Blog #7: What Discourse will YOU examine?

Over the last few weeks, we have been reading about discourse communities, about communities of practice, and identity kits. We have been defining these terms and asking questions about the characteristics of these groups.

For example:

• How are the characteristics of these groups and their ideologies or values exemplified through genres and other communicative practices?

How do the communicative practices of these groups enable them to fulfill their common goals?

What is the style of communication and how does that exemplify the ideologies or values?

How do these groups initiate new members? What are some of the barriers to affiliation with a community? What are some of the costs of affiliation? How do apprentices facilitate affiliation?

There are more questions, of course, but that's enough to get you started. 

Your task in the next essay is to choose one of these communities and begin looking at the goals and characteristics of this community, asking some focused research questions.  You'll use some of our readings as a means of analyzing this community.

In this blog, think about possible discourse communities, communities of practice, or Discourses that you might be interested in examining. What is it about these communities that interests you? What questions are you most interested in asking?

Choose very carefully and consider how you might begin your research. Who will you interview? What can you observe? What genres can you analyze?

Use this space to narrow your options. And don't forget to comment on other people's blogs.

Blog #6: My Identity Kit (Real or Mushfake?)

I am an introvert. I'm incredibly nervous in large crowds. I don't adapt well to new social situations--or job situations. I feel awkward. Like I don't know how to fit in. Because I don't know how to fit in. Like I don't know how to behave. Because I don't know how to behave.

So I sit back and observe: What are the existing power structures? When do people talk? When don't they talk? What kinds of things do people say? What kind of vocabulary do they use? How loudly do they speak? How do they dress? How do they walk?

And then, gradually, I venture into conversations, a few people at a time.
By the time people actually notice me, I have mastered some things, and I seem like I know what I am doing, so people have no idea how awkward I actually feel. That's good.


I was terrified my first day as an instructor of RWS100 at SDSU. I was a grad student, and I felt like I had no idea what I was doing. Because I literally had no idea what I was doing. But I knew I needed to look what I was doing.

I hadn't had a chance to observe other professors teach RWS 100, so I had no idea what identity I should adopt. I had observed what other professors wear, so I picked out an outfit accordingly. I wanted to appear smart and professional. Current but not too young. Or too old.

I wanted to project a knowledgeable yet approachable tone. But I wasn't sure exactly how to do that. I didn't want any of my students to know this was my first day in the classroom, and so I had to pretend like I knew what I was doing. I didn't lie, but I did try to project a note of confidence, as if I belonged in the classroom. I was pretty sure it was obvious that I didn't feel that way, but maybe not. My students were all freshmen who had no idea who they needed to be either.

And then gradually I figured out who I needed to be by conferring with other professors, by finding mentors, by reading pedagogical theories and stories about teaching, by experimenting in the classroom, by actually interacting with students and colleagues.

There's a point to this story. In order to seem like a teacher, I needed to create what James Paul Gee identifies as "sort of an 'identity kit' which comes complete with appropriate costume and instructions on how to act, talk, an often write, so as to take on a particular role that others will recognize" (119). Until I know how to do that, I need to pretend, to engage in what Gee calls "mushfake discourse."



In this blog, talk about your experience in acquiring a new discourse, how you pretended, how you felt, what you did.  Talk about mushfaking and how mushfaking turned into the real deal. Or how you are still mushfaking. I am an introvert. I'm incredibly nervous in large crowds. I don't adapt well to new social situations--or job situations. I feel awkward. Like I don't know how to fit in. Because I don't know how to fit in. Like I don't know how to behave. Because I don't know how to behave.

Blog #5: Discourse Communities and the "Cost of Affiliation"

Steve Jobs didn't finish college. Neither did Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg or John Glenn or Robert Frost. These fabulously successful individuals didn't need it. And yet, statistically, most successful people have complete college. Of course a college degree has no guarantees, but in the last recession, people with college degrees didn't suffer nearly as much as people without them. And most people agree that education plays a significant role in moving up the success ladder--even if what the end up doing has nothing to do with their college degree. (There are many ways to define success, but for the purposes of this discussion, I'm saying enough money to live comfortably and meaningful work.)

The thing is, the people at who most need to move up the success ladder often don't finish college. That has led a lot of scholars to ask why and to create initiatives to improve graduation rates for at-risk students, those kids from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, kids who are the first in their families to go to college. 

I didn't come from a rich background, but my family just assumed that I would go to college. High school graduation was no big deal in my house; it was what you had to do to get to college. And I wasn't done with school until I had a bachelor's degree. That kind of mindset keeps kids like me in school even when they encounter challenges that might keep them from finishing. College is just what you do.

Every day I encounter students who don't have that kind of background; their parents don't understand what they need to do to finish, so they pressure them to attend multiple family gatherings that keep them from studying or to work more hours. Without family support, either financial or emotional, they falter, and many of them just give up, believing college isn't for them.

In "Why Poor Students Struggle," published in the New York Times, New York city high school teacher and educational coach Vicki Madden reviews completion rate statistics and suggests that the biggest challenge to finishing school may be that "students have to come to terms with the unspoken transaction: exchanging your old world for a new world, one that doesn't seem to value where you came from."

This article reminded me of SDSU professor Ann Johns' discussion in "Discourse Communities and Communities of Practice." She argues that when students become "active participants" in a discourse community, they often must make sacrifices that "can create personal and social distance between them and their families and communities" (511). To fit into a new discourse community, they have to take on the "values, language, and genres" of that community. This claim is similar to Devitt's claim that when writers take up a genre, they also take up the ideologies, values, and norms of that genre (339).

So--in this week's blog post, you can discuss the ideas Johns and Madden toss out, or you can consider Amy Tan's illustration of how she moves back and forth between the language of her mother and the language of her profession. Or, you can take a minutes to consider your process of immersion in an academic discourse community or your adjustment to university life or how you navigate between the way you need to be in your family and the way you need to be while you are here at SDSU.

Blog #4: John Swales and the Discourse Community

So I hope you have all discovered an emotionally and tension driven rhetorical situation to respond to in your op/ed. My husband and I are sharing the weekend with friends who have very different political opinions than ours, and we have discussed quite a few of these issues. Happily, even though our conclusions are different, our goals and motivations are the same, and so we work to acknowledge the complexities of the issues we are discussing so that we remain friends. (One of my friends is a judge, and so his job is to remain objective; my job is to teach critical thinking, and so my job is to consider complexities. Our spouses talk about other things.)

The op/ed is so very different. The op/ed is presenting an unabashed opinion, well reasoned, complete with details that make your position seem to bring light on the issue. Have fun. Be creative.

In the meantime, I want you to read something that is pretty much the opposite of creative:
John Swales and the Discourse Community, available on Bb.

Yes, despite the fact that Swales got his own postage stamp (I don't know if that's real or not), this is

not riveting reading.

I personally think Swales, a linguist who studies patterns of writing, is a genius, but I also personally think that his writing, especially this article, is pretty stiff. That's why I didn't give you the whole paper. (If you REALLY want it, I can find it, and we can discuss it at length. That is, if you REALLY want it.)

The thing is, everything we read about the concept of discourse community is going to go right back to what Swales described in this excerpt, so if we want to have a meaningful conversation about discourse community, we have to start here.

At any rate, in your blog, I want you to take some time to define the concept of discourse community based on reading Swales. Keep in mind that the concept of discourse community is NOT the same thing as the concept of primary audience. 

And then I want you to identify a group which might qualify as a discourse community based on Swales' six characteristics and analyze it based on those characteristics, just as he does for his After your analysis, do you still think this is a discourse community? 

And yeah. That's about it for now.
I hope you are having as good of a weekend as I am.

Blog #3: Have I mentioned I love memes?

.

 Before I get started, I just wanted to talk about Maiya's post on genre awareness.  She described how she it took her like 20 minutes to come up with how to start with the blog because it is so hard to translate dense academic ideas into informal blog writing, and it was so hard she decided to start by writing about how hard it is because she thought that might sound "blog-ish." And as she started writing, she realized that this was in many ways exactly what Devitt was talking about.

Yeah. When we are in school, we are so used to trying to sound "smart," that we forget to sound "real." We forget that real writing is for real people for real purposes.

I think one of the values associated with blogging is self-discovery. Like Maiya, I figure out what I think or feel when I start blogging.  Or something like that. 

At any rate, back to meming. I am fascinated by the genre of internet memes, by the way the replication and transformation of patterns of cultural information. 

The Original Rose and the Original Poster

Take for example, Rosie the Riveter:

Someone, probably a guy, wanted to motivate women to work in factories during World War 2, so he chose one of those women to represent all of the women, and he fashioned an image, a poster that went viral, so to speak. No one called it that then. 

Over time, that image has morphed many times, taking shape for a variety of purposes. Take a look at a few of them:

The first three memes press the idea that women CAN achieve the things that men say they can't. They all replicate other strands of culture as well: female Mexican freedom fighter with a bullets draped across her shoulder, the common phrase "Fight like a Man" shifts to "Fight Like a Girl," celebrating the power of women, and the homage to Iranian woman depicts a woman in a hijab.

I'm not sure what the Obama mean says, whether this is positive or negative, but it not only memes the Rosie poster but also his first campaign slogan.

 

Okay. You get the idea. At any rate, read either Knobel and Lankshear or Davison. Both of them talk about analyzing memes. And then analyze a meme in your blog, an internet meme or another unit of culture that has evolved as it has been replicated.  Seriously fun.

Blog #2: Genre Awareness

When I ask my lower division students to think about genre, they immediately think music, about music, about rock or country or rap or whatever genre of music they are most interested in. Then they remember that they are in a writing class, and they think of literary genres. Plays or poetry, novels or short stories. Romance. Science fiction. Fantasy.

That's not what I mean, but I don't mind. It helps them understand that each genre has its own characteristics. No one will confuse a rap song with a minuet. And no one will confuse a romantic sonnet with a science fiction short story. 

It also helps them to see that each of these genres has a different effect on its audience. We feel different when we are listening to rap than we do when we listen to baroque string quartets or heavy metal. The music does something.

In this class, I'm going to ask you to consider some different genres. These aren't really literary genres, but they are written forms of communication, each with a  unique set of characteristics. For example, a blog is a unique genre.

We expect a blog to be informal. Written in casual language. Way more casual than a formal academic essay.

It might be accompanied by images. It will probably discuss real world ideas, responses, emotions. It's personal. You get to know the person who is writing.

All of this is about audience response to genre. In her academic research article titled "Teaching Critical Genre Awareness" (2009), Kansas University writing professor Amy Devitt contends that not only does genre influence the audience, but that because each genre has its own "existing power structures and dynamics" (347), it also has the ability to do something to the author.

In music terms, the musician feels different to playing Mozart than she does playing the Grateful Dead. More pointedly, it feels different to write a waltz than it does a head-banging rock song, and if I write waltzes all the time, I'll be a different person than if I write rock songs all the time. 

Back to Devitt. Her claim is that it's not just what the author says that has an effect on the author, but the very structure of the genre influences the writer because the genre has a sort of ideology, a world view of its own. 

I want you to unpack these ideas as you read Devitt.

First of all, think about what Devitt means by genre. What kinds of writing genres do you encounter at SDSU? At your job? Your internship? Your life? How are each unique? What purpose does each serve? What is designed to do?

Next, think about what Devitt means by genre awareness. Why does she think genre awareness is so important? How might genre awareness and rhetorical analysis of various genres help you?

Early in the text, Devitt claims, "When writers take up a genre, they take up that genre's ideology" (339). What does she mean? How can an ideology have its own ideology?

Finally, what does Devitt mean by "existing power structures and dynamics" (347) associated with genres? Why does she think genres have so much power?

Devitt illustrates some of these ideas by discussing the five-paragraph essay, a genre you have quite a bit of experience with.  You could discuss that, or you might think of other real world examples of genres that you have used in the past or are using now.  For example, you might consider how writing a blog is different than writing a research paper for your psych class or writing a lab report. How is the purpose different? How does your style of writing change? How might using this style influence who you are?

In your blog, you can write about any of these things or go in another direction if you want. 

Blog #1: Creating My Identity Kit

On the Eurostar -- headed under the Channel.

When you walked into the room on Thursday morning, you expected something.

Certainly you expected a professor.
Perhaps you were hoping for someone more hip. More cool. Younger. Perhaps you were expecting someone who sounded more, well, academic.

Maybe you checked out my name on ratemyprofessor.com and you think you know a little bit about me. She's fair. She's flighty. She assigned a lot of homework. She's a tough grader.

More than likely you expected me to conduct the class in a professional manner, to make a syllabus available, to describe course expectations. You expected me to speak grammatically and to communicate clearly.

From this point on, you'll be judging me and the way I teach based on the way I continue to play my part of professor. You'll be figuring out what kind of person I am. 

At Sacre Coeur in Paris.
Did I mention I love to travel?

That's the way life works, or at least the way Goffman describes in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Goffman claims we are all playing roles, consciously or unconsciously presenting an image of ourselves to the rest of the world.

James Paul Gee, a professor in psycholinguistics and discourse analysis, uses a different analogy. He describes what he calls an identity kit "which comes with the appropriate costume and instructions on how to act, talk, and often write, so as to take on a particular role that others will recognize" (7).

I will admit. That sounds a little artificial. But think about it. Whether subtly or dramatically, you behave differently in different contexts. You are one way with your friends. Another way with colleagues or roommates. Another way with your mom. And your dad, Your grandmother. Your sister.

It's not fake--it's situational.

Well, sometimes it's fake. The first time I stood up in front of an RWS 100 class, I wasn't quite sure who I needed to be. So I pretended to be who I thought I should be. And over time, I became who I needed to be.

Often these adjustments in the way we present ourselves are necessary in order for us to succeed and achieve our purposes.

Okay, I've rambled enough.
I'm presenting an image of myself for you. In blogs, I'm conversational. Use short sentences, sometimes fragments. I like short paragraphs. I appear random, but I definitely have a point.

If you're analyzing the appearance of this blog, you can see it's technologically weak. Maybe, you think, she not good at technology because she is so old. Or maybe she's busy and doesn't want to take the time to make this blog look better. Or maybe there's something else going on. You decide.

And when you're done trying to figure out what role I'm playing, make your own blog. In this blog, I want you to do the same thing I'm doing. Imagine an audience, this class. What's the best way to present yourself to this class? What role do you want to play? Who do you want this class to see?


Present yourself in such a way as to appeal to this class, using visuals, vocabulary, and ideas that appeal to that audience.

This first blog post is about introducing yourself and your purpose to this audience. Do your best.