Essay On Discourse Communities

Discourse Communities: A Nursing and Medical Perspective
Importance of Nursing Multiple definitions of discourse communities exist, and therefore many questions arise. Where exactly is the line between a discourse community and a speech community drawn? “How [does] a particular discourse community use its discoursal conventions to initiate new members or how [does] the discourse of another reifies particular values or beliefs” (SWALES)? Some may consider musicians as part of a discourse community, or even a good group of friends. No matter the exact distinctions, John Swales proposes six defining characteristics of all discourse communities noting they each have publicly agreed upon set of common goals, mechanisms of intercommunication, mechanisms

“This specialization may involve using lexical items known to the wider speech communities in special and technical ways, as in information technology discourse communities, or using highly technical terminology as in medical communities” (Swales). All Swales is trying to say here is that specialized groups of people, nurses and other healthcare workers included, have an exclusive form of communication all their own complete with specialized vocabularies, intonations, body language, etc. Ever heard of a synchronous diaphragmatic flutter? It is simply known as a hiccup to the majority of people. How about a temporary form of discomfort known as sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia? Brain freezes can be infuriating, and the medical term for it can be confusing to anyone except those working in healthcare (CITATION). Hematuria, dermatitis, sternutation…the list could go on and on (blood in the urine, inflammation of the skin, and a sneeze respectively). Below is a chart outlining just a handful of the thousands of prefixes and root words that go into constructing medical terms and lexical

Teresa Bruggeman, a retired Registered Nurse and current Anatomy and Physiology Professor here at the University Michigan describes this by saying, “If you were talking about public communication, the only thing you can trust are dependable published papers and therefore they are very formal […] when you’re looking for information on something as serious as people’s lives, you would never resort to something so flawed and biased such as Facebook articles […] Unless you have been working with someone back and forth, emails are a different story and type of communication”