Running Head: The Discourse Community of Marine Biologists
The Discourse Community of Marine Geneticists
Lemm, Amy
English 1302 sec 210
November 3, 2014
Felicia Dziadek
Running Head: The Discourse Community of Marine Biologists
Introduction
What comes to mind when you think of a scientist? One might think of a chemist
mixing different chemicals in beakers. Now what do you think of when you think of a
marine biologist? A completely different image of a person campaigning to save the
whales or the ocean comes to mind. However, marine biologists are scientists too. Marine
biologists spend their lives conducting research to give insight upon the vast oceanic
environment. Their research varies; some researchers are ecologists looking at the
environment as a whole for marine organisms while others are geneticists that look at the
DNA of different species to find out more about that species history. This causes a great
deal of variation in the field of marine biology.
Any discourse community is bound to face a number of problems within it. The
discourse community of marine biologists is no different. The primary difficulty within
this community is communication within members. To solve this problem, standardized
language as well as techniques and protocols for scientific research methods have been
established to minimize confusion. Scientific papers are written in third person with as
much detail as possible in the methodology section for this reason.
For this research, a more specific section of marine biologists was examined due
to the broadness and variation within the marine biologist discourse community. Marine
geneticists have a unique perspective characterized by their use of language, their overall
goals for their research, and other unique characteristics of the group. These unique
features aid in the ability of group to communicate their research amongst individual
researchers across the globe.
Running Head: The Discourse Community of Marine Biologists
Background
introduction
According to John Swales, a professor of linguistics, discourse communities are
characterized by defining criteria such as having shared language, goals,
intercommunication among its members, as well as participatory mechanisms (Swales,
2014). Marine biologists fully fit these criteria since there is a common educated,
scientific language used throughout the community, a broad common goal to find out
about marine life and marine ecosystems, as well as a means of intercommunication and
participation through scientific writings and projects.
The marine biologist discourse community is quite exclusive and at times
misinterpreted; however, misunderstandings arise due to language barriers between
different discourse communities. Marine biologists live in a world where they must
switch their style of language based upon their environment. Their scientific, formal lexis
is used within the scientific community. When someone comes seeking entrance into
their discourse community, scientific language must be defined and explained. One who
does not have entrance into a community such as a college student may think that long,
elaborate terms are not necessary when explaining certain concepts, but those terms are
essential to set up a standardized lexis that helps with concise intercommunication among
different groups of scientists.
Marine biologists also have shared set of goals that may differ amongst different
individual groups, but always comes down to finding out more information about the
ocean environment. A project known as the Census of Marine Life, was a collaborative
work among marine researchers around the globe to evaluate the diversity of the
Running Head: The Discourse Community of Marine Biologists
organisms living in the ocean as well as their abundance and distribution (“About the
Census”, 2010). A scientist working upon this project stated that, ‘‘The programme is
about the connections (…) The Census is only possible if you are a community and you
share the same language and the same world” (Vermeulen, 2013). There are many other
projects of this nature, such as the Barcode of Life project, in which marine scientists
work together with the common goal of finding out more information about the ocean
environment and the organisms living there.
Methodology
To find out more information about this discourse community, Professor Derek
Hogan was interviewed about his experiences in the field of marine biology. He has been
actively teaching at Texas A&M University at Corpus Christi for a number of years and
is currently one of the professors for ichthyology, which is a biology of fish class. He also
runs a lab at the Harte Research Institute where his graduate and undergraduate students
run genetic analysis on lionfish and their stomach contents as well as different species of
gobies.
The interview completed for this study was face to face. Detailed notes were
taken during the interview Interview questions for this study included:
1) Could you describe what your job entails?
2) What are your favorite experiences relating to your work?
3) How did you decide to become a professor?
4) How did you decide to become an ichthyologist?
5) How did you become involved in the Barcoding of Life project?
Running Head: The Discourse Community of Marine Biologists
6) How did you start working with the fish that your researchers work with in
your lab?
The research laboratory of Dr. Hogan was observed a number of times over
various weeks. Details such as the layout of the lab, the number of researchers in the
laboratory, lexis, and the tasks that were preformed were noted. Pictures of the different
elements of the laboratory were taken.
Data
Interview to come. I am saving a page for this section.
The marine laboratory was split into different areas. There is an office where
students use computers to work upon their research, the main section of lab in which
there are four benches in which researchers do a specific process, and a separated gel
room where data from of the other sections of the lab were looked at.
The students were all very friendly and willing to answer any questions. Even
though one person was working on a specific assignment, they were always interested in
other people’s research as well. Students mainly talked about laboratory related topics but
would often have laid back conversations with each other on break.
Observations to be finished this week. Saving 2 pages for details.
Analysis
Interview to come. I am saving a page to go into detail about my interview.
Observations to be completed this week. Saving 2 pages for analysis.
Running Head: The Discourse Community of Marine Biologists
Conclusion
In my essay, I only analyzed the unique lexis, goals, collaboration process, and
unique characters of the group but there is far more to this community.
References
About the Census. (2010). Retrieved November 1, 2014.
Borgman, C., Wallis, J., & Mayernik, M. (2012). Who's Got the Data? Interdependencies
in Science and Technology Collaborations. Computer Supported Cooperative
Work: The Journal Of Collaborative Computing, 21(6), 485-523.
doi:10.1007/s10606-012-9169-z
Swales, J. (2014). The concept of discourse community. In E. Wardle & D. Downs
(Eds.), Writing about Writing (2 ed., pp. 215-228). Boston: BEDFORD/ST.
MARTIN'S.
Vermeulen, N. (2013). From Darwin to the Census of Marine Life: Marine Biology as
Big Science. Plos ONE, 8(1), 1-8. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0054284
Ward, R., Hanner, R., & Hebert, P. (2009). The campaign to DNA barcode all fishes,
Running Head: The Discourse Community of Marine Biologists
FISH-BOL. Journal Of Fish Biology, 74(2), 329-356.