Salma Moreno

Professor Rivas Gomez

English 1A
April 28, 2015

Biology Discourse Community

A discourse community is a written or spoken communication with similarities
between a community. Every discourse community is unique in the way that they read
and write their materials. Discourse communities are driven by similar goals. In the
discourse community of biology are to research and distinguish potentially cancerous
cells from normal cells. They accomplish those goals by researching, publishing papers,
creating hypotheses and conducting the experiments. To better understand what biologists
discuss and interpret on a daily basis, I researched and interviewed a student going into
that profession and a biologist, I asked what to expect within the discourse community in
the biology field.
To get more intel on what I should expect as a student I interview a student at
USC studying the underlying mechanisms that distinguish potentially cancerous cells
from normal cells. My interviewers name is Ranjani Lakshmin, she is working on her
doctorate in biology. I asked her what she typically writes on a daily basis. Ranjani said,
She writes what she does everyday as daily notes. She saids that it is a good way to keep
track of things. She said that she also has to write reports on what she did throughout the
week so it was helpful for that as well. To do so she would write down notes and after

transferring them on with more details to a different paper. She writes when working on
experiments, She has to create hypotheses before the experiments to see the results.After
performing the lab experiments goes back to see if her written hypotheses was accurate.
Occasionally people in her field have to write journals explaining her research. When I
studied a article in her field I noticed the journal had difficult terms to my understanding,
specific format, and figures. Figures are the diagram on the journals that explain the
research. She said that she has to design the diagram and explain the figure explanation.
Ranjani said that as a student biologist she has to do twice as much reading then writing.
There is a lot of reading involved her field because of the research she conducts. She has
to research a lot of journals and articles to be able to create her own research.
To learn more precisely on what the biologists write and read I interviewed a
professional of biology. I first asked if she enjoyed working in her field. She said she
enjoyed it very much because she loved to write all her results from her experiments. She
said to loved to research new hypotheses by creating new lab experiments. I asked her if
the way reading and writing has change from when she was studying to becoming a
professional biologist. She answered that not many things had changed when she
tradition to a professional biologist because she still had to read material on the same
subject. She also said that the writing was only changing because of the time was
developing new research. She said she still has to read journals to stay up to date on all
the new discovery. She answered, that as a biologist she does create journals on her
experiments. Another thing that she has to do is write to receive grants. This is
essentially the most important thing to write. Without grants she could not conduct the

research. She said that a grant take a lot of writing and the grant has to include from what
you have done in the past with the grants and what you what to do. She said she has to
have her research completely done because she is asking for the money to created this
experiment.
One of the articles that I tried to read about biology was complicated to dissect
because it was material intended for someone who has extensive background on these
topics.The article was difficult to read because of the abbreviation of some of the terms,
for example a term that stood out to me was ARID1A. From what I can understand
ARID1A is a protein. In the discourse community of biology, people have to read journals
to not only be aware but to see what others are working on. It is important to see if others
in the field are not researching the same thing. Students in this field have to read journals
that are not yet published. In this field students are can be asked to read a journals if it is
relevant to their research. The journal has to be checked by someone in the field to see if
it is accurate information.
In the biology discourse community, it is essentially important to write down
everything based on research lab experiments. Biologist need to write down how the
started an experiment to result they encountered. For instance biologist need to write in a
specific format when publishing experiments they have conducted. In the biology
discourse community you have to be able to read a write a certain way that you're peers
in your discourse community will understand. In this field you also need to write down
observation that might have changed in experiment. In this community you have to be
able to write notes for yourself, journals, grants and many more. When working on

research the biologist writes down the procedures to show how they came up with the
results for good documentation and so that other biologist can reproduce the test results.
The papers thats they publish also frequently include figures (with an explanation of what
the data shows).. Journals seem to have the same formating but each journal publisher has
its format to create the journal or article a certain way. During my interview with Ranjani
she mentioned that each publisher for journals and articles has their own format.
Every discourse community has its distinct way of writing and reading within the
material. Throughout this research I learned many important facts about why biologists
read and write. The writing in the biology discourse community is about writing journals,
making observation, creating and performing experiments that benefit what their role as
biologist stands for. In every discourse community, basically everything you need to
read and write. Even though it is different material everyone reads and writes in their
profession.

Work Cited
Lakshmin, Ranjani. Discourse Community. Personal Interview. 22 Apr. 2015
Hernandez, Gloria. Discourse Community. Personal Interview. 22 Apr. 2015