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.