Blog #5

Sorry about posting this late; I've been greatly stressed about my other classes and forgot to post it.

There's no doubt that for a group to be a discourse community, it must have all of the key features that define a discourse community.  What I was able to notice was that before we began this exercise, many within the class felt their group could find those key features that would make their subject a discourse community.  However, after each group presented their findings about their community, some felt that there was a lack of some of those key features they felt confident they'd find.  While some groups found that their community has goals, and forms of communication, they also found out that their community members may or may not participate in their community in the same manner as one another.  Other groups found that their community members may participate with one another and share common goals, they may not communicate with one another very well.  It was interesting to see how all of our perspectives about each of our communities changed depending on what we knew before-hand, and what we knew after.  I'll use my group as an example.  When we were assigned our community, I was pretty confident that we'd be able to prove that Kean is a discourse community.  We went through everything we thought we knew about Kean, but as we went through each of the key features of a discourse community, I was beginning to doubt a little whether or not we could prove Kean is a discourse community.  When we eventually ended up presenting, I was already aware that there were some key features that Kean was lacking in to be a discourse community.  For one, not many members may know what the mission statement is(myself included).  However, despite the low rating for the mission statement, much of our key features were in the 4-4.5 range, so Kean is able to meet the requirements of being a discourse community.