As the last decade of the twentieth century approached, a coherent theory of “discourse communities” began to be challenged in the print journals about rhetoric and composition. Key challenging voices came from Joseph Harris, Marilyn Cooper, and Thomas Kent.
But before we discuss these challenges, we can look to James Porter’s 1986 “Intertextuality and the Discourse Community” for one of the working definitions of the term. Porter wrote, “A ‘discourse community’ is a group of individuals bound by a common interest who communicate through approved channels and whose discourse is regulated” (39). He further clarified: “A discourse community may have a well-established ethos; or it may have competing factions and indefinite boundaries” (39). And he raises some key questions: “To what extent is the writer’s product itself a part of a larger community writing process? How does the discourse community influence writers and readers within it?” (42). Like Rafoth (1988), and more recently Beaufort (College Writing and Beyond, p. 37), he also argues for the importance of discourse community as a concept that is more comprehensive than “audience” (43). Crucially, the discourse community for him is represented by textual production.
Joseph Harris and Marilyn Cooper, in separate articles, were the first to critque discourse community theory explicitly. Both draw attention to Raymond William’s contention about the term “community,” who says the term has only a positive and no negative connotation. I’ve summarized their articles in this blog, but it’s interesting to think about how much social class has to do with our talk about discourse community. Harris draws explicit attention to his working class background, and identifies with the challenges of becoming a part of the academic community. Yet, his city metaphor reminds us that “academic community” is a utopia. Yet the very word “utopia” implicates social class values in so many ways; capitalism, socialism, or any other -ism represents a prevalent utopian idea or plan. And it is particularly this “utopianism” with which Harris takes issue.
And Cooper does as well. Tied to the idea that we need to be self-aware (hermeneutic is the term she uses, borrowing from Richard Rorty) and acknowledge the “differences” that exist within all communities. These critiques set the stage for another question: is it productive to think resist the very idea of “communities”? And perhaps other questions: Why is the idea of community so appealing to people? What does writing have to do with communities? And what do we gain by thinking of communities as fragmented groups of people organized around projects of mutual interest?
Among those scholars I’m analyzing here, Thomas Kent presents the most theoretically sophisticated critique. As I have stated, he also draws on Rorty’s work (like Cooper) to present the idea that we need to think “hermeneutically” about our world rather than “epistemologically.” An important line in his article is this: “Instead of conceptualizing writing as a product of the divergent discourse communities in which writing takes place, we might better conceive of writing as a hermeneutic act that brings us in unmediated touch with the world and with the minds of others” (427). Stated simply, he argues that we should see no separation between self, others, and the world. Yet this position, while appealling, raises other questions. Isn’t “mediation” what defines writing as a separate act from speech? Or, what do we gain from viewing all acts of enunciation (speaking, writing, film, art, etc.) as “unmediated” acts in a totally holistic and connected world? And, finally, how (and why) would it be possible to exist in a world without binaries? Don’t opposites give us definition and boundaries that are productive? These are some of the questions we might explore as we consider discourse communities–a concept that despite critique is still being used today.
Discourse Communities 