With the aim of reflecting upon the possible nature, development and workings of a mental lexicon in second language acquisition (SLA) from a connectionist perspective, an analogy is drawn between mental lexicons and the development of an email discussion group. It is argued here that similar phenomena can be observed along the structuring processes underlying both SLA and discussion groups, thus allowing for a more tangible understanding of recent connectionist theorising on language, learning and cognitive processes as a whole in the realm of the Brazilian SLA research community.