A Critical Reflection on the Discourse Community: A Basis for Current L2 Academic Literacy Scholarship

This paper argues that students’ identification with an academic discourse community is crucial in their meaning making and learning composition and academic literacy. I apply theoretically distinct understandings of the discourse community offered by John Swales, Paul Prior, and Suresh Canagarajah to L2 academic literacy studies. Swales’ genre-based approach assumes that students pragmatically accommodate to the expectations of a discourse community. Prior’s approach is grounded in the sociohistoric activity system of a discourse community and disciplinary enculturation to it. Canagarajah’s approach examines critical theories of how power is embedded in a discourse community. Bringing together the work of these scholars suggests that in practice, academic literacy needs a discipline-specific and genre-specific training method. Therefore, instructors’ understanding of academic literacy theories and their distinct positioning regarding the discourse community can help them facilitate students’ identification and learning.