The first characteristic of a discourse community outlined by John Swales is that they have a set of goals or a mission that is intentionally public. I have seen this with all my class syllabusses. The class is a community, since we are all taking the class together, and the syllabus provides the outline and reasoning behind the class. Also, this syllabus is public, thus it fits the criteria set forth my Dr. Swales.

The second characteristic of a discourse community is that regardless of the manner, the members of these groups have ways to communicate with each other. Again, I will use the classes at VMI as an experience. In my history class, we are encouraged to come to study groups to communicate. With this class, we are encouraged to use our blogs as a method of communication. With my engineering classes, we are encouraged to talk to each other in a group commons, and in my MS1 class, we communicate by standing up and addressing the entire group

The third characteristic of a discourse community is the point of assembling a discourse community is to provide information and criticism to one another. I belong to a historical society, so the entire point of having this community is sharing information about the topic and peer editing our knowledge of the topic.

The fourth characteristic of a discourse community is that these groups have their own way of communicating. In my experience this can easily be found in school. In English class, communciation is primarly through papers, while in math it is through math operations, and in engineering classes though drawings or graphs.

The fifth characteristic of a discourse community is that these groups communicate primalry in a set of language that only the group understand. Again for my historical society, common words are K4s, ALCO, HBG among others. I know these pharases and acronyms like the back of my hand, but I had to learn these, so I know how confusing and indepth this language can get. Also, form my experience, this characteristic is what really allows a discourse community to bond. This language is like having a code to enter the clubhouse, it clearly defines membership and comradery.

The last characteristic of a discourse community is that for these kind of groups to be successful, their must be a mixture of new members and old members. This comes back to the third characterisitic, that these groups are meant to share information. If a discourse group, say my historical society, only had veteran memebers, no one would ask question and there would be no point to have this group. The continual passing of knowledge is the main point of discourse groups.