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Chen Lexi
Professor Marie
Ling12-MW11:00 A.M.
19 February 2019
group. Gradually it has agreed goals, and members develop specific ways of
communication to reach the expectation. This group is called a discourse community, and
some characteristics are established within it. To start with, the group must have agreed
styles of contents and specific lexis are employed by the members. Last, each member has
different levels of expertise and positions. These features are defined by the linguistics
John Swales and have to be contained in the organization. There is an example of discourse
UCSB. With the aims of informing students updated information, different approaches to
intercommunicate, the uses of diverse writing styles and specific terms, and the distinct
positions assigned to members, The Bottom Line meets Swales’ definitions of a discourse
community. As a discourse community, The Bottom Line, or TBL, achieves its targets of
“community members may join the organization with private hopes of commercial or
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romantic advancement.” (471). In other words, while the public expectation of organization
is known to members, personal motivation might not match to the big goal in the group.
For example, from the email, which introduces that TBL is an organization focusing on
producing news and provides an opportunity to learn photography, I knew their mission.
Because I was interested in learning taking pictures, I finally decided to take part in the
community. However, the deviation of personal original motivation from the group’s goals
does not reject the commitment to reaching common purposes. After getting trained by the
staff, I could dedicate my photography skills to delivering more information around the
campus to individuals in the future. Therefore, with the publicity of emails, TBL produces
better and more news to further its aims with assistances of newcomers.
mechanisms and provide feedback through them (Swales 471-472). According to Annette
Ding, one of the news editors in TBL, members frequently use scheduled meetings, slack
and Google Doc to communicate with each other. The content is mainly about how to better
the quality of newspaper articles but vary slightly in different medium. One example about
At the meeting, there are the editor in chief and the content editor, and section editors. The
editor in chief passes the reader feedback to the editors of individual sections. For the
content editors, they “sometimes just comment on the state of the writers” (Ding). Some
section editors might suggest new ideas to others’ sections, since they might not be aware
of some latest news. In addition, reviewing the papers and giving suggestions between the
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section editors occurs. Accordingly, this meeting provides the feedback from students and
other colleagues to section editors, helping them better the quality of newspaper articles.
Another tool used by section editors is Slack, an application for team communication.
The content is about submitting the articles and new topics to the content editors before the
end of Monday scheduled meeting. In slack, the editors might share their struggles with
each other and get some suggestions on the new ideas for the papers. Therefore, since the
news might change in the last minute, communication in Slack helps them get latest
information and develops a better quality of drafts. Last medium is shared Google Docs,
an application to keep every change in files immediately, making section editors receive
revision on their writing easily. In sum, the editors facilitate the progress of getting
A discourse community also applies distinct genres to reach its purposes (Swales
472). Genre is featured as the style of contents, usually being written. The newspaper
published by TBL includes six sections: News, Features, Arts and Entertainment, Science
and Tech, Opinions, Photo and Video (The Bottom Line). In this way, each writer has
different requirements for writing articles in specific sections. For instance, Features and
Arts and Entertainment allow to involve emotion for describing a vivid picture to readers
(Ding). Conversely, when writing a news story, writers must have a lot of “guidelines to
be objective” (Ding). Annette usually uses concise sentences and describes “someone
said”, instead of “someone angrily declared” (Ding). Therefore, a news writer is merely
telling the truth to his readers without any emotional interpretation. Similarly, Science
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and Technology articles should not infer any intention by applying objective tones to
narrate the events. A related example of writing a scientific article is Hope Jahren’s
dissertation paper. Even though Jahren describes her struggles with getting grant to do
research projects in some sections of Lab Girl, she maintains objective in her dissertation
paper, since it is about science. Therefore, the collection of accurate data and the
unbiased interpretations are cores of her paper. For instance, after deciding her thesis, she
collects data by using X-ray exposure and “get the readout”, indicating that “this mineral
is opal” (Jahren 70). Next, she incorporates the data, rather than personal statements, in
the paper. Therefore, writers convey the most accurate message to the readers by
According to Swales, a discourse community has particular lexis (473). In TBL, the
most frequently used words are pitches and pieces. A pitch means that a general topic of
an event. The improbability held in Embarcadero Hall at Friday 8:00 p.m. is a good
example. Usually, the pitches are collected by each section editor and sent out by the
editor in chief to every staff on Tuesday. In Tuesday staff meeting, members choose the
pitches they want to cover and talk with the related section editors to get some ideas on
piece, or story. For instance, an article describing the improbability can be a piece. These
stories are not always published on the newspaper due to the limited space. However,
every story is on TBL’s website. Accordingly, the application of pitches and stories in
TBL makes the steps in writing articles clearer and communication among members
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more fluently.
The last features of a discourse community are people with different levels of
expertise having distinct positions and changing membership (Swales 473). In TBL, the
community consists of the editorial board, staff and contributing writers. The editorial
board is made up all the permanent staff. There are manager editors, specific content
editors and the reporter (The Bottom Line). Among the manager editors, the editor in
chief has the most power, who handles the “larger issues about the newspaper as a whole,
like the design and format of our newspaper and the creation of new positions” (Ding).
The other two main positions are managing editor and executive content editors. The
content editor manages the content, including articles, photos, videos, special projects,
corrections, and social media (The Bottom Line). Managing editors are the one who
manages advertising, and the operations of the paper, like payment to writers (The
Bottom Line). Every specific section editor only manages one section, like photography,
and sometimes guides staff to write a story required to submit no later than Monday to
the content editor. Also, there are some national beat reporters who stick to the national
news related to UCSB and editors who focus on the design of the newspaper. Not only
there are differences in the positions of the editorial board but between staffs. People who
first join the TBL are contributing writers, required to write at least one article per quarter
and being paid 13 dollars per article. After reaching 5 papers per quarter, a contributing
writer can be a staff and earn 15 dollars per article. Staff can later apply to be a specific
section editor. When an editor gets some leadership experiences, he can be considered as
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a senior member and has the chance to be one of the manager editors. The requirements
for application are basically the same, except that executive content has to be a former
section editor (Ding). Even though a clear distinction between members in the TBL, there
is no strict threshold for people to have membership. As long as one is driven by his
interest to join the club, he or she will not be rejected. In addition, graduation from UCSB
makes members quit the membership. Therefore, different positions in TBL make the
ongoing issues to students through different writing genres. Inside the community, different
positions of members and various medium assist the efficiency of communication to better
reach its aims. Therefore, when collaborating to target the big goals in the community,
produce online journals confirms the benefits of working together to learn journalism
writing. According to Dorothy Ni Uigin, Noelle Hiigns and Belinda McHale, participated
students in MA, a one-year program, enhance their academic writing skills while exploring
the realities of journalism (Uigin et al. 61). To be specific, participants not only need to
write academic articles, but have the power to name the journal and contact with peer-
reviewers and publishers to publish their articles. In this way, while learning journalism
writing, students are ahead of their peers when they gain more insight into the workplace
Works Cited
Swales, John. “The Concept of Discourse Community.” Writing about Writing: A College
Reader, edited by Elizabeth Wardle and Doug Downs, Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2011, pp.