Running Head: ABNORMAL PSYCHOLOGY DISCOURSE COMMUNITY 1

Abnormal Psychology Discourse Community

University of Texas at El Paso
RWS 1301
Melissa Chavez
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Introduction
People are taught to always follow a certain routine such as how to behave in public, eat

an ice cream or even go out to the movies. Then comes a point where there are people with

atypical behavior compared to others. Simple things such as people drastically changing their

emotions or trying to drink coffee with a fork is not normal. Porter (1986) once wrote, " A

"discourse community" is a group of individuals bound by a common interest who communicate

through approved channels and whose discourse is regulated." Due to my interest in this kind of

strange behavior, I decided to learn more about the Abnormal Psychology Discourse

Community. This is a group of people who learn more about the bizarre thoughts, feelings, and

behavior in society. This group not only learns about mental illness, but also about people's

everyday random behavior. I decided to go into the Abnormal Psychology course at the

University in order to get an insight in this rare subject. This class was taught by Professor James

Wood at the University of Texas at El Paso.

Literature Review

As mentioned above, a discourse community is a group of people that share the same

values and ideas for a certain subject or goal they have in common. There are all kinds discourse

groups in the world from school groups who share the same ideas to fitness communities. John

Swales was one of the main people involved in the idea of discourse communities wrote "The

Concept of Discourse Communities" which tells us more about the argument of what a discourse

community really is. In his article he mentioned that in order to be part of a discourse community

they had to follow six concepts. These concepts where that a discourse community has to agree

to a set of common public goals, have mechanisms of intercommunication among its members,
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use participatory mechanisms to provide information and feedback, possesses certain genres they

must follow, acquired some specific lexis that only the group will understand, and have a

threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discourse expertise

(Swales, 1990). They must follow all of these expectations in order for that specific group to be

classified as a discourse community. Apart from that, they must also have their own specific kind

of genre which are "types of texts that are recognizable to the readers and writers..."

(Swales,1990). This is important in order for the group to be able to understand each other in

their own specific way and for their audience to be able to distinguish that group. Just like James

Porter mentioned in 1986 article of "Intertextuality and the Discourse Community". He said "the

idea that all texts contain "traces" of other texts and that there can be no text that does not draw

on some ideas from some other texts (Porter, 1986). This can tie up to the idea of discourse

communities because this is a group of people with same goals that need each other's ideas in

order to achieve or improve their purpose.

Method

The Abnormal Psychology Discourse Community was a group of people planning to

major in Psychology just like me. The purpose of this group is to learn about the way people

think, behave, and feel in society. I went a couple of Professor Wood's class on Abnormal

Psychology where I had the opportunity to get an insight of this group and met some of his

students that helped me discover this discourse community. I attended two class sessions on

Monday and Wednesday for an hour and twenty minutes each. I also did some private interviews

to some students and to the professor. Finally, I was able to participate in one of the research

studies that they were offering in the Psychology Department in order to understand what the

student have to do in that class.

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Discussion

The Abnormal Psychology class shares a common goal which is to understand and find

ways in order to help society get better and improve their strange behavior in their everyday life

as they go through moments or phases were they start to react in a different manner. Their goal is

to find ways to make connections through the actions of the people with the abnormal behavior

in order to find the problem, its causes, and a solution. Ana Mena, one of the students I

interviewed, said, "One of my main goals for this class is to understand the brain's unconscious

abnormal behavior as I prepare for my goal which is in the clinical psychology field of study",

(A. Mena, personal communication, March 1, 2017). As I attended one of the sessions I was able

to identify that most of the people there wanted to be part of the clinical field of study in

psychology, research, and even attend medical school. Ana mentioned that she enjoyed being

part of this group because she was with a "...group of people who understand my passion for the

subject and I know that I dont feel left out if I try to explain to them some of my thoughts and

ideas about the lectures and the research I do", (A. Mena, personal communication, March 1,

2017).

As I spent some of my days in the class, I was able to identify how the people

communicated there. They would usually have time to discuss one of the issues presented and

then the professor would make them interact with him. The students would turn and talk to the

person next to them as they would discuss their opinion about the subject. Professor Wood would

give his students a discussion post where all of the students had to answer and reply to at least

one of their colleagues. These where the method the group used in order for them to

communicate in the class. Apart from that, they had a specific type of terminology used in class

that all of the people there understood. They had some terms such as "somatoform disorders" or
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"spontaneous remission" that are not likely to be understood by a regular person. Ana mentioned

that "the terminology was very confusing and somewhat difficult to learn since there were some

terms that sounded very similar", (A. Mena, personal communication, March 1, 2017). In order

for them to know the subject and learn what the course was about the students had to keep in

mind what the terms where because they knew they were going to be repeated throughout the

semester. This was one of the things that made this group unique and qualified to be part of a

discourse community.

In this group one of the most important things they need to do is attend and complete

twelve research hours throughout the semester. "One of the main requirements in this course is to

attend the research hours that help students get involve in class and help them learn through

different studies offered by the Psychology Department at the university" (J. Wood, personal

communication, March 3, 2017). Professor Wood told me that this requirement was different

than other classes at the university since they were trying show the students the research side of

the course. He mentioned that "it's not always about the lecture, a student needs to get experience

in the research department in order to get in depth and understand the processes of finding out

what causes abnormal behavior in society"(J. Wood, personal communication , March 3, 2017).

Professor Wood told me that if I was taking a Psychology course I could be part of the research

studies that the university offered. I decided to go for one research session in order to understand

what the students have to go through as they're part of that class. The study I did was called

"Friends in the Lab" where they studied the behavior of you and friend. The community would

post the research studies online, make posters about them, and even send emails to remind the

students of them. The community mostly used the posters around campus in order to let the other
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students at the university know who they were and what they were doing with these studies. This

were the types of genres most commonly used there.

The type of writing they do are small paragraphs discussing the posts they have to answer

on blackboard. As I mentioned before, they answer a discussion question and then they have to

reply to one of their colleagues with their opinions about their answer. Most of the students have

their own notetaking strategy that helps them identify and write the main points of the lecture in

a very clear way since the concepts are sort of difficult. I asked one of the students if I could see

her notebook and I noticed that most of them would write the key points and a couple of words

that would remind them of the meaning. They said that this was effective for the class since there

were so many concepts they had to memorize.

I was able to identify the people who were "in" by talking to them. For example when I

sat next to a girl named Paulina Arroniz , I was able to distinguish her from other students

because of the way she spoke about the subject. Every time there was an opportunity for

interaction she would amaze me with her knowledge about "The Concepts of Psychotherapy",

which was the subject being discussed at the time. After class I interviewed her and she said that

the class made her look at the world from a different perspective since she was learning concepts

that she had never thought about. She said, "I hope that one day I can come back to campus and

help the other students understand what I learned from this class and how it can affect their

future. " (P. Arroniz, personal communication, March 1, 2017). I noticed that the group managed

to always have members since there are people who have to go back in order to help the

newcomers with their path. Paulina mentioned that she enjoys having group sessions with the

class in order to share and discuss the subject being presented. People like her are the ones you

know will always be part of the group as they want to try to spread the word about it.
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Conclusion

The Abnormal Psychology course is considered to be part of a discourse community

because it follows Swale's six criteria in order to be classified as a discourse community. This

group was not only built based on this criteria , but also from the intertextuality the members

used in order to integrate the newcomers and build this discourse throughout the university. Just

like Porter (1986) once wrote ""intertextuality" means looking for... the bits and pieces of Text

which writers or speakers borrow and sew together to create new discourse." Without the idea of

intertextuality the people of the Abnormal Psychology group wouldn't have been considered part

of this discourse. I hope to one day be part of this group in order for me to also share their

common goals with the world.

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References

Porter, J. (1986). Intertextuality and the discourse community. In E. Wardle & D. Downs (Eds.),

Writing about writing : A college reader (p. 395-405). Boston, MA : Bedford/St. Martin's

Swales, J. (1990). The concept of discourse community. In E. Wardle & D. Downs (Eds.), m

Writing about writing : A college reader (p. 212-227). Boston, MA : Bedford/St. Martin's