Running Head: A Psychology Discourse Community 1

A Psychology Discourse Community

Angie Salas

The University of Texas at El Paso

RWS 1301
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A Psychology Discourse Community

A Psychology Discourse Community

Introduction

According to John Swales, a well-known linguistic analyst, a discourse community is a

group of individuals who have equal goals or purposes and socializes to achieve these goals.

Swales reveals six defining characteristics these characteristics are needed for a group to be a

discourse community, without these characteristics according to swales the community fails. The

choice of community I was interested in was psychology, I had the chance to observe a

psychology class in El Paso Community College.

Psychology is the study of the human / animals behavior and how the mind works. Also,

it has many different types of fields in psychology including counseling psychologist, clinical

psychologist, including many more depending on what you want to study but the main focus here

is cognitive psychology.

Literature review

The concept of discourse community, Swales talks about the true meaning about

discourse communities but he also talks about speech community yet Swales argues between

discourse community and speech community. Swales also talks about the six characteristics

according to Swales these six characteristics are found in a group which is a discourse

community. Swales disagreement begins defining what a discourse community is and

distinguishes the difference between a discourse community and a speech community. A speech
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A Psychology Discourse Community
community shares similar language, similar linguistic goals, or both also he notes sociorhetoric

and sociolinguistic. A discourse course community is how individuals use text and language to

accomplish work. The six defining characteristics that uses for a discourse community are,

common public goals, Mechanisms of intercommunication, provide information and feedback,

communicative furtherance of its aims, lexis and levels of expertise. Swales does not want to

change individuals world view and to start a goal also for speech community to likely be

together.

In intertextuality and discourse community, Porter discusses about intertextuality in a

rehtorical term and how it is connected to a discourse community porter defines it as a group of

people bound by a mutual interest and which discourse is regulated. Also, he explains how

Thomas Jefferson didnt come up with the declaration of independence on his own but got some

ideas from the original piece to form it all together. Porter also states that Thomas Jefferson

original ideas were rejected it also shows an example of a discourse community. Intertext and

text are divided into two types, the two types are intertextuality and presupposition and Porter

states the originality of a writing process also he wants to figure out what plagiarism really is and

how it implicates young writers. Porter is certain of intertextuality how it should be clarified

early on young writers and how it becomes social in a discourse community.

The Concept of Discourse Community and Intertextuality and Discourse community, swales

believes what the true definition of a discourse community is and he identify what is the

difference between language community and a discourse community he also uses six

characteristics to see how it affects each individual. Porter on the other hand believes young

writers writer their own original texts even though there is bits of other peoples work. what the
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A Psychology Discourse Community
both have in common is that the both talk about how individuals are bounded in mutual interest,

provide information and feedback, and how the text is knowledgeable.

Methods

The methods I used to analyze this community were by finding out what community I

wanted to observe. Once I figured out what community I wanted to observe I had to contact the

professor in order to sit down in their class and examine their classroom to figure out if the

psychology community had the six characteristics swales found in a discourse community. I

went to observe a psychology class at El Paso Community college and attended only one session

which began at 8:30 am to 9:50 am the class was called the introduction of psychology. The

topics that were going to be talked about were on non-visual senses that involves hearing and

touch. I interviewed Professor Melia through the phone asking her questions on the six

characteristics I observed while being in her class to get a better understanding of the

community and how it worked.

Discussion

Psychology is the understanding of the behavior of humans. Since it is a very important

key that every cognitive process that a psychologist has to go through in order to provide for

their patients. Meanwhile, I had the chance to analyze this society for 1 hour and 20 minutes, to

get an excellent understanding of their exercises. Now we can observe this community with

Swales six characteristics in order for this group to succeed under his elements.

The initial principle that defines a discourse community is the communitys shared goals.

The psychology class has a set of goals to ensure the understanding of the conduct of humans. In

order for psychologist to help their patients with improving their memory. For example
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A Psychology Discourse Community
Language, social, and learning disabilities. As I analyzed this community every student in the

class shared this goal that was mentioned.

Mechanisms that this group used were blackboard in order to figure out what topic was

going to be talked about that day of class, the power points were to see visuals of the topic also

to break down words, the demonstrations were hands on in order for the group to relate to the

topic, emails for any questions the community had about the subjects, or face to face to ask

questions if the topic was not understood. The purposes of these mechanisms are to provide the

community to have to have a better understanding of each topic that is talked about in every class

session and they are important because without these materials the community would be lost.

One genre used in this community to further its aims is scientific literature. Scientific

literature uses scientific articles and these articles are published in journals that are peer reviewed

and they are primary researched articles reported on the findings that scientist work on. The

articles have an explanation on how the examination was done also including the results and

what they mean.

The specialized language the psychology class as mentioned before is cognitive is the

division of psychology that focuses on how people develop information. So technically

speaking, cognitive psychology is concerned in what is happening in our minds. As observing

the powerpoints it gets into detail on how the mind works and the demonstration given which

was feeling an object with our eyes closed. I felt the object in two different ways one was the

object resting in my palm and the second one was actually feeling it to see if my mind could

identify the object without actually seeing it.

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A Psychology Discourse Community

Finally, Newcomers such as myself and any visitor that enters this community, obviously

dont know anything compared to the students that were in the class but the newcomers such as

myself can be informed with the materials used in class as mentioned with blackboard.

Blackboard provides all the information with the assignments of the different kinds of

psychology but once you get into class the professor goes more into depth about the certain

topics that are in blackboard.

Conclusion

The observation and analysis of the Psychology community was defined as an discourse

community. Discussing Swales six characteristics it seems to be found as a discourse community

according to Swales it needed to have these principles if not the community would somehow fail

within time. The accomplishment of a shared goal using each and every one of these

characteristics the goal of Psychology is to learn about the behavior of humans on why they act a

certain way and think a certain way. Observing this community was very interesting and by

observing this class I want to continue to learn more about psychology and one day major in this

field to become a part of a community to then be able to share these common goals.
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A Psychology Discourse Community
References

Porter, J. (1986). Intertextuality and the discourse community. In E. Wardle & D. Downs (Eds.),

Writing about writing: A college reader (p. 395-405). Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martins.

Swales, J. (1990). The concept of discourse community. In E. Wardle & D. Downs (Eds.),

Writing about writing: A college reader (p. 212-227). Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martins.