Understanding your Discourse Community
What is a discourse community? Generally speaking,
it is a community centered around a specific type of
language and mode of communication. For instance, when
you are with your closest group of friends, you might
notice that you have your own way of speaking and communicating
which is very different from how you might interact
with your parents, your family doctor, or your professors
at Rice. Likewise, each field or academic discipline
has different expectations regarding what terms to use,
what subjects are important to discuss and analyze,
and how papers should be organize and convey information.
While strong, clear writing is important to all fields,
you will find the paper expectations somewhat different
depending on what discipline, professor, or audience
you are writing for. Before you begin writing your paper,
ask yourself a few questions:
-
Who is the audience for my paper? (Math professor?
Literature professor? Fellow engineering students?
Professional engineers in the field?)
-
What kind of paper am I expected to write? (Literature
analysis? Lab report? Sociological study?)
-
How should I best organize my ideas to conform
to the specific expectations of my field or audience?
(Should I state my argument first? Last? Should
I start with a creative opening? Divide the paper
into neat sections?)
If you are at all confused about what is expected of
your paper, you should be sure to ask your instructor
and find examples of similar papers people have written
before.
The following links may also help you
to assess your audience better and understand some of
the different writing conventions expected of different
disciplines and discourse communities:
Discipline-specific
resources
Writing
guidelines for engineering and physical science students
If you are working on a literature
paper, we have a page devoted just to you
