In their article, "Materiality and Genre in the Study of Discourse Communities," Amy J. Devitt, Anis Bawarshi and Mary Jo Reiff explain how genres determine the exclusivity of the discourse community and how they can sometimes restrict access to these communities. They argue that members and nonmembers of certain community have "different beliefs, interests, and purposes as well as levels of knowledge" (99). To support this idea they use examples of legal practice, medical practice and classrooms to show, among other things, that the difficulty lies in technical language.
Genres is one of the indispensable characteristics that a discourse community must have according to John Swales. He also explains how discourse communities acquire some specific lexis which means that they have their specific lexical items, and as Devitt, Bawashi and Reiff argue, the most difficult barrier is the technical language.
I liked this article because as I was reading it, it reminded me of how I pretend to understand the legal terminology every time I read a book written by John Grisham or how I need doctors to explain their technical terms with metaphors when I watch shows like Dr. House or Grey's Anatomy on TV.
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