly-Kleese 2004, p.3) who do not have the purpose or language within the higher education community.

All in all, Discourse Communities cannot exist in isolation and their members need to have an integration as well as communication of their knowledge and ideas in order to fulfil goal-oriented activities in a collaborative environment where risk-taking is supported. (McLaughlin & Talbert, 1993 as cited in Winzlaff & Wieseman, 2004, p. 9)

                                                                           References   

Engestrom,Y.,Miettinen, R.,& Punamaki, R. (Eds.). Perspectives on activity theory: Learning in doing social, cognitive and computational perspectives. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press


Hoffman-Kipp, P., Artiles, A.J. & Lopez Torres, L (2003). Beyond reflection: teacher learning as praxis. Theory into Practice. Retrieved September 2011, from http://findarticles.com/p/articles /mi_m0NQM/is_3_42/ai_108442653


 Kelly-Kleese, C. (2001). Editor’s Choice: An Open Memo to Community College Faculty and Administrators. Community College Review. Retrieved September 2011, from http://findarticles.com/p/acticles/mi_m0HCZ/is_1_29/ai_77481463


Kelly-Kleese, C. (2004). UCLA community college review: community college scholarship and discourse. Community College Review. Retrieve September 2011, from http://findarticles.com/p/acticles/mi_m0HCZ/is_1_32/ai_n636154


McLaughlin, M. &Talbert, J. E. (1993). Contexts that matter for teaching and learning: Strategic opportunities for meeting the nation´s educational goals. Stanford, CA: Center for Research on the Context of Secondary School Teaching, Stanford University.


Pintos, V. & Crimi, Y. (2010). Building up a community of teachers and prospective researchers. Universidad CAECE

Swales, J.M. (1990). Genre analysis: English in academic and research settings. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.



Wenzlaff, T. L., & Wieseman, K. C. (2004). Teachers Need Teachers To Grow. Teacher Education Quarterly. Retrieved from http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3960/is_200404/ai_n9349405