Professional Documents
Culture Documents
This community can further be broken down into Academic and Professional Engineering. Both
of these communities can be seen as discourse communities as they meet the six defining
characteristics set forth by John Swales. As discourse communities, they use genres of
communication in order to further their aims (Swales). Each community uses specific language
and functions within their genres, which make the genre unique to the community and reveals
its common goals. Therefore, examples of each genre can be used to show what the
community as a whole values. Within the academic discourse community one of the most used
genres is the journal article. I used the article, Numerical Study of Attacks Angle Effect on Drag
Coefficient of AUV Hull Design, by Aymen Mohamed, Hedi Kchaou, Mohamed Salah Abid, and
Zied Driss, as representation of the academic discourse community. This article shows the
communitys value of the scientific method and data-based arguments and how they are used to
expand the knowledge within the engineering community. In the professional discourse
community a common genre of communication is the website. I used the website of the
website showed that the professional community used different methods to differentiate their
products in order to accomplish their main goal of getting potential customers to purchase from
them.
In the academic engineering field, journal articles are a means for professors and
researchers to communicate with each other. The purpose of this journal article is to effectively
communicate the compiled data obtained through experimentation, and use it to describe and
support a particular theory or principle. As with most journal articles, the target audience is other
engineering academics and engineering professionals. This can be seen through the use of
specific words and terminology found only within the engineering field, such as the use of the
Reynolds-averaged Navier Stokes equations and the principles of hydrodynamic drag. The
stated purpose of this article is to see the effect that the orientation of an autonomous
underwater vehicle had on the drag created by moving underwater (Mohamed et al.). The
experiment was then run by physically testing structures and comparing the results to
The very specific use of structure in the article reveals a very important aspect of the
academic community, which is the emphasis on the Scientific Method. The Scientific Method is
a particular way of forming an argument in which a hypothesis is made then tested through
experimentation, and finally a conclusion is made based on the data obtained in the experiment.
This is clearly shown throughout the article by the use of ordered sections. In the introduction
section, the hypothesis is stated. The Numerical Model shows the equations and theories that
are used to structure the experiment, and the results and discussions section shows how the
experiment was conducted. The conclusion section is simply the conclusions drawn from the
experiment based on the hypothesis. The reason why the Scientific Method is so important to
the academic community is that it is the only credible way to present new information. In the
academic discourse community everything is based on scientific proof. The only way to add new
information to the community is if it can be proved with with data and repeated by others in the
field. This is why the Scientific Method is used as it clearly states the experiment, the theories
behind the experiment, and the supporting data proving the author's statements.
potential customers in order to obtain their business. I chose to analyze Prodrive Technologies
website, as it clearly shows different methods used by companies to attract potential customers.
The website has a very crisp look to it with very nice visuals. This is used to give a good first
impression for anyone looking at it for the first time. There are succinct sentences that explain
what the company does and its mission. These are meant to give a quick overview of the
company at a glance. The reason why these are used by companies is that customers do not
want to have to read paragraphs of information. They want get a quick overview of the company
The main purpose of an engineering website is to list the companys products, and
explain why the potential customer should choose the company. There are a lot of specific
words used by companies to accomplish this purpose. For Prodrive, they use a lot of words like
innovation, competitive, and cutting edge, in order to show how they are different from other
companies and have a superior product. In the engineering field the best product is generally
defined as the product that meets the specific design specifications that the customer has and is
the most cost effective. As most products of the same family generally meet the design
specifications and are around the same cost, companies need ways of communicating what
makes their product superior. This is why companies in the professional engineering discourse
community must use specific language and formatting, in order to cater themselves to the
customers while also proving that their product will work best. This is all done with the goal of
maximizing of sales.
Even though academic and professional discourse communities are different entities
they do share many similarities. The academic discourse community strives to further the
engineering field through development and investigation of engineering principles and theories.
The professional discourse community strives to reach customers to sell their products, which
they have developed themselves based off of engineering principles and theories. The main
commonality between the two is that they are both based in engineering principles and theories.
However, they differ in what they do with those principles and theories. The academic
engineering discourse community uses the principles and theories to gain a better
understanding of the world, as well as to expand their knowledge. The professional engineering
discourse community uses the principles and theories in order to create new products to in turn
sell and make money. The rhetoric they both use also vary by quite a bit. The academic
community uses very formal language with a heavy emphasis on technical terms and proofs,
while the professional community use simple language with emphasis on presentation and
impact.
As both communities fall under the larger engineering community, they are often closely
related. For instance, professionals will read journal articles in order to get ideas for new
material, and academics will base their experiments and research off of what is being pursued
in industry. This communication is good for both communities as it leads to more knowledge for
the academic community, and more products for the professional community. The academic
community uses data and experiment driven arguments, specifically using the scientific method,
to accomplish this growth in knowledge. On the other hand the professional community uses
specific words and formatting to attract customers in order sell products. All in all even though
the academic and professional engineering communities are different from each other,
especially in how they communicate, they do have overlaps which lead to collaboration between
Aymen Mohamed, Hedi Kchaou, Mohamed Salah Abid, Zied Driss. Numerical Study of Attacks
Angle Effect on Drag Coefficient of AUV Hull Design. American Journal of Mechanical
Swales, John. ''The Concept of Discourse Community." Genre Analysis: English in Academic