Discourse Community Analysis
Dietary protein safety and resistance exercise: What do really know?
Prof. Eric Walker
Level 004C
UMEI004- Reading, Writing, Grammar
Maryland English Institute
Tahani Zareef
02/17/2009
Discourse is a term to describe the way of speaking, writing, communicating inside
specific community. Each member in this community shares the same interest, language, and
evidence. Also every member is able to understand and analyze the particular discourse in his
community, whether it is the medical community, the scientist community, or the art community;
every community has its own discourse. People outside these communities find difficulty to read
and understand academic journals that belong to these particular communities. The nutrition
community is not far a way from all these communities; it has its own discourse. In this essay, I
will analyze a sample topic in nutrition community in terms of vocabulary features, grammar and
modality, organization, and evidence. The essay title is ‘Dietary protein safety and resistance
exercise: What do really know?’ it was written for Journal of the International Society of Sports
and Nutrition 2009,6:3 by Lonnie M,Lowery and Lorena Devia.
Language and vocabulary are very important part in the nutrition community. The
authors used formal language for academic purpose. In addition, nutrition community is a part of
the scientific community so that the formal language is only accepted within these communities.
In terms of vocabulary, people who work in nutrition fields use their own vocabulary and key
words, for example, when we analyze this specific article, it is easy to recognize from the title
that it belongs to the nutrition community. The authors include people outside their community
to share many of common key words such as dietary, health benefits, bodyweight, and calories.
On the other hand, they exclude people who are not members in the nutrition community by
using specific words such as dietetics, protein synthesis, dietary recording and amino acid
supplements, high protein diet and whey-carbohydrate drinks. When people read these terms,
they must be fully aware that article belongs to nutrition community.
In terms of modality and degrees of certainty, they are extremely important in the
scientific community in general and in the nutrition community in particular. In this article the
authors used different degrees of certainty according to their evidences .For example, ‘in fact,
protein consumed in excess of what the body needs will be converted to fat’. They used the
model ‘well’ to show the high degree of certainty in future results when people consume a large
amount of protein which scientists have already approved. In addition, ‘one must wonder’ show a
higher degree of certainty, also they used the simple presents when they talk about facts.
However, the authors used weaker certainty in this article such as ‘may pose health risks’,’ can
contribute’ and might affect’ to show that all these results need to be approved by scientific
evidence. Furthermore, the authors used some adverbs such as probably, perhaps to show the
possibility when they expressed their thoughts.
However, the article followed the rules of the organization pattern in the nutrition
community. This pattern rules include an abstract to summarize the most important information
for the whole article, an introduction, previous studies, and a conclusion. In addition, authors
used several subheadings to organize and explain each section in the article separately, for
example, (introduction, competing interest, authors’ contributions, summary and references).
Moreover, they presented study investigation by using the key words in table and bold letters
(higher protein group, lower protein group, duration of higher protein intake, uncontrolled
variables). The title is very specific and gives the reader the main idea and the purpose of the
study as in the most articles that presented in the nutrition community.
In addition to all those important points, nutritionists cite their research by using the
previous research results and studies as strong evidences to support the article or their point of
views, for example, lean body mass has been shown to influence serum creatinine and
concentration and thus presumably renal ‘work ’(19).The authors document their point of view
with facts and approved results. Furthermore, some other studies show charts, statistics, and
reports from organization such as WHO and FDA as evidence in the community.
In conclusion, nutritionists share special discourse inside their community. This
discourse include unique vocabulary and key words, facts and ideas with higher degree of
certainly, special organization pattern that help nutritionist to better understand the topic , strong
evidences and citations to document the articles and research papers .consequently, If you are
able to understand this kind of discourse community you will enjoy their valuables academic
essays.