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Kelsey Kurzhals

ENGLISH COMP

Research Paper

Discourse Community

Introduction

Swales introduces that a discourse community is made up of individuals who share a

broadly agreed upon set of common public goals. There are six characteristics of a discourse that

need to be present in a group for it to actually be considered a discourse. These characteristics

include: having a broadly agreed set of common public goals, having mechanisms of

intercommunication among its members, uses its participatory mechanisms primarily to provide

information and feedback, utilizes and hence possesses one or more genres in the communicative

furtherance of its aims, in addition to owning genres, it has acquired some specific lexis, and

lastly has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discoursal

expertise.

Education at Work

The discourse I will be discussing is a nonprofit organization, “Education at Work”.

Education at Work is a US-based provider of contact center and staffing services with a mission

to help students graduate with little to no debt and the skills they need to secure great jobs in the

future. A quote from the article, Education at Work Receives $50,000 Grant from The Greater

Cincinnati Foundation explains, “Education at Work has helped college students afford college

through part-time employment plus tax-free tuition assistance. Students are employed as

customer service agents in a contact center environment and learn critical skills in problem-

solving, communications, and collaboration. To date, more than $690,000 has been paid out in

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tuition assistance with over $3.7 million dollars earned in student wages”. This discourse is

important for many reasons, it is not just a temporary fix for a student it is long term and can

make a huge difference in someone’s life who may not have had a chance to go to college

without this discourse. According to Sam Becker, we're up to $1.2 trillion in outstanding student

loans, and as of 2014, 17% of borrowers are delinquent or in default on those loans, per a report

from the New York Fed. Millions of graduates can't pay their loans back, and some are even flat-

out refusing to.  Becker also believes that the student debt crisis is the next economic problem

and there isn't any clear way out of it. This discourse research paper is relevant to students in risk

of debt.

Six Characteristics of a Discourse

Common Goals

A discourse community has a broadly agreed set of common public goals. In the EAW

discourse the members all have a common goal to graduate from college with little or no debt.

Achieving a certain GPA students are eligible for tuition assistance. Chelsea Fiest, a member of

the discourse for 5 months believes, “Because we are all students I think a goal we all share is to

maintain our grades and work hard in our studies so we are able to get tuition assistance”. The

benefit of working at EAW is the tuition assistance that is what sets it apart from other jobs. Fiest

knows that if she maintains a 3.5 GPA she will then receive $3,000 a semester and if she gets a

2.5 GPA she will be able to receive $1,500 a semester. This is clearly a common goal of the

community because if an employee was not receiving tuition assistance then there would be no

point to this particular job. When interviewing another employee at EAW, Cassie Johnson a 6

month employee, she states the reason she joined the discourse was because of the tuition

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assistance and the $9 dollar an hour wage which is slightly more than minimum wage. The

common goal of the discourse is money, job status, and experience for future jobs.

Intercommunication

A discourse community has mechanisms of intercommunication among its members.

Swales gives examples of this characteristic such as meetings, telecommunications,

correspondence, newsletters, conversations, and so forth. While observing the discourse I

became aware of the way they communicate while working there every day job. The

communication device they use is on their computers this is convenient because they work on

computers all day. Lync is the instant messaging technology they use, which comes bundled with

Office 365 business subscriptions, is Microsoft's server platform for unified communications. It

is a very fast communication process which is necessary for their work. Another form of

communication they have is their Facebook page.

The EAW Facebook page description reads, “This group serves as a resource for current

Education at Work employees to see updates, share questions and concerns, and learn about

opportunities to grow at EAW.” This is a modern way to send out notifications and updates for

employees which can be accessed easily and they do not have to be at work to access the

information unlike their other source of communication Lync. When asking Johnson about the

certain terminology used in the discourse she states, “We use a language that only our work

place would get, it is not hard to catch on to but we don’t talk to our customers using the

abbreviations and terms that we would say to a coworker or supervisor in Lync”. The discourse

is a very technology friendly and has many different systems and programs they use to help

customers.

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Providing Feedback

A discourse community uses its particular mechanisms primarily to provide information

and feedback. As I observed the employees throughout their work day I was informed that every

week each member had to meet with their supervisor to receive feedback and constructive

criticism on their statistics. Fiest says, “I work for the Macy’s call center branch of EAW and my

stats are basically how the customers rate me and Macy’s from 1-5 and other things like how

many calls I take an hour”. These meetings help the employees better their skills and fix what

they could be doing wrong or could at least be doing better.

Besides the weekly meetings they also have to read articles on Macy’s to know what is

going on before answering the phones, for example it is important to know there was a snow

storm in Chicago and people were not receiving there shipments due to weather, therefore they

will be able to inform customers who call in what is going on. Johnson verifies how important it

is to be up to date on current information to answer calls most effectively.

Genes

A discourse community utilizes and hence possess one or more genres in the communicative

furtherance of its aims. A genre is a particular type of literature, painting, music, film, or other

art form which people consider as a class because it has special characteristics. Genres develop

overtime in response to rhetorical needs. Swales demonstrates that discourse communities all use

genres. Another way to look at genres is as a textual tool used by people as they work toward

their desired ends. As noted above most of EAW’s genres are technological. Facebook is EAW’s

main communication tool for its employees. After being hired an employee can expect an invite

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to the page if they have a Facebook. Emails are sent regularly from the organization to its

members as well. An example of an email from EAW to its employees is, “Good morning,

Please make sure you approve your time cards by Monday 11/23 to ensure that everything is

corrected for payroll the following day. Payroll is being processed a day early due to

Thanksgiving being next week. You can check your time cards at ew.attendanceondemand.com

Your username will be your badge number and your password will be 0.If there are any errors,

please contact your supervisors”. Members receive constant reminders and notifications from

work to keep them updated. Printed lists of members statistics for the work week are printed and

placed on a wall to receive feedback on performance (for types of statistics read “lexis”). EAW

also has various commercials on Pandora specifically, as well as on the radio, encouraging new

members to join! A picture of the ad:

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The ad encourages new members to become part of the team by talking very highly of the non-

profit organization.

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Lexis

In addition to owning genres, a discourse community has acquired some specific lexis. A

lexis is a term used for the specific vocabulary used by a group or field of study. This

vocabulary must be known to all members of the discourse. While asking Fiest of any “lexis”

used in her discourse she informed me of what most of their conversations conclude, what their

conflicts are about and educated me on the systems so I was able to understand the conversations

while observing. To understand what an employee is complaining about or rejoicing about you

would need to be a member of the discourse or well educated in the discourse to fully understand

what they are talking about. They will talk about their CP60, which is the amount of calls they

take per hour. The employees are expected to take on average 6 calls per hour. Another term they

will talk about is their “CES score”. This score refers to how the customer rates them after a call.

Conversations about these two terms are very common.

Other terms that are used fairly often in the discourse but can also be understood by

nonmembers are promo codes, authorization holds, tracking numbers and other customer service

terms. Another lexis for the discourse is the communication about money and credit cards. There

is a lot of information needed to work in the job.

Threshold Level of Members

A discourse community has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of

relevant content and discoursal expertise. Swales elaborates more on this concept by saying,

“Discourse communities have changing memberships; individuals enter as apprentices leave by

death or in other less involuntary ways. However, survival of the community depends on a

reasonable ratio between novices and experts”. After reflecting on this I asked Johnson about

new members in her discourse, “You can definitely tell who the new kids are… they fill up our

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lync with stupid questions and it is really annoying, I feel bad saying that because I used to be

new and probably did the same thing”. As you can see the new members lack knowledge that

the experts have, that is why it is crucial to have a balanced ratio between the two. If there were

too many new members the organization would fail because not enough people would know the

material to make it successful but also if there were too many experts and not enough new

members then there would be no one to carry on the tradition of the discourse therefore it would

die out and eventually fail.

Fiest also makes a comment on the experts in the organization, “We have a handful of

supervisors but we have recently hired a lot of new people because of the holiday season coming

up, I can see how the company is already hurting from too many unexperienced people”. This is

a perfect example of an unbalanced ratio between the new members and experts if it does not

cause a failure it definitely causes a lot of frustration.

Conclusion

A discourse community is a group of people who share a set of discourses, understood as

basic values and assumptions, and ways of communicating about those goals. To be considered a

discourse community there are certain characteristic requirements your community must meet,

these characteristics include: having a broadly agreed set of common public goals, having

mechanisms of intercommunication among its members uses its participatory mechanisms

primarily to provide information and feedback, utilizes and hence possesses one or more genres

in the communicative furtherance of its aims, in addition to owning genres, it has acquired some

specific lexis and has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and

discoursal expertise. It is important to understand what a discourse community is and why it is

relevant in your everyday life. A discourse is important because it is how we communicate in

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society. The social groups we associate with in on a regular bases are our “communities”.

Everyone belongs to a discourse, if not several at least one, as a result of ethnic, religion, family,

personal interests or particular activities. Our discourse’s mold us into the way we see, do,

believe and value whether we realize it or not. We are influenced by our peers and experiences.

Therefore discourse communities build our characters and personalities. If we were involved in

different discourses than we are now then we would not be who we are now.

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Works Cited

"Discourse Community." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 12 Nov. 2015.

"Education at Work Receives $50,000 Grant from The Greater Cincinnati Foundation." Reuters.

Thomson Reuters, 03 Aug. 2015. Web. 12 Nov. 2015.

"Home - Education at Work." Education at Work. Education At Work, Inc, n.d. Web. 12 Nov.

2015.

Becker, Sam. "When It Comes to the Student Debt Crisis, Taxpayers Lose Either

Way." ProQuest. When It Comes to the Student Debt Crisis, Taxpayers Lose Either Way, 13

June 2015. Web.

Fiest, Chelsea. "Discourse Questions." Personal interview. 20 Oct. 2015.

Johnson, Cassie. "Discourse Questions." Personal interview. 20 Oct. 2015.