Abstract

          I will be examining the El Paso Police Department (EPPD) and conducting a test to determine whether the EPPD is a discourse community.  The test is called the “Swales Test” and is conducted by testing out six special characteristics that define a discourse community.  I touch back on two readings called “The Concept of a Discourse Community” by John Swales (1990) and the other being “Intertextuality and the Discourse Community” by James Porter (1986).  The two professors present their definitions of what a discourse community and explain why their definition is correct.  To perform this test I had an interview with a veteran of the United States Marine Corps, also retired from the El Paso Police Department (EPPD) who is now serving for the police department of the El Paso Independent School District (EPISD).  I asked him about fifteen questions in total and we went through the six characteristics of Swales (1990) thoroughly and determined that the EPPD is in fact a discourse community.

Introduction  

          There is a variety of different discourse communities around us, but one thing that is for sure is that there will always be a discourse community in the field of law ranging from police officers to judges.  Discourse communities, “Groups that have goals or purposes and use communication to achieve these goals,” (Swales, 1990, 217) is a difficult subject to become aware of.  I was first introduced to discourse communities in my RWS class at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) by my professor.  In our lives, we become involved in groups, teams and organizations but we do not realize that some of these, according to John Swales, can be classified as discourse communities.  I decided to interview a member of the El Paso Police Department (EPPD) by the name of John Hernandez who had been with the department for quite some time and is now a police officer for the El Paso Independent School District (EPISD).  I determined that the EPPD are indeed a discourse community because they possess the six specific characteristics presented by John Swales (1990).

Literature Review

          Swales (1990) infers that in order for a discourse community to be interpreted as a discourse community, there are six specific characteristics it must have: “A discourse community has a broad range of goals or purposes, has mechanisms of intercommunication among its members, uses its participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information and feedback, utilizes and hence possesses one or more genres in the communicative furtherance of its aims, has acquired some specific lexis or terminology, and has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discourse expertise” (Swales, 1990, 216).  In the excerpt Writing About Writing-The Concept of Discourse Communities by Elizabeth Wardle and Doug Downs, Swales (1990) establishes his own definition on what a discourse community is while touching back with other definitions that have been given from previous professors.  Swales (1990) argues that discourse communities are different from speech communities in that speech communities have shared linguistic forms, shared regulative rules, and shared cultural concepts.  This results in the opposite of discourse communities which rely heavily on writing and are separated into special interest groups & areas of expertise, whereas speech communities inherit members by birth, accident or adoption (Swales, 1990).

            On the other hand James Porter (1986) has a much simpler view for his definition of what a discourse community is.  He argues that everyone is born into at least one discourse community.  Porter also brings up the question, “Is plagiarism evitable?”  Porter (1986) says that possibly almost nothing is original and contains “traces” of other texts that were at some point used before (Porter 1986).  He continues to his analysis of the Declaration of Independence (DOI).  In his analysis he implies that he finds various traces of texts that were not original to Thomas Jefferson but were used in other declarations.  His actual introduction derives from a theory by John Locke, one of the most influential political philosophers who introduced the idea that all man created had the right of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  By borrowing this idea from Locke here is still more evidence that Jefferson was guilty of plagiarism.

            So it is true then, that maybe in Jefferson’s time in 1776 this was not considered plagiarism, but certainly if Jefferson was to turn in his paper here at our University at this time and age, his paper would be considered plagiarism.  So this idea of intertextuality, referring to “traces” found in texts from other texts, is what writers use to write new texts.  Basically they are drawing off knowledge from previous documents and building off new knowledge to be interpreted differently; thus making it incredibly difficult for any writer to write something original.  We can say based off what I have read from Porter (1986) that even his writings are not original.  Porter (1986) as well as Swales (1990) took information that other writers have written before and simply reorganized it and gave specific explanations as to why they thought their information was correct.  So within Porter’s (1986) article is a form of intertextuality. 

Methods/Discussion

            After conducting the Swales (1990) test with Officer John Hernandez who I interviewed for 45 minutes, I considered the EPPD to be a discourse community.  Officer Hernandez has been with the law enforcement for decades, and I knew that he was the perfect guy to give me some great information because of his skill set and years of experience within the field of law.  He was also in the Marines, so it was a great experience having a conversation with him.  Since he was a marine he decided to go into the field of law with his experience and become a police officer.  The first of Swales’ (1990) characteristics for a community to be classified as a discourse community is they need to have an agreed overall goal or set of public goals.  In this case, the main goal Officer Hernandez gave me was community safety.  I am pretty sure all of us want to go outside and not be mugged by some criminal, or be the victim of some drive-by shooting.  We want our kids and family members to go outside without a child molester or gang member trying to abuse them or kidnap them.  For this they also set out to communicate with the people of El Paso to form partnerships known as the neighborhood watch.  They are dedicated to serving and protecting the citizens of El Paso.

            Officers respond to all sorts of emergency calls ranging from domestic violence, to early day burglaries and afternoon traffic citations to making night arrests consisting of people driving while intoxicated (DWI) and others driving under the influence (DUI).  To communicate with these everyday emergencies, officers have mechanisms of intercommunication, that is, devices that can be used to communicate with each other.  Today new entering officers are stuck for years on night shifts, which Hernandez says is not good at all because they do not gain the necessary experience that they need to be receiving like he did when they used to be rotating every month.  They do not know how to handle other situations and sometimes many of them are continuously letting their guard down and are simply not ready for future situations that may be serious and even occasionally life-threatening.  For all of these situations that officers respond to, they have a mechanisms of intercommunication, which is the second characteristic Swales (1990) describes.  Their most common one is their radio.  They also used another common communication mechanism called a Mobile Data Terminal (MDT).  These are used for background checks as well as for the dispatch unit to relay information to the officers that may be useful to them.  Another reason they use this is because they can track the location of their fellow co-workers, and if they are in any situation that might need more than one police officer they can go as back-up.  This is called a “hot call” or they can simply roll by and see what is going on.

            Every professional organization wants to know how they are doing with time.  That’s one way of improving their jobs.  With that said, all the mechanisms for which the police department uses is primarily for feedback (Swales, 1990).  Their twitter and facebook account, as well as their city website is used to provide not just the feedback but also vital information.  Police departments have divisions within the department consisting of Administration, Community Services, Animal Control, Dispatch, and many more.  In this case, the EPPD has a division that is called Internal Affairs, and this is where officers mainly receive their feedback.  Mechanisms that provide feedback is the third characteristic that Swales (1990) describes.  Internal affairs is the division in which the citizens of El Paso can file complaints.  They encourage citizens to file complaints when an officer is doing his job incorrectly.  The job of Internal Affairs is to investigate the case and make a decision on whether the citizen was harassed during the issuance of his citation or arrest.  Police officers want to provide a valued performance and enforce the law how it should be enforced.  Although it is a division where citizens can make a complain, they also have a city website, a Twitter and a Facebook account where citizens can provide feedback on how well a police officer does his job, which is always appreciated by the police department.

            Police officers use different genres to further their aims within the El Paso community.  A genre is literally just any kind of text that the community therefore possesses.  The specific genres that police officers use are police reports and citation book.  Hernandez specified that they also have a things-to-do list while they are patrolling on the streets as well as an EPPD website, these too are genres.  Genres play a vital role in discourse communities because they identify the linguistic ecology of the discourse communities, meaning the relations and interactions people have with their environment as well as with other people (Swales 1990).  Hernandez spent much of his time writing police reports for incidents that occurred throughout the day and spent hours doing paper work after an arrest.  Just as an example when I was a boy, at the age of sixteen I was arrested and taken to the Juvenile Detention Center.  I remember that I spent hours there just waiting for my parents to pick me up only because the police officer and the detention officers had not yet finished processing my paperwork. These genres are essentially what discourse communities use in order to get things done.

            There is another characteristic I want to talk about.  It is the fifth characteristic that Swales (1990) mentions.  Discourse communities hold on to a certain lexis, that is, a special language that they use to communicate with each other.  Police officers use a special language amongst themselves called Police Lingo.  If you were to walk into a random discourse community meeting and they were talking in their lexis, you probably would not know what is going on in the meeting or what they are talking about. It would be puzzling to the average citizen.  If the officers did not want someone to know what they are talking about they will simply speak in terms of their lexis.  These are called ten codes.  There are about one hundred of these codes and it is difficult to remember all of them.  Some of the most common ones are 10-20 which means location, 10-4 meaning affirmative and 10-27 which requests driver license information.

            There are many levels of expertise when you go into the field of law.  There are certain qualifications that it takes to become a police officer.  There is a writing part, a total of 45 college hours are required, 1 year of experience in public relations and a polygraph, which is a lie detector test on questions of your past, and of course the drug urine analysis test.  Military experience is a big plus if you want to join the Special Forces teams like the Swat and Bomb Squad in law enforcement.  According to Officer Hernandez, the biggest difference between the experts and the new entering officers was not only the knowledge older officers have but the skills they gain throughout the career.  Officers gain the skill of becoming more cynical.  One of their biggest mistakes is when they start believing everything one civilian has told them.

Conclusion

            If you take what you have just read, and you look at the big picture, you and I can conclude that the field of law can all be a discourse community.  They have levels of expertise, genres, specialized lexis, and mechanisms of intercommunication.  All six of Swales (1990) characteristics are fulfilled in the EPPD.  Hernandez went over the different characteristics I showed him in the reading “The Concept of Discourse Community” by John Swales (1990).  He carefully read them and understood them and after gave me these examples. We evaluated that the EPPD is indeed a discourse community.  Even though Swales (1990) does broaden up our understanding with what a discourse community is and what it consists of, I still agree with the definition that Porter (1990) gives us.  There are different perspectives from which you can look at Porters (1990) definition.  Writers simply borrow forms of writing and parts from certain excerpts and create new meaning from them.  Porter (1990) mentions we are constantly influenced by everyday life.  Music, clothing brands, and television all influence us and our creativity.  He argues we are trying to find a place of acceptance, and we can do so by becoming part of a discourse community. 

           

           

References

 

Bussin, M. (2012).  Law as a Discourse Community.  Retrieved from http://mattbussin.wordpress.com/2012/11/29/law-as-a-discourse/

 

Porter, J. E. (1986).  Intertextuality and the Discourse Community.  Writing about Writing. (Pg. 395-405) 5.1 (1986), 34-47

 

Swales, J. (1990).  The Concept of Discourse Community.  Writing about Writing. (Pg.215-227). Boston:  Cambridge UP (1990).