Thursday, October 8, 2015

Kemble's Blog


I am a current student of Texas A & M – Commerce with a major in Pre-Vet – Animal Science and am taking an English 1302 class with Jennifer Jones in my semester course studies.  In this class, we as students are responsible for a research project that explains a chosen subculture.

I have chosen to do my Project on Durant Animal Hospital located at 86 West Mulberry Street, Durant, OK 74701.  This site was chosen by me because it is of interest to me and my proposed field of study.  I chose this site because they deal with both small animals like dogs and cats along with livestock like horses and cattle.  Due to the fact that I am considering a career in this field, I felt this would be a good research site for me to explore before I get into this field hot and heavy to only realize that it just is not for me.  With my research, I may also be able to help others in the community that are seeking a career in this field, answer some of the same questions I may have or will face.  I plan to research the ins and outs of the veterinary business along with how the veterinarians interact with their different patients and their owners.

During one of our classes with Ms. Jones, she presented the class with a PowerPoint slide presentation of: John Swales “The Concept of a Discourse Community.”  In this presentation, Mr. Swales, the author of the presentation, has six criteria that he feels are the concepts to a discourse community.  The animal hospital that I will be basing my research on falls into a discourse community and I will briefly explain why.  Below you will see a summarized criteria list of his full article.


1.      “A discourse community has a broadly agreed set of common public goals.”

2.      “A discourse community has mechanisms of intercommunication among its members.”

3.      “A discourse community uses its participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information feedback.”

4.      “A discourse community utilizes and hence possess one or more genres in the communicative furtherance of its aims.”

5.      “In addition to owning genres, a discourse community has acquired some specific lexis.”

6.      “A discourse community has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discoursal expertise.”


Criteria 1:  With this being a veterinary practice, the members or employees of the practice have a broad agreed set of common public goals with some of them being animal welfare, preventative medicine for animals, emergency care for animals, and public awareness and education of animals.


Criteria 2:  With the various positions that a clinic requires, each employee knows their set jobs and what duties they need to perform on a daily and routine basis.  Due to this, they do not need to have communication on a daily basis but also with their jobs, daily communication is necessary like in the case of an emergency (not something that happens on a daily or routine basis) where instructions need to be communicated and followed.


Criteria 3:  Each employee of this veterinary practice needs to be involved in this discourse community in order for it to operate and properly function.  If an employee does not do their job or do it properly, the community will not function as well or maybe even not at all.

 Criteria 4:  This particular veterinary practice uses many types of text with some of those being the phone book, Facebook (social media), a newly formed web-site, and word of mouth.


Criteria 5:  With this practice, the veterinarians and staff use their own language or veterinary terms that many of us may not understand.


Criteria 6:  The clients are a part of the community that come and go while the employees are more prone to stay.

 With just some of the above mentioned criteria, I will use this as a basis for studying how literacy fits into this research project.  I plan to approach this research project with an open mind and with a general set of basic questions.  After reviewing this site for a few days, I will go further in depth with my questions and begin interviewing the staff and clients.  During this time, I will go from an outsider’s perspective to an insider’s perspective and will share my results with you thorough blog posts and my final research paper.

Works Cited

 Swales, John. “The Concept of Discourse Community.” Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings. Boston: Cambridge UP, 1990. 21-32. Print

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