Blander Brioso-Rodriguez

Dr. J.T. Taylor

ENC 1101-0M49
December 5, 2015
Game Plan Essay
Every new setting, every new sheet of paper and every new environment explored is all
part of a process called enculturation and is different for all discourse communities. But what is a
discourse community? A discourse communities as defined by researcher and educator John
Swales are groups that have goals or purposes, and use communication to achieve these goals.
Everybody has a different way of learning things and adapting to them. Despite the fact that
everybody has its own way or style of doing things, we often share in some slight similarities;
this could be a social setting for instance. In Lucille McCarthys A Stranger in Strange Lands,
the author, McCarthy, journeys with a college student Dave Garrison hoping to find out how
writing is influenced by social settings. She wondered if writing in different classes was
genuinely harder due to different teachers writing styles or was it harder for some students
because they are in different surroundings or are writing in a different genres.
The social setting in which one is to write, has major influence in that persons writing.
As a student I am able to familiarize myself with different social settings and styles, perhaps
even genres and combine them with my style of writing allowing me fit in a specific discourse
community other than what I am already used to. McCarthy goes on to point out the fact that
some people write well in one setting (e.g., at home alone) and not very well in another (e.g., on
a timed exam), or that some people write well in one genre (e.g., poetry) but not very well in

another genre (e.g., a literacy criticism essay). These are settings that we can adapt ourselves to
by means of the experience, observation, and instruction acquired on a specific community.
Additionally, McCarthy emphasizes the importance of trying to adjust to unfamiliar
academic settings. As I briefly revealed in the previous essay My Writing Process, my writing
style is a collection of the many settings and teachers I have encountered throughout the years
through experience and observation from my instructors as well as experience obtained from
sharing my knowledge with others, consequently preparing me for any obstacles I might
encounter. Furthermore, in her study McCarthy interviewed David, his three friends, and three
professors in this study and observed and analyzed classes, their interviews, and how they write.
She found that although the writing assignments in three classes she observed were generally the
same, David found them to be completely different and different from anything he had ever done
before. Moreover, she believes that it is due to different social settings. However, although I
dont think her experiment is valid or very reliable for she had a very small study group, it is
possible that writing has something to do with the social settings.
As previously mentioned, a discourse community is a group of people involved in and
communicating about a particular topic, issue, or in a particular field. Considering the
communitys effect on the individuals it is a possibility that the communitys affiliation affect a
persons world view in ways which the person must remain ignorant on a daily basis in order to
comfortably participate in the communal work. Therefore in order to fit in one must be warned of
certain rules and regulations the community may uphold; that is, language to say the way we
speak and perhaps interest in topic to be discussed. My short personal experience as a member of
a discourse community consists of a summer internship with Sensa Educational Systems. The
first few days were rather uncomfortable, for my peers and I had do perform a number of

professional tasks we were not accustomed to doing. We had to speak, act and behave in a more
sophisticated way than we were used to. True, it was a little awkward at first, but then we got
used to it and successfully worked as a group.
Additionally, according to The Concept of Discourse Community, by educator and
researcher John Swales, there are six characteristics essential for identifying a group of
individuals as a discourse community.
1) John Swales believes that a discourse community has a broadly agreed set of common
public goals. Swales is pretty straight forward when conceptualizing this characteristics. A
group of students have set of common goals:to go to class and learn so that in turn we can have a
better future as well as trace a safe and bright path for the generations to come.
2) A discourse community has mechanisms of intercommunication among its members.
Basically any type of communication tool we use fits this characteristic; that is talking on the
phone, texting, emailing and replying to emails etc., as long as it facilitates the inter part of
intercommunication.
3) A discourse community uses its participatory mechanisms primarily to provide
information and feedback. Meaning useful resources similar to mechanisms previously
mentioned and other tools such as blogs and other informational resources to enrich common
goals.
4) A discourse community utilizes and hence possesses one or more genres in the
communicative furtherance of its aims. Here Swales makes reference to genres implying the
texts to be used or material to be discussed; as Swales himself wrote the appropriacy of topics,
the form, function and positioning of discoursal elements, and the roles texts play in the

operation of the discourse community. This characteristic allows for thinking and planning on
our course of action in the community.
5) In addition to owning genres, a discourse community has acquired some specific
lexis. This refers to the entire stock of words in a language that is specific to a community and
required by members of the community in order to communicate mutually as people. A persons
lexis tells of who they are. Personally I come across as a very sophisticated person when I find
myself amongst professionals or in some civilized event. I try acting professional at all times but
in these occasions even more. Those are morals I believe help build your character and open the
doors for the future community you want to be a part of.
6) A discourse community has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of
relevant content and discoursal expertise. In a race one must start in order to finish, meaning
that in order for a person to succeed or be an expert they must start learning and mastering the
their area of interest. The same happens in a discourse community. In order for the community to
have that level of member with such suitable degree of relevant content and discoursal
expertise, there must be a number of both, new members coming in or novices to keep he
community growing and experts to teach novices the way otherwise the community will die
away. Which is why in a discourse community members join the community and leave by death
or other less involuntary ways as stated by Swales in his writing of genre analysis: The
Concept of Discourse Community.
Moreover, similar to McCarthys A Stranger in Strange Lands Elizabeth Wardle does a
great job when talking about the writer and his journey to adapt to new a setting. She was very
much fascinated in the way people learn to write as adults moving among different discourse
communities. In her article "Identity, Authority, and Learning to Write in New Workplaces",

Wardle makes an attempt to explain why learning to write and think for new positions or in new
situations can actually be very helpful and mentally engaging. I completely agree with Wardle,
learning to adapt oneself to new settings helps the mind open up and see things differently, at
least different than what one is used to. Wardle argues that, although writing in a new work place
can be difficult for reasons such as struggling with identity and authority, it can improve
cognitive ability and complex thinking skills. It helps the mind better generate and shape ideas.
Wardle does a great job at explaining how ones own identity and the authority of people
in a new place can constrain and frighten a person and make it more difficult to adapt, not to
mention the process of having to learn new writing customs and methods of this new place. She
elaborated that issues of the identity and values are important factors in neophytes abilities and
willingness to learn and write in and for new workplaces, as they must choose between ways of
thinking and writing with which they are comfortable and new ways that seem foreign or at odds
with their identities and values. I like how this quote directly makes our values and morals a
part of our future selves as well as what discourse community we want to be a part of.
Moreover, she explores what it is like to go through this process by telling the story of Alan, who
in his new workplace, was constantly fighting to not conform to the way other people saw him
and the way they wrote: she said that to tease out relationships between identity and writing in
the workplace, we need theories that consider the workplace as a legitimate and important
influence on subject formation. Wardle tells us about the right components such as personality
and identity needed in order to harmoniously conform other members of certain discourse
community as well as her three interrelated modes of belonging--- engagement, imagination,
and alignment which serve as models to entering into each discourse community effectively in
the future.