Academic writing in discourse communities

A discourse community is described by many researchers and theorists, such as Bizzel (1992), as a knowledge community (cited in Pintos and Crimi, 2008).  It is seen as a social construction that, according to Swales (1990), should accomplish certain requirements to be recognized as such.  He also states that members of a Discourse Community should have common goals, they need to be intercommunicated and there should be participatory mechanisms where information and feedback can be provided (cited in Pintos and Crimi, 2010).

 As Swales (1990) pointed out members of a Discourse Community should have at least one genre which defines their work and they also ought to make use of highly specialized terminology so as to achieve a certain level of knowledge.  In this line of thought, Kuhn (1970) claims that “members of a discourse community function as scientists because they share language, practiced, education, goals, professional initiations and professional judgement” (as cited in Pintos and Crimi, 2008, p. 13).

Academic writing plays a central role within a Discourse Community since this type of writing “involves composing for knowledge transforming” (Grabe and Kaplan, 1996, cited in Pintos and Crimi, 2008, p. 10).  In order to produce an academic paper, members of a Discourse Community need to be aware of the specific requirements of academic writing. According to Swales (1990) these requirements

are regulated by a general academic register, a formal style, a proficiency in language use, the ability to integrate information from other sources, and the type of genres academic writing deals with” (as cited in Pintos and Crimi, 2008, p. 10).

The characteristics of academic writing mentioned above are connected to the requirements that a Community needs to fulfil in order to be considered a discourse community. If all these features of academic writing are accomplished and genre is properly defined, the way in which a discourse community operates is articulated (Swales, 1990, cited in Pintos and Crimi, 2010). In order to be members of a discourse community, students or future researchers should be aware of the pre- established conventions that academic writing has.

Grape and Kaplan (1996) stated that writing may have two different purposes: knowledge telling or knowledge transforming. According to these authors, those pieces of writing that are intended to generate knowledge and accomplish with  the academic requirements already mentioned are considered to be academic writing (cited in  Pintos and Crimi, 2010).

To sum up, in order to belong to a discourse community, a writer should meet certain academic requirements such as using formal style and register, being a proficient language user and having the ability to integrate information from other sources. However, academic writing involves more than knowing the conventions of academic writing.

References

Pintos,V., & Crimi, Y. (2010). Unit 1: Building up a community of teachers and prospective researches. Universidad CAECE: Buenos Aires, Argentina. Retrieved October, 2010.

Pintos, V., and Crimi, Y. (2010). Unit 3: Academic writing. Universidad CAECE: Buenos Aires, Argentina. Retrieved October, 2010.