Blog ยป family.stuycs.org
Posted on 08 Mar 2013 03:41
I belong on to Stuy's so-called "CS Family", a community of Stuy Computer Science Alumni.
It exists as the brainchild of the head of the CS Department at Stuy, and I think it's a great example of a Discourse Community, especially according to Swales' definition of a discourse community.
It has a clear goal, as stated on it's website. It provides opportunities for Stuy CS Alums to network and socialize, and to support the current CS program at Stuy. Obviously, we all care about CS (to the point of ridiculousness).
The mailing list is the primary means of communication, as it allows members to converse towards our mutual aim. We do this by emailing job listings, intership opportunities, interview tips and more to the entire group. As a result, the general lexis very specific to Computer Science.
In general, it is a very closed group, so it is composed entirely of insiders. Of course, the documents produced by this community are mostly directed towards insiders, but there are some documents (like the website, and some of the blogs maintained by members) which are specifically aimed at outsiders.
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Interesting example, Daniel, one that could provide good ground for further study if you decide to dig deeper into more detailed research. An alumni community seems like a very specific and unique kind of discourse community, and this one in particular is useful for study because its history is so clear and clearly documented. I'd be most interested in hearing about how the genres of communication (those e-mails, newsletters, etc) help the group members achieve the common goal of the community. I think you'll need to really dig into the evidence itself for a further study, but you've started to lay out your territory quite well here.