From Beaufort, I learned that limiting your writing to one discourse community produces writers who are ill-prepared, highly demotivated and incompetent “products” (Beaufort 7). Hence, I had to learn subject matter knowledge, genre knowledge, rhetorical knowledge and the writing process knowledge concerning my professional field. By acquiring this knowledge, I was able to begin my becoming as a competent writer.
From Johns and Swales, I learned what the term “discourse community” means. From Swales, I learned that a discourse community is deemed distinct for the members share a goal, for how they utilizes specific genres and lexis, and how they provide a specific kind of information to a specific audience. From Johns' extension of Swales’ argument, I learned that discourse communities are distinct from one another because of how individuals of said community share genres, share practices and values, specific knowledge, specific vocabulary and concepts, as well as regulate and initiate new members into that community. This allowed me to define my current and …show more content…
He says that genres are not limited to written frames, rather any form of communication by which interaction occurs can be constituted as genre. This allowed me to form a framework about the direction of my extended writing project. Keeping in Bozeman’s definition of genres, I concluded that genres constitutes as any distinct and creative work used for meaningfully communicating our thoughts. Hence, lab meetings, lab memos, lab reports and journals can be called genres, and those particular to my discourse community can be thoroughly