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. 

Some Ideas from John Swales

John Swales talks about six defining characteristics of a discourse community. Here are the first three with some examples of how they apply to history professors.

• A discourse community has a broadly agreed set of common public goals.

This rule definitely applies to history professors. The general goal is of course to provide the best education possible to students. History professors have to keep up on new developments and theories in their field and keep their students up to date on the new information. Another goal is just to keep history alive and viewed as an important subject. We can learn so much about the present and future just by studying the past.

• A discourse community has mechanisms of intercommunications among its members.

History professors must have ways of communicating to continue to be on top of new information. This is true of almost every discourse community. In different fields, people may need more urgent means of communication, but for history professors, simple online trade journals and news stories do just fine. People in the history department at universities will also change the curriculum based on the new information shared over these sites.

• A discourse community uses its participatory mechanisms primarly to provide information and feedback.

While history professors do provide feedback on trade journals and other news sources, I'm not sure that is the primary use of the participatory mechanisms. In my opinion, the primary use it just to get the information out there so universities can decide how to handle the new information and whether or not to add it to course curriculums.

Overview

For this blog I would like to address the ideas of John Swales, Ann Johns, Elizabeth Wardle, and James Paul Gee. They have all given extensive insight about the ideas of discourse communities in the academic and professional worlds. Basically, I am going to take their ideas and relate them to the professional field of history professors, and show you if and how their ideas apply. I will also use my own research to provide tips on how to be successful in this field based on the rules that Swales, Johns, Wardle, and Gee have laid out for us.