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The document discusses Luis Arnal Ortiz's research on the U.S. Consulate General in Cd. Juarez as a discourse community. It provides background on discourse communities and describes John Swales' six characteristics of a discourse community. Ortiz interviewed family members who work at the consulate to learn about its communication mechanisms, genres used, and specialized lexicon. He determined that the consulate fits Swales' definition by having common goals, methods of internal communication, ways to provide information to the public and employees, established genres, unique terminology used within departments, and experienced members.
The document discusses Luis Arnal Ortiz's research on the U.S. Consulate General in Cd. Juarez as a discourse community. It provides background on discourse communities and describes John Swales' six characteristics of a discourse community. Ortiz interviewed family members who work at the consulate to learn about its communication mechanisms, genres used, and specialized lexicon. He determined that the consulate fits Swales' definition by having common goals, methods of internal communication, ways to provide information to the public and employees, established genres, unique terminology used within departments, and experienced members.
The document discusses Luis Arnal Ortiz's research on the U.S. Consulate General in Cd. Juarez as a discourse community. It provides background on discourse communities and describes John Swales' six characteristics of a discourse community. Ortiz interviewed family members who work at the consulate to learn about its communication mechanisms, genres used, and specialized lexicon. He determined that the consulate fits Swales' definition by having common goals, methods of internal communication, ways to provide information to the public and employees, established genres, unique terminology used within departments, and experienced members.
Luis A. Arnal Ortiz The University of Texas at El Paso
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Introduction Joining discourse communities is something most of us have experienced at one moment in our lives, whether it is by being part of a sports team at school or participating in the local clubs around our community. Every discourse community will have many characteristics that will set them apart from each other as they possess unique lexis among themselves and their communication strategies are not all the same. I picked up an interest in studying, what I believe, a very unique community, the U.S Consulate General in Cd. Juarez; the reason why I chose this group specifically, its because of the differences that exist in each one of these U.S. Consulates located all throughout the world, each one of them has their own set of unique characteristics that sets them apart from each other. Whether it is the communication system/language to even the genre each one of them possess. In the study I conducted, I analyzed this community in detail to discover how its members communicated among themselves, what type of platforms where used to send out a message, what was their specific lexis, the information and feedback that was sent between leaders and subordinates and lastly discover the level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discoursal expertise. (Swales, 1990, pp.220-222). I personally belong to many discourse communities, some of them being The University of Texas at El Paso, the college of engineering in the Engineering Leadership program and my religion Roman Catholicism, I was not aware of the latter until I went over the characteristics which make a discourse community. I was able to use the experience that I possess and the information given to me, to analyze and understand the aspects of the community I chose.
Literature Review
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In order to have a better understanding of what is a discourse community and how it is composed we can look at linguistic John Swales, who thoroughly describes the concept of a discourse community. Swales begins by clarifying the many definitions and concepts that have been given to what a discourse community means, he acknowledges that there are discourse communities and that they do share a common goal, however the idea was not well defined back in 1986, therefore the definition of discourse communities needed to be clarified for future references. Swales then goes on to comparing speech communities and discourse communities and compares and contrasts both to identify their similarities and differences. After giving a thorough definition of what a speech community is, Swales then goes over to defining a discourse community with a more specific definition which also includes the six characteristics that make a discourse community. These six characteristics are as follow: 1- A discourse community has a broadly agreed set of common public goals. (Swales, 1990) This is really simple as it simply means an objective which the members of this community have towards the public. 2- A discourse community has mechanisms of intercommunication among its members. (Swales. 1990), mechanisms of intercommunications can be anything from e-mails, newsletter, faxes, letters, texts, etc. 3- A discourse community uses its participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information and feedback. (Swales, 1990) this can be done throughout websites, FAQs webpage, blogs, etc. 4- A discourse community utilizes and hence possesses one or more genres in the communicative furtherance of its aims. (Swales, 1990) This is something that tends to be understood or cause confusion as something very complicated, but to write it in simpler terms it refers to text, any way by which text can be conveyed to the audience. 5- In addition to owning genres, a discourse community has acquired some specific lexis. (Swales,1990) Lexis, is a term we do not hear quite often, but it refers to a unique set of language
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that is used among its members, doctors use unique terms among themselves and engineers use a completely different language than doctors, each community has its own lexis. 6- A discourse community has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discoursal expertise. (Swales, 1990), within a discourse community exists a type of hierarchy if you will, there are new comers and others with more experience, as time goes on new comers or beginners, learn the lexis, genre, and knowledge throughout different ways provided to them. This is how Swales describes what a discourse community is and what it needs to have in order to be described or consider as one.
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Methods In order to find out more about this community I had to go beyond just going through a website or sending e-mails, so what better way than to ask people who work there and can give me answers based on personal experience. To begin with, many of my relatives work at the U.S. Consulate General in Cd. Juarez, including my mother, so I knew the task was going to be a lot easier and I was going to be able to get more concrete and honest answers. I began by researching on my own with the resources that were available to the general public, I looked up information that might be needed in order to fit the definition of a discourse community into this group, I found out early on that the first characteristic was easily found in the U.S. Consulate General, this was simply provided to me by their website. I then moved on down the list of the characteristics to find out the remaining ones. Since I would not be able to know on my own whether or not they had mechanisms of intercommunication among its members, I went on to ask my mother if there were any ways in which messages could be sent to almost everyone in the office and take it even further, to all the employees. She told me there are many ways by which information is exchange between workers and sometimes sent out by the bosses of each department. This include e-mails, alert messages and sometimes phone calls if necessary. Most of the information I gathered was obtained through my relatives as this ensured I could collect true information about the topic and personal experiences came along the way. One good example of this is how my mother was able to explain to me how the U.S. Consulate General does possess a genre and a specific lexis. Genre was simply the different types of outreach they have with the community as well as press releases and social media, this is how they send out information to the public or if theyve like to their employees. The specific lexis found in this community is very unique as it can even be divided into each department of the consulate. Each
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office will use different language to interchange information and communicate among its members.
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Discussion After analyzing my community, the U.S. Consulate General in Cd. Juarez, I realized that it did fit into the six charcateristics of Swales discourse community. The first charcateristic that I found was that of a broadly agreed set of common public goals, this goals are; to promote the best communication between the United States of America and Mexico (U.S. Consulate General Ciudad Juarez, Overview) and they also offer U.S. citizens travel information and basic information about Chihuahua. As described by Swales, this common public goals are very general and focus on a large group of members among the community. The second characteristic found was the mechanisms of intercommunication among its memebers, I was able to obtain this information by observing how information was passed between all of its members, essentially an e-mail was not only sent out to one of its memebers, but rather, if the occasion called for it, the message was sent to all employees so that they were made aware of the situation and in most occassions this proved to be right as they were all caught up to date. One good example of this, is how whenever there is an emergency or an accident has happened, most employees, if not all, are sent a text message or e-mail in regards to what they should do in order to avoid any accidents or to keep out of dangerous stituations, since one of the main concerns of the U.S. Consulate General is to maintain every employee safe and out of danger. As any other discourse community, the U.S. Consulate General provides mechanisms to provide information and feedback, whether it is to their employees or to the general public, this mechanisms include an offical website, social media, suggestions boxes and routine evaluations given to employees by their bossess at different times throughout the year. The official U.S. Embassy & Consulates in Mexico website provides many options to acquire information about their services and many departments located within their consulates. The U.S. Consulate General in Cd. Juarez does have
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one or more genres in their communication system, these include press release, outreach to the community and through social media websites such as facebook, twitter, and youtube. In this discourse community a specific lexis can be found among its members, from the name of different forms one must fill out and submit if they request a passport or the different type of visas that are available, to the name that is given to the main person in charge of that consulate in this case that being the Consulate General, or the person that follows, Deputy Principal Officer. Even the departments within the Consulate have a specific lexis used among themselves, the public affairs office and the human resources office have their own language which sets them apart from each other. At last, I was almost certain that a type of hierarchy or ladder of success existed in this community as most jobs there is always someone who is above all. I asked my mother and relatives how was this hierarchy established and they told me that at the top of the pyramid was the Consul General, who is in charge of keeping track of every department and making sure the expectations are being reached. I wondered if anyone could ever get to that position to which my mother responded: One can only become the Consul General if they are in the Foreign Service, are a diplomat and a U.S. Citizen among few other requirements. However, one can certainly climb through the ranks if they have enough experience, expertise and time in their jobs. After gathering and analyzing all the data and information I had collected I was able to come to the conclusion that this was indeed a discourse community as it did fit in into the characteristics that a discourse community has. One could certainly get confused about what is a discourse community and may believe every organization or team is a discourse community, but one has to look thoroughly into the community to find out whether it fits Swales six characteristics of a discourse community.
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References Swales, J. (1990). The concept of discourse community. In Downs and Wardle (Eds.), Writing about writing (p. 215-229). Boston, MA: Bedford-St. Martins. U. (n.d.). U.S. Consulate General Ciudad Juarez, Overview. Retrieved September 11, 2016, from https://mx.usembassy.gov/embassy-consulates/ciudad-juarez/overview/ What is a discourse community? (2013). Retrieved September 12, 2016, from https://webcourses.ucf.edu/courses/984277/pages/what-is-a-discourse-community