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Methods

The question I will explore through my research project is how discourse

communities, lexis, genres and case studies help a dental office function properly. I

developed this question after reading most of the articles I have found and realized they

give broad definitions as to what each of my subtopics mean and what they’re all about

but not how they can be used in a real life situation, in this case a dental office. For

example, John Swales defines a discourse community as a group of people that shares

goals or purposes and uses communication to achieve them while Anthoney Liddicoat,

asserts that each discourse community has it’s own valued texts and norms of

communication which are determined both by the communicative needs of the discourse

community and by the patterns of communication found in the particular culture of the

writers. Although they are both correct they don’t give insight as to why a discourse

community has valued texts or norms.

In order to further explore how these headings contribute to the practical use of a

dental office, I will conduct a study to see how they all rely on each other and if one of

the headings were missing, there would be no discourse community. I will interview my

hygienist, Iradia Reardon of Ira Kotch dental and ask her questions such as how she

communicates with her patients, how she communicates with the doctors, different

phrases or shorthand she might use and if her office has ever looked over case studies and

used them on future patients. By conducting this study I will be able to piece together

how my heading work together to help a discourse community run effectively.

Genre and Audience

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Since my project discusses the workings of a dental office, I will use dental

hygenists as my audience. I think it’s important to share my information with the new

dental hygenists because by understanding the role that genres play in their new

community, newly hired dental hygenists will be better prepared to meet the needs of

their community. When dental hygenists first get hiredat the office, they receive a

training manual which they must read in order to learn about their job. For this reason,

I’m going to use this training manual as the model for the genre that I will present to the

dental hygenists.

The training manual is a printed paper with large headings, including the headings

“What to know on your first day” and “How to get your paycheck.” These headings are

bolded and colorful. Underneath the headings, there are short paragraphs that are written

in conversational language. These paragraphs address the hygenists as “you” and the

office as “your new home,” which may be intended to make the new employees feel

welcomed. This is something that I will also try to incorporate into my manual on genres

in the dental office.

In addition to the bolded headings, the manual uses some quotes from the dentists

themselves. It seems like citations are important in this genre, because there are multiple

direct quotes that have parenthetical references. The references are always listed at the

end of the sentences. There are also footnote citations that appear to be in MLA format.

Based on my analysis of the training manual, I will create a similar manual that is

written in conversational language, is organized into headings, uses language that helps

the new employees feel welcomed, and incorporated both parenthetical and footnote

citations.