Editor's Choice: An Open Memo to Community College Faculty and Administrators.

Abstracts

To maintain a strong presence with higher education, the community college should consider itself a discourse community, a concept that borrows from "speech community." Understanding this concept is helpful in conceptualizing the nature of the community college in general, in increasing perceptions of community college communicative competence, and in moving its professionals into positions of legitimate power within the larger higher education discourse community.

As a guardian and promoter of one of our nation's community colleges, how are you faring? Are you successfully guarding your college's academic quality and promoting its credibility as a scholarly institution? In an effort to uphold your particular community college's mission and sustain your college's efforts to be a strong presence within higher education, you might consider ways to enhance the college's reputation, to bring prestige to the campus and its faculty, and to reshape the image of the institution in the eyes of both the public and the education community. Language can help you meet these goals through an understanding of the community college as a discourse community.

An investigation into the notion of the community college as a discourse community must begin with a presentation of the arguments regarding the definition of the term discourse community. Although the literature offers evidence that the definition of the term discourse community has been greatly debated, I begin with a tentative definition offered by Bizzell (1992) because it is comprehensive in scope. A discourse community, she says, "is a group of people who share certain language-using practices ... [that] can be seen as conventionalized" by social interactions within the group and in its dealings with outsiders. It borrows from the concept of "speech community." It is "bound together primarily by its uses of language, although bound perhaps by other ties as well, geographical, socioeconomic, ethnic, professional, and so on" (p. 222).

The community college can be seen as a discourse community: Its members have, over time, developed a common discourse that involves shared knowledge, common purposes, common relationships, similar attitudes and values, shared understandings about how to communicate their knowledge and achieve their shared purposes, and a flow of discourse that has a particular structure and style (Kutz, 1997, p. 200). Understanding discourse in this way is parallel with a social constructionist perspective. As Bruffee (1986) explains, this "assumes that entities we normally call reality, knowledge, thought, facts, selves, and so on are constructs generated by communities of like-minded peers. Social construction understands [these things] as community-generated and community-maintained linguistic entities" (p. 774). As Giroux (1983) puts it, language is a social event that is defined, shaped, and constrained by the culture of the setting in which it is used.

Communicative Competence and Boundaries

The community college discourse community may be somewhat disenfranchised within its larger discourse community--higher education. Bizzell (1982, 1992) writes about academic disciplines as separate discourse communities [noted elsewhere as disciplinary communities (see Kent, 1991)] and the university as a discourse community, defining the accepted conventions for academe. It is here, among members of the university discourse community, that the perceived communicative competence abides. Participating in the discourse of their disciplines and of higher education in general is an expectation of their culture; it is part of the "conceptual scheme" of the discourse community. Because this particular expectation is not a part of the community college culture, its discourse community can be seen, figuratively speaking, as a stepchild of academe. In this sense, community colleges are, as argued by Zwerling (1976) "second best" in terms of their communicative competence within higher education. Communicative competence is described as what one must know in order to use language appropriately in particular discourse communities (Kutz, 1997, p. 18). To put it another way, communicative competence is related to the idea that "individuals and groups with greater skill in using (and manipulating) the language system will exercise power in naming and thus controlling how others will view social reality' (Bowers, 1987, p. 28).

The community college can be seen as adopting language that has been given particular meaning within the larger higher education community, meaning that is less applicable to its own community but is nonetheless consistently used. The use of such language and definitions exemplifies the argument that the communicative competence within academe belongs to the university discourse community. For example, within the community college, the term nontraditional is widely used to describe the students. Students who are deemed "nontraditional" at the university are, on the contrary, traditional students in the community college setting. But within the community college discourse, the term nontraditional is used to describe the students. On the other hand, from its position apart from the higher education discourse community, terms like open door take on meaning specific to the community college discourse community. Having an open door is a cultural statement about the mission of community colleges; they are essentially open to all who want access to postsecondary education.

Discourse communities are often described as having fuzzy boundaries (Porter, 1992; Rafoth, 1988). They "may operate like little ecosystems," says Porter. These ecosystems "inevitably interact with systems abutting them. Discourse communities cannot be isolated from other discourse communities.... We need to remember that discourse communities overlap--and are flexible and locally constituted." They may cross boundaries (1992, p. 86). Rafoth (1988) puts it this way: "Communities have fuzzy boundaries that allow for a good deal of overlap.... The same may certainly be said of discourse communities. Human beings, such as they are, have multiple allegiances that overlap and conflict, and human discourse reflects this overlap and conflict all too well" (p. 143).

The relationship between the university and community college discourse communities illustrates this overlap and conflict. The community college discourse community exists both within and apart from the higher education discourse community in this sense: Community colleges have institutional missions quite apart from that of universities and four-year colleges; their student body is composed largely of those students who are termed nontraditional and at-risk from a university perspective. The organizational structure, faculty roles, and systems for promotion and tenure (if any) are vastly different; the culture of the community college discourse community does not include an expectation of faculty scholarship.

From their position within the higher education discourse community, community college faculty and other leaders learn the accepted conventions and language of the larger discourse community and join in the conversation through their scholarship. One might argue here, though, that when community college faculty engage in such an activity, they do so not as a member of the community college discourse community but as a member of the university discourse community; they cross a boundary.

Power and Influence in a Discourse Community

Clark's (1994) worries regarding the political assumptions that underlie the rhetoric of the discourse community of composition studies are relevant to many discourse communities, including higher education, its many disciplines, and community colleges. That is, the rhetoric "assumes that [the members of a discourse community] are more or less equal politically, that they have equal access to and equal influence upon the discourse that determines the beliefs and purposes they will share." But, in fact, these communities "tend to minimize or exclude the participation of some people as they establish the dominance of others" (Clark, 1994, p. 61). A strength of discourse communities, as described by Rafoth (1988), is that they admit writers, readers, and texts all together. But the readers play a passive role in this triad, and most community college professionals are readers. It is the writers, and at time the texts, that hold the real power.

The power of university scholars to name "what is" comes largely from their ability to be prolific with their writing and publishing ventures. By focusing on sharing their knowledge, findings, and interpretations, they create policy and redefine the language and reality of higher education; engaging in scholarship is a well developed aspect of the culture of this discourse community. The power to name "what is" comes also from one's level of prestige within the community. Zito (1984) argues that "an author is granted a certain binding authority to his intended meaning; this is legitimated by academic credentials, professional associations, and the division of knowledge within the academy" (p. 89). Furthermore, within a discourse community, "only those qualified by some socially institutionalized agency may engage in such discourse and be taken seriously." "The academic `turf,'" says Zito, is "a battleground for the right to speak with authority" (Zito, 1984, p. 89).

In discussing the work of Foucault, Zito (1984) outlines three main constraints on discourse: traditional texts that are vested with high authority and still continue to exert their influences by repetition and reiteration within the discourse community, the academic discipline working to make its own author identities legitimate, and the qualifications of the speaker. "Only the ordained may employ the ritualistic speech of their discourse and expect to be taken seriously," he says (p. 91-92). The perceived lack of opportunity and avenues for engaging in scholarship, an institutional culture that may not encourage or support such endeavors, and the lack of legitimate power (position power, reputation, prestige) within the larger discourse community fight against the community college faculty member's ability to be heard. "From a critical standpoint," says Rafoth (1990), "discourse community goes beyond the identification of various sets of norms and their degrees of isolation and overlap. The broader, explanatory significance is to show how language operates to define one's identity, to maintain the divisions of social class, to constrain access to power, and even ... to shape personal consciousness" (p. 147).

In seeing themselves as merely a secondary part of the discourse community of higher education, the community college faculty members have little power and limited communicative competence. They are often relegated to the role of reader within this community, while others take on the role of writer; they are seen as the receivers of knowledge, not the producers. But within their own discourse community, they have more individual "ability to negotiate meanings and purposes instead of passively accepting the social realities defined by others" (Bowers, 1987, p. 2).

At present, one might argue that community colleges can be more accurately defined as a speech community rather than as a discourse community because much of their discourse takes an oral form. One might also argue that much of their written discourse is produced by members acting as (or in an attempt to be accepted as) part of the larger community of higher education. But I prefer to see the boundaries as dotted lines, not barriers to community college faculty developing their communicative competence within and beyond their discourse community. As Porter (1992) cautions, these boundaries "are not fixed or real; they are rhetorical constructs." "We cannot accept the divisions as given or assume them as a foundation because to do so would be to miss the essential framework on which the [discourse] community is based" (p. 91). We can see discourse communities as "living creatures, nurtured and nourished by rhetorical discourse" (Hogan, 1998, p. 292). At the same time, we are cautioned by the reality that "the community-building function of rhetoric often works as much by exclusion as by inclusion" (Hogan, 1998, p. 62).

Nonetheless, it is my belief that understanding the community college as a discourse community both in its own right and as a part of the larger discourse community of higher education is helpful in conceptualizing the nature of the community college in general. Seeing the community college from this perspective allows one to inquire into the shared notions of reality, the constructed meanings, and the community-generated language and style of the faculty and staff. This kind of inquiry can lead to a more thoughtful, qualitative understanding of the community college. It may also provide faculty and administrators with a greater understanding of the need for scholarship that has been generated from within the community college discourse community. Understanding the community college as a discourse community would, perhaps, increase perceptions of community college communicative competence and move community college professionals (and community colleges in general) into positions of legitimate power within the larger higher education discourse community while increasing their esteem within that community. Through community college scholarship, we can enhance our colleges' reputations, bring prestige to our campuses and to our faculty, and continue to reshape the image of community colleges in America.

References

Bizzell, P. (1982). College composition: Initiation into the academic discourse community. Curriculum Inquiry, 12, 191-207.

Bizzell, P. (1992). Academic discourse and critical consciousness. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press.

Bowers, C. A. (1987). The promise of theory: Education and the politics of cultural change. New York: Teachers College Press.

Bruffee, K. A. (1986). Social construction, language, and the authority of knowledge: A bibliographical essay. College English, 48, 774.

Clark, G. (1994, February). Rescuing the discourse of community. College Composition and Communication, 45 (1), 61-74.

Giroux, H. (1983). Theory and resistance in education: A pedagogy for the opposition. South Hadley, MA: Bergin & Garvey.

Hogan, J. M. (1998). Rhetoric and the restoration of community. In Hogan, J. M. (ed.), Rhetoric and community: Studies in unity and fragmentation (pp. 292-301). Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press.

Kent, T. (1991, December). On the very idea of a discourse community. College Composition and Communication, 42 (4), 425-445.

Kutz, E. (1997). Language and literacy: Studying discourse in communities and classrooms. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook Publishers.

Porter, J. E. (1992). Audience and rhetoric: An archaeological composition of the discourse community. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Rafoth, B. A. (1988). Discourse community: Where writers, readers, and texts come together. In Rafoth, B. A. & Rubin, D. L. (eds.), The social construction of written communication (pp. 131-146). Norwood, New Jersey: Ablex Publishing Corporation.

Rafoth, B. A. (1990). The concept of discourse community: Descriptive and explanatory adequacy. In Kirsch, G. & Roen, D. H. (eds.), A sense of audience in written communication (pp. 140-152). Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications.

Zito, G. V. (1984). Systems of discourse: Structures and semiotics in the social sciences. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press.

Zwerling, S. L. (1976). Second best: The crisis of the community college. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Christine Kelly-Kleese is director of the Campus Learning Center and English instructor at Durham Technical Community College. [e-mail]