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Dan Nguyen

Emilia Grant
UWRT 1201
November 17, 2014
Engineering Discourse Community
The discourse community I decided to observe and research was the
Engineering discourse community, specifically the electrical engineering community.
This community is an important community in society as it helps maintains and
improves upon how we live now. In this report Ill be discuss the student and new
members of this community on the campus of the University of North Carolina Charlotte.
During the past week in my observation I asked my friend Triet Dinh to let me tag
along during a study session with other members of the Electrical Engineering
community. During the time I spent with the study group I noticed that commenting with
each other was an important aspect of the groups especially when it was a
collaboration. The majority of what was spoken was the brainstorming of ideas to better
the project and improving upon those ideas in detail. As they discuss, many of the
member wrote down notes for future reference. During my time there it was clear that
some were better members than others. The most in members were the ones who
actively contributed ideas to the project while the one who seemed to be mushfaking
were usually the ones who who take a seat back and let the others take charge of the
project.
In my research i decided to interview my friend is a part of the community, Tony
Tran. In the interview i asked him four questions. the first question I asked him how long

he was member of the community to which he said three years (Tran). I asked him why
he decide to choose to be a part of the community, he replied that it was because he
enjoyed the aspects of technology and what it can do your people as well as the various
opportunities that the community would grant him (Tran). For the third question I asked
him if there was a lexicon of words that others outside the community might not know
about. He gave me three words: circuits, ohms, and fibonacci. As he describes circuits
are used to guide electricity throughout a mechanism. My final question to him was that
how does he community with his peers and other members of the community. His
answer was that the combination was mostly done through messaging, but for the
professors he usually emails since it is a more formal manner of communication (Tran).
In my research I also looked into the forms of communication that
members of the community used to talk to one another. Tony Tran let me see his text
message to his classmates to better understand how the community talks to one
another. Most of which where relating to meet up to discuss projects and homework.
To start off explaining how the Electrical engineering community is in fact a
discourse community I will be using Swales six characteristics to describe how it is a
discourse community. The first characteristic is that there would be a set of common
goals to be achieved. After observation and research it seems that the main goals of the
community would be to find out how objects work since it seems to be a common
interest in the various members of the community. Another goal is to meet the
requirements of a project whether it is in a professional setting or a classroom setting
(Tran).

The second characteristic are methods to intercommunicate within the


community. The community seems to communicate thought basic methods as most
people would communicate such as phone calls, text messaging, and emails. Although
this is usually used to community small details and casual conversation based on
subjects of engineering from one student to another. To intercommunicate from students
to teachers, they often give lab reports to their professors to communicate exactly what
they have done on projects to best give out reports on their findings (Dinh).
The third is the feedback from these methods of communication. Most of the
feedback comes from the professor as he or she are experts among the community and
give the most advice on the lab reports sent in. However professors are not the only
ones who can give feedback. Students tend to work together to provide feedback to
each other especially when working together as it is beneficial to the group (Dinh).
Next the fourth characteristic is the genres of communication. Among the
community there is not many different genres of communication. The main types would
be messaging, email, and lab reports. However there are also presentations and public
speak to convey projects to other peers in the community.
The fifth characteristic is that community has a lexicon and a set vocabulary that
only the members of the community would know. The majority of the terms used in the
community tend to be various vocabulary and the names of items used among the
community such as circuit boards. Among that the community also uses a programming
languages and programs to help conduct their projects
For the sixth characteristic, the variety of members in the community there are
veterans as well as beginners. The beginners would be students who have yet to enter

the workforce and the veterans would the ones who will teach the students as teachers
and as supervisors. Veterans of the industry would be those who have extras
knowledge of the electrical and engineering mechanics. The students or newcomers
would learn to grow in veterans through schooling and college.
After thinking about Swales six characteristics, the aspects of Ann M. Johns
ideas on a discourse community became clearer. For example she asks of there are
conflicts within the community. To which there is certainly, in the study group I observed
there were moments where group members would yell at each other when one member
would mess up or make an incorrect statement. Although there are conflicts within the
community there doesn't seem to be much conflict outside, from what I observed
Engineer major tend to get long with those outside of the community. Another aspect of
Johns characteristics is authority. Who has it? Authority in this community almost
always goes to the more knowledgeable person, usually the professor due to years of
experience on the subject. Those with lesser years on them must have the elements of
belonging to be a part of the community. They must learn how to learn the material
handed to them and be able to understand it. They also must learn time management
due to the heavy work load. the next aspect is multiliteracies which members are
expected to learn to be literate in many aspects. Members must learn programming
languages, public speaking, how to construct a lab report, all to present and articule
their ideas better. The final aspect that John talks about there stereotypes. One
stereotype of the engineering community is that it tends to be full of nerdish people
which is untrue. There is a large variety of members in the community that all share an
interest in engineering. However there is also another stereo type that seems to be true

and it is that the members tend to have a heavy work load, which is true for the people I
observed and interviewed.
The electrical engineering community is an important community in society. They
represent a part of society that will eventually go on to improve aspects of it. When they
meet their goals it helps society as a whole to be able to maintain an average life with
the use of electricity. What others can learn of this community is to maintain the same
interest in having an interest in how the things we use everyday works.

Works Cited
Dinh, Triet. Personal Interview. 14 November 2014
Tran, Tony. Personal Interview. 13 November 2014

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