Pharmacists And Other Discourse Communities
The concept of discourse community was initially introduced by a Martin Nystrand; a sociologist in the early 80s. The key word in the term discourse community is discourse which refers to all forms of communication that describes and characterizes a particular group of people. As such, a discourse is unique to the group and is shaped by an institutionalized ways of thinking of those who subscribe to and act according the tenets of the discourse. According to Eli (2005), a discourse is entrenched in the uniqueness of a community in terms of language that they use and which constitutes the unique terminologies, composition of the language (vocabulary, intonations among other), the dressing code and style, dressing culture, the pilings, tools, symbols, believes attitude, customs, ritual, glossary, practices among others aspects of life unique to the groups.
For it to be a discourse all aspects of it must be supported and practiced by virtually all the members of the group. In addition, individuals who form a discourse community may be individuals with certain qualifications and similar career goals, especially if the latter is composed of individual belonging to the same profession or pursuing the same career (Eli, 2005). Examples of discourse communities includes the legal practitioners (lawyers), individual who contributes to a certain academic journals, medical practitioners such as pharmacists members of an email list posing as Madonna fans (Swales,1990:6), readers of a particular academic journal among others. Ideally, it is the individuals that subscribe to a certain discourse community the helps develop the discourse most of which are typically informal groupings. A discourse community is ideally subtle. As a results, it can be imaginary, the latter based on the platform or forum in which a group of individuals operates.
According to Eli (2005, p.6) there are six characteristics or rather qualities unique to a disclosures community. First, a discourse community has a set of reestablished and unanimously agreed common public objectives as well as established communication systems among its members. In addition, discourse community has one on more unique genre and which it consistently uses to achieve its objectives. Also, it makes use of its participatory systems to communicate or transmit information among the members as well as obtain feedback. On top of the unique genres, Eli points out that a discourse community has unique terminologies and jargons (vocabularies) that they use not only to communicate amongst themselves, but also a source of identity, pride and a way of keeping secrets that belongs to the community to itself.
However, James porter referred to a discourse community as a confined and provisional mechanism that is formed by scores of unique practices and characteristics of a formation and which is brought together by unanimity of purpose (Swales, 1990, p.27). The author of this article asserts that a discourse community is a textual organization consisting of both formal and informal rules, important history and characteristic approaches of acquiring power, institutional bureaucracies and vested interests among other aspects binding its members together. Members of a discourse community can be identified by habits, ways of thinking, methods, external circumstances, and tradition customs that are clearly known by the members who use them. Language and rules all of the discourse community must be unconditionally adhered to. The users of those terms and an individual who wish to deviate from the usage of such language must comprehensively justify the deviation.
The terminologies, lexis, rituals, practices and communication styles all of which are the elements of language form major identification points and building points of a discourse community. According to Eli (2005, p.4), the nature of language used by a discourse community and which is unique to them is referred to as register or diatype. As such, members are mainly recruited to the discourse community via training personal influence; a factor that differentiate the language used in the speech community or the native community language, in which an individual becomes a members either via inheritance of the dialect (language) or adopting it from the parents or predecessors. In order for a person to fit in a specific discourse community therefore, it is vital that he or she learn the discourse language (diatype) in order to be in a position of understanding the terms used, meaning of vocabulary as well as understanding the conceptions and prospects in the context of that particular community.
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