Ryan Riegle English 106 Mrs.

Parsons 4/2/14

Discourse Community: Engineers Do engineers make up a discourse community? Do they meet all the qualifications of a discourse community? We will examine this topic with the use of Swales definitions and qualifications of such a community. It seems to me that they do in fact make up a discourse community, but using Swales definition will shed more light on the topic. I am a future engineer. Ive only been in engineering for about a year now. All of the people that I will examine in this paper are future engineers, but will be referred to as simply engineers for convenience sake. Ive always noticed since Ive come to Purdue that I tend to fit in best with my engineering friends. My elders told me this would happen, but I just assumed I would fit in with just about anybody like I did in high school. However, I find myself most comfortable and at ease with my engineering buddies. We think the same; we talk the same, and even share the same sense of humor. We all have different backgrounds, but similar goals in life. I guess you could say we are all mathematically and scientifically minded, and tend to be more introverted when it comes to social interaction. I enjoy spending time with my engineering friends and sharing our plans for the future. Most often we all have ambitions on building, constructing, or developing whatever our discipline may entail. I would say that I am heavily involved with my discourse community. We spend many hours studying for the next physics, chemistry, or calculus exam that threatens to ruin our precious GPAs.

I chose this discourse community to examine because I think that it has real potential to prove to be a true discourse community. I would invite you to visit the study rooms or library sometime. Youll find groups of engineers working together on a particular project or an assignment. Like-minded people tended to congregate together. Thats human nature, but it will take more than that to qualify as a discourse community, according to Swales. Lets take a look at some feedback I obtained from members of m y discourse community. Then we will analyze this feedback and compare it to Swales definition of a discourse community and come to a conclusion on whether or not engineers really make up an official discourse community. The methodology I chose was to use interviews as a way of generating feedback from people I suspect to be in my discourse community. I interviewed five people by the names of Sarah, Omar, Brad, Suhani and Shijia. I wanted to get a sense of what people thought about my opinion on the topic and how they felt about being part of a discourse community. Most of the people I interviewed gave me fairly consistent responses, but not all of feedback correlated with each other. For instance when I asked these people what kind of individuals day prefer to hang out with, I got similar responses. Omar, Sarah, and Suhani all mentioned they prefer to hang out with people that are academically similar. They mentioned to me that they feel they relate to people that are more academic reminded as they are academically minded themselves. Kumar differed in this question by claiming that he prefers to hang out with people that are from similar origin. He feels more couple with people that are not necessarily the same academic area, but from the same geographical location.

When I asked a question about attire and how members of the discourse community behave themselves, I had similar responses across the board. No one thought that they wore anything in particular except casual wear and normal comfortable clothing. However Brad did mention that formalwear is required for professional then such as speaking or presenting a project for engineering. There were a number of different kinds of feedback when I posed the question if there was a particular jargon used in their discourse community. The people I interviewed mentioned technical terms used by engineers, acronyms, and even inside jokes that are common among engineers. I know from personal experiences that my groups of friends who are engineers tend to enjoy jokes that refer to scientific or technological topics. Someone in a fraternity crowd would not understand the humor and think we were just a bunch of dorks. My fourth question was Why did you choose to become a part of this discourse community? Most of the feedback that I received indicated that these people like to be around other people that have similar interests. Sarah and Suhani both specifically mentioned being around people of similar interests and feeling comfortable around those who have correlating life goals. Kumar mentioned he fits in with other people that are not necessarily engineers. He seems more relaxed on who he hangs out with includes and his friend group. Brad indicated that he feels freer around people that are in his friend group because it allows him to express his social and intellectual self. My fifth question had to do with communication. Communication is an integral part of any discourse community as indicated by Swales. And asked about methods of communication all were very consistent. All of the people I interviewed told me they

prefer communication by text, face-to-face, or even by e-mail. These are standard ways of communicating as with any discourse community or even individuals that belonged to separate discourse communities. For my sixth question I asked if there was a particular ranking system with in my discourse community. All answers were the same and indicated that there was no ranking system, which happens to be contrary to what Swales requires for a discourse community. When asked if these individuals enjoyed being part of a discourse community, the responses were fairly consistent. Brad mentioned it being fulfilling that his friends have similar interests and they get along great. Suhani mentioned that she enjoys the fact that she can relay ideas to her engineering friends and because they are in the same position as her, they can give good advice. Shijia said that its great being part of this group of friends because they all can relate to each other and have something to talk about (Shu, 3/24/14). Kumar was more laid-back on this question stating that he enjoys hanging out with his friends whether theyre engineers or not. Sarah, like Suhani, mentioned homework help and the fact that her engineering friends know what shes going through and can understand her academic struggles as an engineer (Metha, 3/24/14). According to Swales there are six characteristics that a group of people must have in order to be a discourse community. Lets examine the first one. Swales claims that a discourse community has a broadly agreed set of common public goals (Swales p471). Any discourse community must have public, not private goals that can be seen by outsiders. Swales makes the point to indicate that having the same public goals and being involved in or studying the same subject are two different things. Just because two groups

of people focus on the same topic, doesnt mean they are both part of the same discourse community. Take for example the car factory workers and the board or directors of GM. Both groups of people are devoted to promoting the use and purchase of GM vehicles, but these two communities would not be considered part of the same discourse community. Engineers meet this requirement because all engineers have the common goal of using math and science to solve problems in a way that is cost effective, ecofriendly, and maximally beneficial to the people who are in need. Secondly Swales says that a discourse Community as a mechanism of communication among its members (Swales p471). After asking my subjects about how they prefer to communicate there was a clear consensus. All preferred to either text or talk face to face. This is consistent with what Swales says about a method of communication. Although engineers appear to use these ways of communicating, it should be noted that the general public uses these methods to communicate as well. You can find people as young as 10 years old with a cell phone texting and calling their friends. In other words, texting and talking face to face is not exclusive to engineers. The third requirement of Swales is that a discourse community uses its participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information and feedback (Swales p472). This requirement by Swales slightly conflicts many qualities that engineers tend to have. There is no subscription or annual fee required to hangout with my engineering friends. However this requirement would have applied if I were a part of an engineering fraternity or association. In this case there could be group activities geared toward using participatory mechanisms to provide information and feedback.

According to Swales a discourse community utilizes and hence possesses one or more genres in the communicative furtherance of its aims (Swales p472). This requirement by Swales fits very well. Engineers tend to have a work hard and academically centered genre. When my interview subjects were asked what sort of people they prefer to hangout with the consensuses was relatively clear. I prefer to hangout with people who are of the same academic level (Randall, 3/24/14). We can conclude from this that engineers tend to employ an academic genre. We see something different when examining what Kumar had to say to the same question. He claimed he hangs out with people around his dorm or from his fraternity (Kumar, 3/24/14). There seems to be a discrepancy between Kumars answer and Brads. Kumar doesnt particularly employ an academic genre like the other people who were interviewed. Swales fifth requirement is in addition to owning genres, a discourse community has acquired some specific lexis (Swales p473). Engineers do tend to have a certain lexis between them. Particular to Purdue there are acronyms that stand for certain activities that are done in our engineering classes. Examples include MEA and ICA, which stand for Modeling Eliciting Activity and In Class Activity respectively. Engineers also tend to work in groups when solving problems. In a design process there are terms such as problem scoping, bio-mimicry, and deliverable that people outside of this realm would find confusing. Knowing this sort of lexis is helpful when engineers communicate with each other. Lastly Swales requires that a discourse community have a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discoursal expertise (Swales p473). This requirement is more or less not applicable. Yes, it is ideal you are an engineer

to be a part of this discourse community. However there is no depends on having a reasonable ratio between novices and experts. All engineers are looked at the same in my discourse community. The only exception to this is if there was an engineer who perhaps had a higher degree in engineering, or is on his/her fourth year verses someone who is on their second year. When applying these principles its important to note that we are talking about engineers who are in the same grade or professional field. Professional engineers on the job site dont normally associate themselves with sophomore engineering students going to class on a Wednesday morning. This could be looked at as sub-discourse communities that make up a greater meta-discourse community. In conclusion I would like to state that based on the previous analysis it seems for the most part engineers do seem to fit the requirements for a discourse community, according to Swales that is. Although there were many similarities, there were also some discrepancies as well. My friend Kumar clearly didnt comply with my other four interview subjects. He seemed to differ on his stance with some questions that were asked, suggesting that not all engineers think closing the same or have similar philosophies on matters. In addition to that, there were a few requirements by Swales, like the third and sixth requirements previously discussed that didnt apply to engineers as a discourse community. Other than these discrepancies my hypothesis held fairly true. Engineers do have common public goals and do use a genre and have acquired a certain lexis. In closing, engineers do somewhat fit Swales requirements of a discourse community, but admittedly not as much as I previously thought.