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Ryan Mills
Professor Ogbara
English 1A - 32469
23 February 2015
Computer Science Discourse Community
Introduction
A discourse community is defined by linguistics professor John Swales as a group of
people involved in and communicating about a particular topic, issue, or in a particular field.
According to Swales a discourse community is defined by six characteristics. "A discourse has a
broadly agreed set of common public goals" (Swales 471). Each member of the discourse
community has a commonly shared goal(s) and each member of the community is aware of these
goals. The discourse community "has mechanisms of intercommunication among their members"
(Swales 471). Each discourse community has its own different way of communicating depending
on the discourse community. A discourse community "uses its participatory mechanisms
primarily to provide information and feedback" (Swales 472). Each member of the discourse
community interacts with other people is a way to exchange information and provide feedback.
A discourse community "utilizes and possesses one or more genres in the communicative
furtherance of its aims" (Swales 472). This is how language is used in the discourse
communities. A discourse community "has acquired some specific lexis" (Swales 473). Members
of a discourse community have a specific way of communicating with each other. And a

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discourse community "has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant
content and discoursal expertise" (Swales 473). This is how members of a discourse community
determine their expertise and success in the field.
My discourse at Pasadena City College is Computer Science focusing on the subset of
Software Engineering. Studying the genres of the computer science discourse can provide a
better understanding as to what common goals are shared in the discourse community.
Performing interviews with the students and professionals of the computer science discourse can
help me understand why and how computer science functions as a discourse community. This
will involve asking questions of students and professionals in the computer science field of
study. What are the goals? What lexis is used? What is required to be considered an expert in
this discourse community?
Methods
To answer my research questions, I conducted an interview with two different people. In
this research, only one form of data collection was used. The interviews were conducted over
email.
Two interviews were conducted one with a student currently in school and a professional
in the computer science field. The first interview was conducted with Andrew Foster, a SQL
developer at Solvexis. The second interview was with Karolina Poliatevska, a student at
Maynooth University Ireland.

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Both interviewees were contacted by me through the internet by asking people in the
computer science field if they would be willing to be interviewed for a paper I am writing. Both
the interviews were conducted through email. Both participants were asked questions pertaining
to their profession or field of study.
Karolina Poliatevska was asked and responded; What school do you attend? Maynooth
University Ireland; What degree are you pursuing? Bachelors of science Computer Science
and Software Engineering; Do you subscribe to certain publications or visit conferences related
to your field? I do not; What influenced or inspired you to pursue this path? I like the logical
way of representing information in computers; How long have you been pursuing this path?
Two years; How do you communicate with other people in this community? Online forums
and sites like reddit (how you contacted me); What are the shared goals among members of this
community? I think that the goals can differ depending on which specific field you are in, but
some shared goals could be a love for computers, being able to get them to work, or to get them
to do something; What types of specialized words or jargon do you use? BIOS, bug, buffer,
DNS, Dos, dpi, memory, the list goes on; As I have described it do you believe you are a
member of this discourse? Did not know what a discourse was before you described it to me,
but yes.
Andrew Foster was asked and responded; What is your profession? I am a SQL
Developer at Solvexis; What degree(s) do you have? I have a Bachelor of Science in
Psychology; Do you subscribe to certain publications or visit conferences related to your field?
No; What influenced or inspired you to pursue this profession? Interest in computers from a
young age, opportunities for advancement, and job security; What do you like about your

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profession? I like that computers and computer networks are systems that follow known rules,
which I can manipulate to the benefit of myself or my employer if I fully understand the rules o
the system. I am interested in computers because I find the process of writing code or creating a
new computer, network or database to be creative and fulfilling. I can directly apply my
knowledge to bring something new into the world, and I enjoy that immensely; How long have
you been a part of this profession? Four years. How do you communicate with other people in
this community? I contact them through email, AIM, and ICQ; What are the shared goals
among members of this community? To keep things running and to fix problems; What types
of specialized words or jargon do you use? AIM, ICQ, SQL, python, linux, table, network; As
I have described it do you believe you are a member of this discourse?
These two interviews helped me to get a deeper insight into a career in computer science,
more than any article would have. I analyzed the results of the interview according to the six
characteristics of a discourse community as demonstrated by John Swales in The Concept of a
Discourse Community, focusing more closely on specific common goals and lexis in order to
better understand how the discourse functions.
Results
In relation to the six characteristics of a discourse community outlined by Swales,
Computer Science is a perfect fit for a discourse community. In 1963 the Association for
Computing Machinery National Conference held a meeting to determine the curricula of
Computer Science which led to a publication in the Communications of the ACM, the leading
publication in the computer field. In that issue, the author described computer science as ... the

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study of the organizational and structural properties of systems, arrays of symbols and
mechanical languages .... (Hemmendinger 2). People in the field of computer science can work
in many different areas. There are five main areas of computer science, software engineering,
computer engineering, information systems, computer science, and information technology.
Many people choose to enter the field of computer science for a variety of reasons. My
reason for entering the Computer Science field is because I have always enjoyed working on
computers and I enjoy figuring out problems. Compute science is a discipline that spans a variety
of topics related to computers such as the limits of computation or software engineering. The
Computing Sciences Accreditation Board (CSAB) was formed in 1981 by the Association for
Computing Machinery and the IEEE Computer Society (Hemmendinger 4). The CSAB identifies
these four areas as crucial to the field of computer science; computation theory, computer
algorithms, data structures, programming languages, and computer architecture. In addition to
those four areas, the CSAB also identifies and defines fields such as software engineering,
artificial intelligence (AI), computer networking, databases, operating systems, computer to
human interaction, and computer graphics as being important areas of computer science (CSAB,
1997).
Although there have been several definitions for what computer science is, the general
consensus among people in the field have agreed upon the definition as defined by the CSAB,
Thus, a well educated computer scientist should be able to apply the fundamental concepts and
techniques of computation, algorithms, and computer design to a specific design problem"
(CSAB, 1997). The common goals of this discourse would be to put these concepts into practice

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in their respective field. This definition of computer science provided by the CSAB fits Swales
first characteristic of community discourses, the common public goal.
A method of intercommunication among the members of computer science exists in
several different organizations, committees and groups involved in the defining the field of
computer science. The methods of intercommunication consists of the Institute of Electrical and
Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). These
organizations joined together to form driving committees that work together to form the
standards for computer science for review and publication. An example of one of these standards
is the Software Engineering Education Knowledge (SEEK) which was devised by a committee
of focus groups that were divided on the standard for the Software Engineering Body of
Knowledge (SWEBOK) (SE2004 17). The SEEKs purpose is to develop an undergraduate
standard for software engineers (SE2004 12).
An example of the mechanisms of information and feedback as listed as the third
characteristic of a discourse community as defined by Swales is present in the SWEBOK
knowledge areas and in its public review process. Recommendations and scrutiny have helped to
devise and fine tune the standards of SWEBOK, just like the ACM guided the SWEBOK
publications to focus on the specialty roles and areas of computer science (Buglione and Abran
1).
In reference to Swales Fourth Characteristic of a discourse community utilizing one or
more genres in the furtherance of its aims is the ten knowledge areas as defined in SWEBOK.
These knowledge areas consist of software requirements, software configuration management,

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software design, software engineering management, software construction, software engineering

process, software testing, software engineering tools and methods, software maintenance, and
software quality (Buglione and Abran 3). These genres are designed to promote a constant view
of what software engineering is worldwide; To clarify the place of software engineering
compared to other computer science disciplines, such as mathematics and computer engineering;
And to provide a foundation for the development of education, certifications and for licensing
material (Buglione and Abran 2).
Conclusion
The computer science discourse community is a group of people who enjoy the
challenges that computers present to us. The computer science discourse community, which is
comprised of people with different degrees in computers, have problems arisen associated with
people not understanding technology and the people who do having trouble coming up with a
standard of what it is. It is often perceived as the most discoursing subject that a lot of people
have trouble with. Many classes in the computer science field are often crowded with people
who are just doing it for a job and crowding out the people who have the knowledge and
experience to use these classes.

People should pay more careful attention to these issues because without the widely the
computer science field, it would be impossible to live in our society the way it is now. Even if
you are not familiar with the discourse community or you dont see yourself as a member of the
discourse community, your life has been influenced by computer science extensively and
significantly. A little bit more of peoples attention to the classes and the current computer

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science educational system will help to develop the discourse community and foster future
interest in computer science.

The computer science field has gone through each of the six requirements to be a
discourse community as described by Swales and the computer science field is a proper example
of a discourse community.
Upon further research into the computer science discourse community I am very aware
that it remains an emerging field and will be for some time, both as a profession and as an
education. Since 2004 the release of the software engineering standards the educational
requirements of software engineering and computer science are becoming more easily defined
with a strong foundation of mathematics similar to the other sciences. Despite some of the
inconsistencies with the educational qualifications I remain in my comfortable in my knowledge
that computer science and its various areas of knowledge is a discourse community.