Running Head: DISCOURSE COMMUNITY ETHNOGRAPHY 1

Discourse Community Ethnography

Lauren Quezada
UTEP

















DISCOURSE COMMUNITY ETHNOGRAPHY 2
Introduction
The purpose of this following study was quick research for me, as a nursing
student to have an understanding of the types of writing and communication skills. This
is so I can learn and be more successful in my major and career in the near future. This
study took place in a hospital as I shadowed a nurses and one in particular. This
following study will provide information on discourse community of nursing.

















DISCOURSE COMMUNITY ETHNOGRAPHY 3
Literal Review
Experimenting is very different for me I can say I am a very opened minded kind
of person when it comes to what I want to do and with what knowledge I have, I like to
go beyond. As I continue on with getting my education I feel limited to what I want to do
with my life, I always want to do something different that not many people understand
but now I know not everything I wanted to do in life was for me, crushing small dreams. I
found myself shadowing a nurse, which I in fact thought I would never go into the
medical field. Now that is exactly what I want to do, which I still cannot believe.
Going into the medical field I thought was not for me, I grew up with surrounds
of doctors and nurses who always talked different terminology to me which I did not
understand and thought they are crazy what are they even saying. My mom is a nurse and
when she went to nursing school I was always there helping her study, pretending I knew
what she was saying and telling me with all those piles of books and some gross
pictures of bodies, I always said to myself that is to much reading and to many big words
for me to understand. Now I see myself wanting to see those gross pictures and do
some more investigating on those big words I once did not understand. Going into the
nursing I did some research. The research I did focus a lot on the discourse of the
profession.





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Method
A discourse community is groups that have goals or purposes, and use
communication to achieve these goals". Says (John Swales). When doing research I
figured I would follow the concepts and rules John Swales uses, which are: a discourse
community has a broadly greed set of communication goals, a discourse community has
mechanisms of intercommunication among its members, a discourse community uses its
participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information and feedback, a discourse
community utilizes and hence possesses one or more genre in the communicative
furtherance of its aims, a discourse community has acquired some specific lexis, and a
discourse community has threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant
content and discoursal expertise. I have read and learned what a discourse community
was based on what john swales is making it out to be. A little information about John
swales was he was a straightforward kind of person but was that was good because he got
right into the point of what he wanted hes readers to know. He explained a discourse
community into sections as I have listed and mentioned before, one of which says
discourse community has a broadly agreed set of common public goals These public
goals may be formally inscribed in documents (as is often the case with associations and
clubs), or they may be more tacit. (John swales). In my study I will prove this and show
how this interacted the discourse of nursing.
I soon realized I should prove myself and understand what communication is use
to communicate around a nursing environment. I shadowed a nurse from the NICU,
which is the neonatal intensive care unit. I thought that unit would be best for me to
shadow since I want to work as an intensive care nurse. I shadowed the nurse around the
DISCOURSE COMMUNITY ETHNOGRAPHY 5
unit for about two and a half hours I asked questions and just followed them and
researched what they were doing.
When shadowing the nurses I noticed they are always on the go. These nurses
always have something they are doing or someone they are talking to, I shadowed this
nurse named Mrs. Mata I know she was busy so I did nit want to hover over her I stayed
back and just studied what she was doing for an hour that she was really busy at that time
I saw so much, she only had three patients but those three patients she took care of were
very intensely sic babies. She had two under incubators, which you constantly had to be
watching over and the other one was just there for feedings. When I was studying her I
realized she was charting down everything she did to her patients specifically, she would
write times down next to everything she would do to them and she would write their
condition and what she used on them and how she did whatever she would do to them in
which way. Her chart writing was very specific and in order by time. When I was
studying her I thought wow she is an organized person but as I was looking at the other
nurses I realized she was not the only one that neat and specific and that is how everyone
was writing down their charts. So in their community they have to be really specific and
persist they cannot let anything slide through or get a time wrong because it can really
affect the patient later on and the others reading their charts (form of writing).





DISCOURSE COMMUNITY ETHNOGRAPHY 6
Questions
When the hour passed Mrs. Mata had a little free time for me to get into
discussion with her and for me to start asking her questions about the discourse
community she works for. My first question to her and two other nursing working there
was (Q)do you enjoy what you do? And why do you do it? it came to a surprise to me
that this question was answered the same by all three of them, (A)they all loved what
they did and they loved doing it so much because of the satisfaction they get when
helping out a little one and watching them grow. My questions to Mrs. Mata went out like
this(Q) identify the forum by name and affiliation? (Q) How large is the forum and
who are the members? (Q) its leaders and readership?. (A)The form they used was a
specialized flow sheet adaptive to patient care; the organization affiliation would be the
Tenet health care corporation. The forum for patient care runs about 5-6 pages; the
members of this forum would be the patients, all the health care team members who give
patient care. The leaders for this forum would be al the health care professionals and the
readership is all the healthcare team involved. (Q) In what manner does the forum
assemble? (A) The forum assembles for a group of professionals who take care of the
patients. (Q) How frequently? (A) on a daily basis, different health professions are
always checking and making changes to the specialized flow sheet. (Q) What types of
discourse does this forum admit? (A) this forum admits the discourse of patient
information and instructions given. (Q) Technical or specialized jargon?
Abbreviations? (A) the specialized jargon would be the medical terminology and
Abbreviations are used in some occasions. Depending on what it is. (Q) Tone? (A) The
tone used is proper nothing to major just a straightforward tone. The audience is other
DISCOURSE COMMUNITY ETHNOGRAPHY 7
medical professions that know medical terminology so nothing is out of the ordinary or
different for them. These questions helped me understand her environment and work care
around her community. Getting deeper into the discussion about her discourse
community I asked more questions.
(Q) What are the shared goals of community? (A) the shared goals of the
community were education, providing recourses for example financial help. For
counseling and rehabilitation. (Q) Why does this group exist and what does it do?(A)
this group exists to help patients financially and physically they are a team who does their
job. (Q) What mechanism do members use to communicate? (A) non verbal
communication (hand gestures, hand signals) they also use verbal communication
(talking to peers) as I studied the nurses I noticed that they do use a lot of hand gestures
and hand signals to communicate with each other. This was interesting to me because
going in there I did not know about that communication they used. (Q) What are the
purpose of the mechanisms? (A) the purpose of these mechanisms is to be able to
provide positive feedback.
The Study of Nurses
When studying the nurses and watching them do their job I knew it must not be easy to
tell a patients parent any negative or unsupported feedback, these nurses are working in
an environment where they cannot tell their patients what is going on with them so they
have to break it down to the patients source which in this case would be the babies
parents, seeing that majority of the parents in their were very young or a new first time
parent so this is extremely difficult to the nurses in a way that they need to know how to
break information down to them I studied how the nurses provide feedback to the parents
DISCOURSE COMMUNITY ETHNOGRAPHY 8
of the patients and it is kind of different when the parents are younger and probably less
wiser they tend to baby the feedback to them meaning they will tell them what they have
to do and how to do it giving them minimal options, which is different to an older maybe
a little bit wiser of a parent with these parents the feedback they give them is the reality
feedback and trying to maybe find sources to help them depending on how the case of the
patient is.
(Q) What specialized language is used? (A) the specialized language used is medical
terminology. (Q) Who has expertise? (A) All the professions involved in the work
place which in this case would be Tent health working team. (Q) Who are the
Newcomers? (A) the newcomers are new team members who have entered the health
care team. (Q) How do newcomers learn appropriate language genres, knowledge? (A)
the newcomers learn appropriate language genres and knowledge by getting educated in
the profession (pre-septing and teaching). When all my questions where finally answered
and my studding was done with, I saw that this discourse community has mechanisms of
intercommunication among its members which was all these team members engage in a
verity of ways of communication and still understand each other. This was another one of
john swales points about discourse community.






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Discussion
When doing research about nursing and the medical profession I did not know
what kind of discourse community followed behind it. Shadowing nurse Mata and the
rest of her team really helped me out I found information I did not even know about in
ways that the medical professions communicated and what they were even saying. The
goals I wanted to achieve with this research and study did follow through to me, I
understand now what discourse community is in the nursing profession and what
communication and writing abilities are used. When studying the nurses and looking over
to what they call charts my goal of finding the discourse community and types of
communication being used around the working environment came clear to me and helped
me achieve my goal.











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References
Swales, J.M. (1990). Genre analysis: English in academic and research settings.
The concept of discourse community Cambridge: Cambridge UP.