Ugharadar 1
Naeem Ugharadar
Eng 3010
Discourse Community: Physical Therapy
A Discourse Community is a group of people who share similar ideas, goals
and communication style with each other. According to Swales1(pg. 471-473), a
discourse community has common public goals, different genres and lexis. In order
to enter into a particular discourse community, one must learn their ways to analyze
data, write (lexis) and communicate using the standardized rules created by the
group. Everyone is a part of multiple discourse communities in their life. Similarly I
am a part of many different discourse communities as a student at Wayne State
University, Detroit, MI. Examples of a discourse community in my life are: family,
friends, organizations that I am a member of and my courses at the university. I
interact differently according to the type of discourse community I am surrounded
by. I will communicate very formally with my professors at the university as oppose
to my friends.
My goal in the future is to acquire proper education and requirements to
enter the discourse community of physical therapists. Physical Therapists are very
important in the society. They provide services to help make the community a
healthier environment. Role of a physical therapist is very challenging now days, as
they have to communicate and co-operate with a vast diversity of people. Physical
therapists sometimes work with elderly people, athletes and children. A Physical
Therapist must know and learn how to communicate with these different types of people
in order to successfully provide services they offer to their patients. One aspect of being a
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physical therapist that I love is to see patients get better. An excellent example of this is
when my cousin tore a ligament in his shoulder while playing flag football. He received
surgery and was referred to a Physical Therapist later. I was very fascinated and
impressed by the progress he made recovering from that surgery by the help of the
Physical Therapist.
In order to learn more about the responsibilities, problems and current interests of
study in the field of Physical Therapy (PT), I decided to interview a working Physical
Therapist named Dr. Faisal Rehman. I interviewed him because he recently graduated
Wayne State University’s Physical Therapy School. I thought he could give me some
valuable information about the process he went through to successfully function as a
physical therapist. In his interview Dr. Rehman2 said “becoming a physical therapist is a
lot of studying and hard work, but it pays off at the end when you see patients get better
right in front of your eyes”. From his interview and some of my own research, I came to a
conclusion that the discourse community of physical therapy is not easy to fit in. It
requires students to pass all the required courses in pre-physical therapy major while
maintaining a minimum GPA of 3.0, achieve a good grade in GRE test and get into a
physical therapy school. Other than academic achievements, Pre-PT major also requires
students to shadow a working Physical Therapist so you get the real idea of how the
discourse community of PT works. I believe this is an excellent tool that Wayne State
University provides their students so they can get a glimpse of what their future life will
turn out to be. This can also be a wake up call for some people who cannot handle the
responsibilities and challenges that this profession has to offer.
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Dr Rehman gave me all the details about the types of language and genre used in
the discourse community of PT. He explains that physical therapists communicate with
two types of people on daily bases: patients and other colleagues. Physical therapists
must know how to communicate between these two discourse communities as a part of
their job. They use anatomical and medical terminology to communicate between each
other. They use very simple language (without any confusing medical terms) when they
communicate with patients. They have to use simple language in order to make the
patient understand. Most of the time physical therapists assign certain exercises to do at
home for patients. Unclear communication about these exercises can lead up to major
problems. Genres that PTs use are e-mails, letters and patient profile forms. Letters and emails are used to document the communication between two professionals in PT. The
forms physical therapists use when they see patients include pictures of muscle skeleton,
bones, and blanks to indicate the point of injury and treatment.
Another aspect of PTs discourse community is conducting proper research. In
order to find recent hot topics in research, I searched some of the literature about physical
therapy on Wayne State University’s library website. I came up with lots of journals such
as Cardiopulmonary Physical Therapy Journal, Journal of Acute Care Physical Therapy,
and Journal of Physical Therapy Education. These journals used the citation style of the
American Medical Association (AMA) in their articles. These articles also contained
different sections such as abstract, introduction, purpose, summary and references.
Abstract section of the article gave brief information about the study. Introduction and
purpose gave background information about the study. The body of the article explained
the results and analysis of the study. Finally the summary gave a brief conclusion.
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Based on the research and some of the personal interests I have in the field of
Physical Therapy, I came up with a research topic as per the requirement of this course.
My research topic is about Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL) and Medial Collateral
Ligament (MCL) tears in athletes. I want to conduct a research about how you can
prevent these injuries by building proper equipment to wear for athletes. I also want to
research about how you can make the recovery time faster for the people who already
tore their ALC & MCL. To initiate my research, I would first study the knee movements
of athletes involved in different sports. Then I would interview some of them in order to
gain more information. I would then interview athletes who injured their ACL or MCL to
study the cause of the problem. After studying the participants very carefully, I would
then propose a solution to the problem.
In conclusion, an interview and articles about physical therapy gave me a better
understanding of the field. Basically in PT’s discourse community, one must know how
to communicate with your colleagues and patients. PTs use anatomical and medical
terminology to communicate with each other and use simple language to communicate
with patients. A PT must know how to use different genres such as e-mails, forms, letters
and research formats. The main goal of physical therapy is to make our community a
healthier place. Before this project I knew very little about Physical therapy. Now I know
the responsibilities, languages and genres I need to learn in order to successfully enter
into a discourse community of physical therapy. My dedication and interest in this subject
certainly increased after this project.
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Works Cited
1. Swales John. The concept of discourse community. Writing about writing.
Bedford St. Martins, Boston: Downs and Wardle; 2011: 466-473. Available
in print. Accessed September 24, 2012.
2. Dr. Rehman, Faisal. Telephone interview. September 20, 2012.