Discourse Community

Oral and written communication within a discourse community goes beyond plain academic language, it rather involves a detailed understanding of how a community works which includes its values, goals, jargon, and protocols. As a college student, knowing these elements in a particular discourse community can considerably help to determine proper ways to move effectively across a discourse community, have a successful communication and better career development. I identify myself as a member of the Environmental Science community through my studies in the Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences at the University of Arkansas, which is an Environmental science community by itself, but it is also part of a worldwide community
“People are born, or taken involuntarily by their families and culture, into some communities of practice” (Johns 501). However, an academic discourse community is chosen; members are affiliated with different discourse communities based on their interests or what identifies them the most. Furthermore, John Swales in his article “Concept of Discourse Community,” defines a discourse community as a group of people that interchange, share public goals, and use communication to achieve these goals (220). However, according to Swales, a group needs to meet six criteria in order to be a discourse community, including a set of shared goals, ways of communication within and without the discourse community, the participation of its members, a specific lexis, and members of expertise (220-222). This context is exemplified in the Environmental Science community, which is a group of activists, researchers, professors and other professionals in this field that seeks to ensure environmental sustainability and human
The Environmental Science community has different approaches of informal and formal exchanges within the community. The most common and formal way is through research or academic articles. This community uses academic articles with a scientific format to report findings in different issues among the environment, share with others in the community and built knowledge and information for future extension or feedback of the data collected. The proper use of the language and the content of that language are very important in these articles because this writing style needs to be precise and consistent, using technical words that have a specific meaning in order to be understandable for the community. One example of this type of lexis can be seen in the article, “Water-budget evaluation of prairie and maize ecosystems,” by Kristofor R. Brye, a professor and research expertise of Applied Soil Physics at the University of Arkansas, and other colleagues. This article has a very complex lexis and terminology such as such as tallgrass prairie, no-tillage, and tilled agroecosystem that only members of this community could understand (Brye et al 715). Another way of communication is conferences, symposiums, and seminars. There are different professional organizations such as Soil Science Society of America