Engineering Discourse Community

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 maintain and improve
upon how we live now. In this report Ill be discussing the students and new members of
this community on the campus of the University of North Carolina at 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 communicating
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 improve upon those ideas in detail. As they discussed, many of the
members wrote down notes for future reference. During my time there it was clear that
some were better members than others. The most active members were the ones who
actively contributed ideas to the project while the ones who seemed to be mushfaking
were usually the ones who took a seat back and let the others take charge of the
project.
In my research I decided to interview my friend who is a part of the community,
Tony Tran. In the interview I asked him four questions. The first question I asked him
was 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 for people as well as
the various opportunities that the community would offer 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
described, circuits are used to guide electricity throughout a mechanism, ohms are a
measurement of electricity, and a fibonacci is a collection of numbers going up in a
sequence. My final question to him was how does he communicate 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. 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 the methods of intercommunicating within the

community. The community seems to communicate thought basic methods as most
people would communicate such as phone calls, text messaging, and emails. This is
usually used to communicate small details and casual conversation based on subjects
of engineering from one student to another. Intercommunication between students and
teachers, often involve 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).
The fourth characteristic is the genres of communication. Among the community
there are not many different genres of communication. The main types would be
messaging, email, and lab reports. However there are also presentations and public
speaking 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. The community also uses programming languages to
help conduct their projects
For the sixth characteristic, members in the community consist of 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 into 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 if there are
conflicts within the community. There certainly is, 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,
engineering majors tend to get along 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 explain
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, and how to construct a lab report, all to
present and articule their ideas better. The final aspect that John talks about are their
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 stereotype 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 on the UNCC
campus. 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 how the things we use everyday work.
Works Cited
Dinh, Triet. Personal Interview. 14 November 2014
Tran, Tony. Personal Interview. 13 November 2014

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The second characteristic are the methods of intercommunicating within the

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