Maryland English Institute 1
Discourse Community Analysis
November 14, 2012
Assignment Description
Every community of speakers has its own ‘discourse’, that is, its own “ways of speaking”
and writing. For example, in the community of lawyers, there is a very specific, Latinate (Latinbased English), technical language; the expectations among its members of the rules of grammar
(passive voice and modals, in particularly), register, argument, and evidence are very clear and
specific to the community. Medicine is another community with similarly extreme discourse
rules. Some language scholars say that all communities purposefully create discourses that are
designed, in large part, to welcome people to “the club,” as it were, and to keep others out.
What this means for us is that a large part of our language tasks will be fulfilled
according to the norms and expectations of the academic discourse community we belong to.
The language use within this community represents an entire ethos or set of ideologies that
informs the way that its members speak and write to each other.
This assignment asks you to write a 9 paragraph analysis (presentation) that examines
(purpose) the discourse of a sample text in your academic community. Please include your
sample text with your analysis. Your audience is our 007 community. Your evidence will come
from a close analysis of the key language features and practices of your text. Your language
should be appropriate for members of our community.
Your analysis should contain the following moves. In the body paragraphs, you may change the
order of the moves if it makes better sense to your analysis.
Introduction
 Move 1: an introduction of your topic
 Move 2: a thesis
Body paragraphs
 Move 3: an identification of the key organizational pattern (e.g. title, abstract of the text,
key vocabulary, and subheadings)
 Move 4: an identification rhetorical moves (e.g. create the space of the conversation,
enter the space, alter the space, discuss significance of the alteration)
 Move 5: of major topics
 Move 6: an identification of major frames
 Move 7: a discussion of appropriate conventions of evidence (e.g. charts, graphs,
quotations of experts, facts, statistics, examples, anecdotes, etc.)
 Move 8: an examination of key grammatical structures (voice [passive v. active], tense,
and modality [degree of certainty])
 Move 9: an identification of key vocabulary features ( register and technical words)
Conclusion
 Move 10: a conclusion that paraphrases your thesis
Maryland English Institute 2
Discourse Community Analysis

Move 11: an answer to the question “So what?” Why should your readers care—that is,
how they should interpret your analysis and/or understand why being able to analyze an
academic community’s discourse is important
Assignment Goals
Upon completion of this assignment, you will be able to
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introduce your topic (context and thesis)
state a clear thesis that grows out of the context and prepares the reader for the analysis
that follows
identify, analyze, and discuss key pragmatic features (i.e.. organization, moves, topics,
frames, and assumptions)
identify, analyze, and discuss conventions of evidence (e.g. charts, graphs, quotations of
experts, facts, statistics, examples, anecdotes, etc.)
identify, analyze, and discuss grammatical structures (voice [passive v. active] and
modality [degree of certainty])
identify, analyze, and discuss key vocabulary features ( register and technical words)
conclude by appropriately paraphrasing your thesis and by telling your audience how to
interpret analysis and why your thesis is important