Swales and Hyland – Cheap Research Essays

In his essay “The Concept of a Discourse Community,” renowned linguist John Swales explains what a discourse community is. In doing so, he takes a stance on how that concept should be defined, clarifying and challenging other conceptualizations before giving his own six criteria. Ken Hyland, in his essay “Disciplinary Voices,” draws on Swales’ ideas to argue that academic writers express their writing voices in ways that are consistent with the “values, practices, and beliefs” of their academic disciplines (p. 9). He also distinguishes between how writers show stance and engage with their readers as they build knowledge. Based on his research, Hyland argues that these strategies vary among what he terms “soft-knowledge” and “hard-knowledge” disciplines, such as sociology and mechanical engineering, respectively.

These concepts are essential both to thinking about disciplinary and interdisciplinary writing and to drafting your first project. So, to develop a working understanding of Swales’ and Hyland’s ideas, I’d like you to apply them to your own academic discourse community. This could be your major, department, field, or future profession. First, apply Swales’ six criteria to explain how your discipline works as a discourse community. Since this is a writing course, I suggest you focus specifically on the types of communication that your discipline uses to think about how it functions as a discourse community. Then, look at a sample of writing from your community and test Hyland’s findings. How does a writer take stances and engage readers in your discourse community? What lexical features (words and phrases) are used, and are they same as Hyland found in his research?