Monday, November 25, 2013

A Few More Ideas from John Swales


These three rules are the second half of John Swales' six defining characteristics of discourse communities, and my own descriptions of how they apply to history professors.

  • A discourse community utilizes and hence possesses one or more genres in the communicative furthurence of its aims.

Genres are the different methods of communication within discourse communities. This rule applies to history professors because they use so many different news sources to communicate amongst each other. When communicating with coworkers and higher-ups within a university, often there will be message boards and meetings to discuss different ideas. All ways of communicating should be professional, very descriptive, and to the point.

  • In addition to owning genres, a discourse community has acquired some specific lexis.

This rule does not seem to apply to history professors that much. Sure, they talk about
different events in history that not all people may know about, but the vocabulary is simple and easy to understand. There is not much specific jargon between people in the historical community, not like there would be in a medical or business community, because there is simply no need for it.

  • A discourse community has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevent content and discoursal expertise.

This is definitely true of history professors and their discourse community. For starters, you cannot even become a history professor without at least a masters degree, so all members must have that in common. The very definition of real teaching requires that you be an expert in what you are teaching. 

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