Discourse Community Angela Carter once said, Language is p.docx

Discourse Community Angela Carter once said, “Language is
power, life and the instrument of culture, the instrument of
domination and liberation.” In the Literacy, Discourse, and
Linguistics, James Paul Gee indicated “language” is a
misleading term, it too often suggests “grammar”. A person
probably still does not know how to use a language, even
though the person knows the grammar of that language
perfectly. In the viewpoints of James Paul Gee, he suggested
people must say or write the right thing in the right way while
playing the right social role and hold the right values, beliefs
and attitudes when people are using language. Gee called the
combinations of saying (writing) – doing – valuing – believing
as “Discourse”. Sometimes, people could not find out a
comfort place of a group or community. As Gee said “We
acquire this primary Discourse, not by overt instruction, but by
being a member of a primary socializing group (family, clan,
peer group). Further, aspects and pieces of the primary
Discourse become a ‘carrier’ or ‘foundation’ for Discourse
acquired later in life.” People should adjust themselves to fit in
different communities. However, for some introverted people
such as Ocean Vuong, they would choose to “surrender”.
“Normally, my poor writing abilities would excuse me from
such assignments, and I would instead spend the class
mindlessly copying out passages from books I’d retrieved from
a blue plastic bin at the back of the room. The task allowed me
to camouflage myself; as long as I looked as though I were
doing something smart, my shame and failure were hidden”

Diagnostic Essay
The summer after I graduated from high school I worked as an
intern of JW Marriott Hotel in Shanghai, China. During that
time, I helped to plan several Banquet &Wedding Event and
International conference preparation.
In the first morning of a busy week, everyone came to hotel
early. Some people talked about their weekends to others while
changing into their working suits. Some people were doing their
own things or just relaxing. Everything was silent in few
seconds after the “bald guy walked in. He was the manager. By
the time, a 6 feet tall young man who wear a green flight jacket
with black hair burst in the lobby. Everyone stared at him
because he was panting and puffing. He said “Sorry for being
late”. However, the bald guy did not say anything. After the
“morning speech” of the “bald guy”, most people just ignored
the new guy and headed into the work. There were also couple
guys saying hello to him and want to pretend to be friendly. At
this time, John came over. John was the foreman of the group
and the person who always tour the new guy around to every
part of hotel and introduce him to others. John said “Hey, how’s
going man? I’m John. Do not worry about the first time late, it
would be fine being early since now. Let’s start your first day.”
When John walked him around, he seemed kind of nervous. He
would touch his hair and bite lower lip from time to time when
he introduced himself to others. During the lunch time, he just
ate his lunch alone and sit with no one. Probably because of the
unfamiliar environment and introverted personality. These is
kind of my first day of my internship in my friend Tim’s eyes.
On the first day, it is difficult for me to fit in the big group.
After a week working with them, I gradually integrated into
them.

One of the best things about being in hotel operations is not
only being in contact with guests, but also interacting with our
associates and working in teams – in a hotel everyone needs to
work together to exceed guests’ expectations! I met so many
special people and I am so proud to have been learning with
them on a daily basis as we work together side by side.
I am discovering everyday what Hospitality is all about. The
opportunity of being in a hotel is priceless. It has been an
amazing experience to contribute hands-on to different
activities at these properties. Interning here definitely made me
understand more about hotel management, how to exceed
expectations of guests and how to better work in teams.
Surrendering
By
Ocean Vuong
Reading and writing, like any other crafts, come to the mind
slowly, in pieces. But for me, as an E.S.L. student from a family
of illiterate rice farmers, who saw reading as snobby, or worse,
the experience of working through a book, even one as simple
as “Where the Wild Things Are,” was akin to standing in
quicksand, your loved ones corralled at its safe edges, their
arms folded in suspicion and doubt as you sink.
My family immigrated to the U.S. from Vietnam in 1990, when
I was two. We lived, all seven of us, in a one-bedroom
apartment in Hartford, Connecticut, and I spent my first five
years in America surrounded, inundated, by the Vietnamese
language. When I entered kindergarten, I was, in a sense,
immigrating all over again, except this time into English. Like
any American child, I quickly learned my ABCs, thanks to the
age-old melody (one I still sing rapidly to myself when I forget

whether “M” comes before “N”). Within a few years, I had
become fluent—but only in speech, not in the written word.
One early-spring afternoon, when I was in fourth grade, we got
an assignment in language-arts class: we had two weeks to write
a poem in honor of National Poetry Month. Normally, my poor
writing abilities would excuse me from such assignments, and I
would instead spend the class mindlessly copying out passages
from books I’d retrieved from a blue plastic bin at the back of
the room. The task allowed me to camouflage myself; as long as
I looked as though I were doing something smart, my shame and
failure were hidden. The trouble began when I decided to be
dangerously ambitious. Which is to say, I decided to write a
poem.
“Where is it?” the teacher asked. He held my poem up to the
fluorescent classroom lights and squinted, the way one might
examine counterfeit money. I could tell, by the slowly
brightening room, that it had started to snow. I pointed to my
work dangling from his fingers. “No, where is the poem you
plagiarized? How did you even write something like this?” Then
he tipped my desk toward me. The desk had a cubby attached to
its underside, and I watched as the contents spilled from the
cubby’s mouth: rectangular pink erasers, crayons, yellow
pencils, wrinkled work sheets where dotted letters were filled
in, a lime Dum Dum lollipop. But no poem. I stood before the
rubble at my feet. Little moments of ice hurled themselves
against the window as the boys and girls, my peers, stared, their
faces as unconvinced as blank sheets of paper.
Weeks earlier, I’d been in the library. It was where I would hide
during recess. Otherwise, because of my slight frame and soft
voice, the boys would call me “pansy” and “fairy” and pull my
shorts around my ankles in the middle of the schoolyard. I sat
on the floor beside a tape player. From a box of cassettes, I
chose one labelled “Great American Speeches.” I picked it

because of the illustration, a microphone against a backdrop of
the American flag. I picked it because the American flag was
one of the few symbols I recognized.
Through the headset, a robust male voice surged forth, emptying
into my body. The man’s inflections made me think of waves on
a sea. Between his sentences, a crowd—I imagined thousands—
roared and applauded. I imagined their heads shifting in an
endless flow. His voice must possess the power of a moon, I
thought, something beyond my grasp, my little life. Then a
narrator named the man as a Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I
nodded, not knowing why a doctor was speaking like this. But
maybe these people were ill, and he was trying to cure them.
There must have been medicine in his words—can there be
medicine in words? “I have a dream,” I mouthed to myself as
the doctor spoke. It occurred to me that I had been mouthing my
grandmother’s stories as well, the ones she had been telling me
ever since I was born. Of course, not being able to read does not
mean that one is empty of stories.
My poem was called “If a Boy Could Dream.” The phrases
“promised land” and “mountaintop” sounded golden to me, and
I saw an ochre-lit field, a lushness akin to a spring dusk. I
imagined that the doctor was dreaming of springtime. So my
poem was a sort of ode to spring. From the gardening shows my
grandmother watched, I’d learned the words for flowers I had
never seen in person: foxglove, lilac, lily, buttercup. “If a boy
could dream of golden fields, full of lilacs, tulips, marigolds . .
.”
I knew words like “if” and “boy,” but others I had to look up. I
sounded out the words in my head, a dictionary in my lap, and
searched the letters. After a few days, the poem appeared as
gray graphite words. The paper a white flag. I had surrendered,
had written.

Looking back, I can see my teacher’s problem. I was, after all, a
poor student. “Where is it?” he said again.
“It’s right here,” I said, pointing to my poem pinched between
his fingers.
I had read books that weren’t books, and I had read them using
everything but my eyes. From that invisible “reading,” I had
pressed my world onto paper. As such, I was a fraud in a field
of language, which is to say, I was a writer. I have plagiarized
my life to give you the best of me. ♦
“I need you to say ‘I’”: Why First Person Is
Important in College Writing
by Kate McKinney Maddalena
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180

“I need you to say ‘I’”: Why First
Person Is Important in College
Writing
Kate McKinney Maddalena
At this point in your development as a writer, you may have
learned
to write “I-less” prose, without first person.* I-less-ness is fine;
writ-
ing habits, like all habits, are best simplified when first learned
or
re-learned. Jazz pianists learn strict scales before they are
allowed to
improvise. Someone might go on a strict diet and then return to
a
modified menu after the desired weight is lost, and the bad
eating
habits are broken. Constructing arguments without using “I” is
good
practice for formal “improvisation” at higher levels of thinking
and
writing. Avoiding personal pronouns forces you to be objective.
It also
“sounds” more formal; you’re more likely to maintain an
appropriate
tone if you stay away from the personal.
But writing in various academic and professional contexts needs
to be more flexible, sophisticated, and subtle than writing for
high
school English classes. In college, you should start using first-
person
pronouns in your formal academic writing, where appropriate.
First
person has an important place—an irreplaceable place—in texts

that
report research and engage scholarship. Your choices about
where you
place yourself as subject are largely determined by context and
the
* This work is licensed under the Creative Commons
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Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License and is
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Writing Spaces Terms of Use. To view a copy of this license,
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Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco,
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Why First Person Is Important in College Writing 181
conventions of the field in which you’re writing. The key is
making
sure that your choices are appropriate for the context of your
paper—
whom you’re writing it for, and the kind of information it’s
meant to
communicate. Here I’ll list some ways in which first person
improves
written argument and show you some examples of the ways
scholars
use first person, and then I’ll propose places where it might be
used

appropriately in your own writing.
Why “I”?
First person can support the following characteristics of good
written
argument (and good writing in general).
1. Objectivity and Integrity
The main reason most teachers give for the discipline of I-less-
ness is
that it keeps your writing “objective.” They want to make sure
that you
don’t rely on personal experiences or perspectives where you
should
be providing concrete, researched support for your arguments.
Your
best friend at summer camp doesn’t “prove” a sociological
theory. Your
memory of a “fact”—the average rainfall in a town, the actions
of a
character in a film, the tendencies of groups of people to behave
in
certain ways, or the population of Kenya—is not a reliable
source in
academic contexts. You shouldn’t write, “because I think so,”
or “I
know that . . .” But if you consider some of the higher-level
implica-
tions of perspective’s effects on argument, there are some well-
chosen
places where “I” can give your argument more objectivity and
intel-
lectual integrity.

Take scientific writing, for example. Up until very recently,
when
writing observational and experimental reports, scientists, as a
rule,
avoided first person. Methodology was (and is still, in many
cases) de-
scribed in the passive voice. That is, instead of writing, “We
took mea-
surements of ice thickness on the first and 15th day of every
month,”
scientists wrote, “Measurements of ice thickness were taken on
the
first and 15th day of every month.” Taking out the “we” focuses
the
reader’s attention on the phenomenon (object) being observed,
not the
observer taking the readings (subject). Or at least that was the
reason-
ing behind passive voice in science writing.
Kate McKinney Maddalena182
But during the last half of the last century, mostly because of
de-
velopments in physics, scientists have talked a lot about a thing
called
the “observer effect”: while observing or experimenting with a
social
or even physical system, the scientist watching can affect the
system’s
behavior. When particle physicists try to measure the motion of
some-
thing as tiny as an electron, their very observation almost
certainly

changes that motion. Because of the observer effect, the passive
voice
convention I’ve described above has been called into question.
Is it
really honest to act like “measurements are taken” by some
invisible
hand? Is the picture minus the researcher the whole picture? Not
re-
ally. The fact is, someone took the measurements, and those
measure-
ments might reflect that observer’s involvement. It’s more
truthful,
complete, and objective, then, to put the researchers in the
picture.
These days, it’s much more common to “see” the researchers as
sub-
jects—“We measured ice thickness . . .”—in methodology
sections.
That same kind of “whole picture” honesty applies to you
making
written claims, too. When you first learned to write an essay,
you were
probably taught to make claims as though they were true; write
“The
sky is blue,” not “I think that the sky is blue.” That second
claim isn’t
arguable—who can disprove that you think something? But a
much
more sophisticated claim includes your perspective and implies
the ef-
fect it may have on your stance: “From my position standing on
the
earth’s surface in the daytime, I see the sky as blue.” You can
make that
claim without using first person, of course, and in some

contexts (i.e.
for a scientific argument), you probably should. When you’re
taking
a stance on an issue, though, first person just makes sense.
Defining
your perspective gives your reader context for your stance: “As
a volun-
teer at a bilingual preschool, I can see that both language
immersion
and individualized language instruction have benefits,” or “As a
prin-
cipal at an elementary school with a limited budget, I would
argue that
language immersion makes the most sense.” Consider those two
posi-
tions; without the “whole picture” that the statement of
perspective
implies, you might assume that the two claims disagree. The
subtlety
of the subject—who the writer is—lets you see quite a bit about
why
the claim is being made. If you asked the second writer to take a
stance
on the immersion/bilingual instruction issue with only learning
objec-
tives in mind, she might agree with the first writer. The “truth”
might
not be different, but the position it’s observed from can
certainly cast
a different light on it.
2. Clarifying Who’s Saying What

A clear description of your perspective becomes even more
important
when your stance has to incorporate or respond to someone
else’s. As
you move into more advanced college writing, the claims you
respond
to will usually belong to scholars. Some papers may require you
to
spend almost as much time summarizing a scholarly
conversation as
they do presenting points of your own. By “signification,” I
mean little
phrases that tell the reader, “This is my opinion,” “This is my
interpre-
tation.” You need them for two big reasons.
First of all, the more “voices” you add to the conversation, the
more
confusing it gets. You must separate your own interpretations of
schol-
ars’ claims, the claims themselves, and your argument so as not
to
misrepresent any of them. If you’ve just paraphrased a scholar,
mak-
ing your own claim without quite literally claiming it might
make the
reader think that the scholar said it. Consider these two
sentences:
“Wagstaff et al. (2007) conclude that the demand for practical
science
writing that the layperson can understand is on the rise. But
there is
a need for laypeople people to increase their science literacy, as
well.”
Is that second claim part of Wagstaff ’s conclusion, or is it your

own
reflection on the implications of Wagstaff ’s argument? By
writing
something like, “Wagstaff et al. (2007) conclude that the
demand for
practical science that the layperson can understand is on the
rise. I
maintain that there is a need for laypeople to increase their
science
literacy, as well,” you avoid the ambiguity. First person can
help you
express, very simply, who “says” what.
Secondly, your perceptions, and therefore your interpretations,
are
not always perfect. Science writing can help me illustrate this
idea,
as well. In the imaginary observation report I refer to above, the
re-
searchers may or may not use first person in their methodology
section
out of respect for the observer effect, but they are very likely to
use
first person in the discussion/conclusion section. The discussion
sec-
tion involves interpretation of the data—that is, the researchers
must
say what they think the data means. The importance of
perspective
is compounded, here. They might not be right. And even if they
are
mostly right, the systems scientists study are usually incredibly
com-
plex; one observation report is not the whole picture. Scientists,
there-
fore, often mark their own interpretations with first person

pronouns.
“We interpret these data to imply . . .” they might say, or, “We
believe
these findings indicate . . . ,” and then they go on to list
questions for
further research. Even the experts know that their understanding
is
almost always incomplete.
3. Ownership, Intellectual Involvement, and Exigency
Citing scholarship contextualizes and strengthens your
argument; you
want to defer to “experts” for evidence of your claims when you
can.
As a student, you might feel like an outsider—unable to
comment
with authority on the concepts you’re reading and writing about.
But
outsider status doesn’t only mean a lack of expertise. Your own,
well-
defined viewpoint might shed new light on a topic that the
experts
haven’t considered (or that your classmates haven’t considered,
or that
your professor hasn’t mentioned in class, or even, quite simply,
that
you hadn’t thought of and so you’re excited about). In that case,
you
want to say, “This is mine, it’s a new way of looking at the
issue, and

I’m proud of it.”
Those kinds of claims are usually synthetic ones—you’ve put
in-
formation and/or interpretations from several sources together,
and
you’ve actually got something to say. Whether your new spin
has to do
with a cure for cancer or an interpretation of Batman comics,
pride in
your own intellectual work is important on many levels. As a
student,
you should care; such investment can help you learn. Your
school com-
munity should also care; good teachers are always looking for
what we
call “critical thinking,” and when students form new ideas from
exist-
ing ones, we know it’s happening. On the larger scale, the
scholarly
community should care. Having something new to say increases
the
exigency of your argument in the larger, intellectual exchange
of ideas.
A scholarly reader should want to pay attention, because what
you say
may be a key to some puzzle (a cure for cancer) or way of
thinking
about the topic (interpreting Batman). That’s the way scholars
work
together to form large bodies of knowledge: we communicate
about
our research and ideas, and we try to combine them when we
can.
An emphatic statement like “Much discussion has addressed the

topic of carbon emissions’ relationship to climate change, but I
would
like to ask a question from a new perspective,” will make your
reader
sit up and take notice. In I-less form, that might look like:
“Much
discussion has addressed the topic of carbon emissions’
relationship
to climate change, but some questions remain unconsidered.” In
this
case, second sentence still sounds like summary—the writer is
telling
us that research is incomplete, but isn’t giving us a strong clue
that
his or her (new! fresh!) argument is coming up next. Be careful,
of
course, not to sound arrogant. If the writer of the sentences
above was
worried about his or her lack of expertise in an assignment
involving
scholarly sources, he or she could write: “What scholarly
discussion I
have read so far has addressed the topic of carbon emissions’
relation-
ship to climate change, but I would like to ask a question from a
new
perspective.” He or she can use first person to employ both
deference
and ownership/involvement in the same sentence.
4. Rhetorical Sophistication

Some writing assignments focus on one simple task at a time:
“Summarize the following . . .” “Compare the readings . . .”
“ana-
lyze,” or “argue.” When you write a simple five-paragraph
essay, your
mode rarely changes—you can write an introduction, thesis,
body,
and conclusion without explaining too many shifts in what the
pa-
per is “doing.” Writing at the college level and beyond often
has to
“do” a few things in the same text. Most involved writing
assignments
expect you to do at least two things. You may need to
summarize/
report and respond, or (more likely) you’ll need to
summarize/report,
synthesize, and respond. A good introduction, as you’ve
learned, needs
to anticipate all of it so the reader knows what to expect.
Anticipating
the structure of a complex argument in I-less mode is tricky.
Often, it
comes out as a summary of the document that follows and is
redun-
dant. First person can clear that problem right up. Consider the
intro-
duction to this article; when I come to the part where I need to
tell
you what I’m going to do, I just . . . tell you what I’m going to
do! My
writing students usually find this rhetorical trick (or is it an un-
trick?)
refreshing and liberating. The same concept can be applied to
transi-

tions between sections and ideas: “Now that I’ve done this
thing, I’d
like to move into this other part of my argument . . .” I’ll use
this type
of transition, myself, when I move into the section of this text
called,
“When, and When not?”
Academic Examples
The fact is, using first person for rhetorical clarity and to ease
transi-
tions isn’t just easier—it’s common in many academic contexts.
It’s
accepted, even expected, in some cases, for scholarly writing
such as
abstracts, position papers, theses, and dissertations in many
fields to
employ first person in the ways I’ve just described. In almost
all genres,
formats, and fields, the scholarly writer is expected to describe
the re-
search done thus far by her peers and then make her own
claims—a
structure that lends itself to first person.
Robert Terrill, a cultural studies scholar, begins his article, “Put
on a Happy Face: Batman as Schizophrenic Savior,” with an
evalua-
tion of Tim Burton’s movie’s box office success, and then
spends sev-

eral paragraphs discussing other scholars’ applications of
psychological
frameworks to film studies. Throughout the literature review
section,
Terrill’s own voice stays remote; he uses third person. But look
at what
happens when he is ready to begin his own argument:
Because much of my analysis is grounded in the theo-
ries of Carl C. Jung, I will begin by outlining relevant
aspects of that theory. Then I suggest that Gotham
City is a dream world, a representative projection of
image-centered dreams. Within the framework of
Jung’s model, I show the principal characters to be
archetypal manifestations that erupt from Gotham’s
unconscious. Wayne/Batman is a splintered manifes-
tation of a potential whole; his condition represents
the schizophrenia required of a hero dedicated to
preservation of the shattered psyche of Gotham. (321)
Terrill’s move to first person separates his own claims from the
scholars he’s summarized in his introduction, and it allows him
to take
ownership of his main claim. The way he “maps out” his article
is also
typical of academic argument.
First person is used similarly in the sciences. Unlike Terrill,
who
argues for a certain interpretation of a text, psychologists
Jennifer
Kraemer and David Marquez report research findings in their
article,
“Psychosocial Correlates and Outcomes of Yoga or Walking
Among
Older Adults.” Much like Terrill, however, their introduction

consists
of a review of literature in the third person. For almost three
pages,
Kraemer and Marquez describe studies which have explored
health
and injury patterns in old age, as well as studies which have
investi-
gated various fitness programs for the elderly. When it comes
time for
Kraemer and Marquez to describe their own study, they shift
into first
person:
We hypothesized that an acute bout of yoga would be
more effective at improving mood and reducing state
anxiety among older adults when compared with
acute bouts of walking. We further hypothesized that
older adults who practice yoga would have lower lev-
els of depression and higher quality of life when com-
pared with those who walk for exercise. We did not
make direct hypotheses for exercise barriers and bar-
riers self-efficacy because, to date, there is no research
that has examined those variables in this population.
(393)
Kraemer and Marquez continue in first person as they describe
their
methodology. “We recruited a total of 51 participants (8 men,
43
women)” they write, “through classes at local yoga studios and
mall

walking groups” (393). The researchers themselves, in first
person, are
the subjects who “do” every action in the methods: “We asked
ques-
tions on . . . We measured state anxiety by . . . We measured
mood
using . . .”(393–4). By putting themselves in the picture,
Kraemer and
Marquez acknowledge themselves as variables in their own
study—a
key aspect of any scientific methodology, and especially those
which
involve human subjects and use interviews to collect data.
On the other hand, some academic communities and genres stay
away from first person. Susan Clark, a professor at Yale who
writes
about the communication and implementation of sustainable
forestry
practices, describes her study without putting herself in the
picture.
Where Kraemer and Marquez describe themselves “doing” the
meth-
ods of their study, Clark has her article as the agent in her
description
of analysis:
This article (a) describes the intelligence function
in conceptual terms, including its sequential phases
(as described by McDougal, Lasswell, & Reisman,
1981); (b) uses examples to illustrate the intelligence
activity from Reading and Miller (2000), Endan-
gered Animals: A Reference Guide to Conflicting Issues,
which gives 70 cases by 34 authors in 55 countries

that focus on species, ecosystem, and sustainability
challenges; and employs a “problem-oriented” look at
intelligence activities across all these cases (Lasswell,
1971). It does so by asking and answering five ques-
tions . . . (637)
Clark’s methods are to analyze others’ processes—hers, then, is
meta-
analysis. It’s appropriate for her to remove herself rhetorically
as she
deals with many actions and many, diverse actors. She is more a
de-
scriber than a “do-er.”
At the very end of her article, in a “call to action” that directly
ap-
plies her findings, Clark does finally use first person. “We can
increase
the possibility of better biodiversity and ecosystem
conservation, and
better sustainability overall,” she writes, “if we choose to use
an ef-
fective intelligence activity. Success is more likely if we
increase the
rationality of our own directed behavior” (659). Clark’s “we” is
dif-
ferent from Kraemer and Marquez’s “we,” though. It refers to
Clark’s
audience—the community of sustainable forestry as a whole—
and
predicts future action in which she will be active.
When (and When Not) to Use First Person?

Now that I’ve convinced you to try first person in some of your
aca-
demic writing, I should talk about how to use it appropriately.
(See?
I just used “I” for a clear transition to a new idea.) The key is:
don’t
go “I” crazy. Remember the self-discipline you practiced with I-
less
writing.
Probably the best way to approach first person in an academic
con-
text is this: use it to make yourself clear. You’ll need “I” for
clarity
when one of the ideals I described above is in question. Either
1) you’ll
need to describe an aspect of your personal perspective that will
help
the reader see (your) whole picture; 2) you’ll need to make the
di-
vide between your voice and the scholars’ as clear as possible in
order
to avoid misrepresenting the scholars’ claims; 3) your own
claim will
need to stand apart from the other perspectives you’ve presented
as
something new; or 4) you’ll need to guide your reader through
the
organization of your text in some way.
Below, I’ve listed a few common writing situations/assignments
that first person can potentially support.

Try “I” when . . .
. . . the assignment asks you to. Personal position papers,
personal nar-
ratives, and assignments that say “tell what you did/read and
provide
your reaction,” all explicitly ask you to use first person.
. . . you’re asked to “Summarize and respond.” You might
transition
into the response part of the paper with “I.”
. . . you’re introducing a paper with a complicated structure: “I
will
summarize Wagstaff ’s argument, and then respond to a few key
points
with my own interpretation.”
. . . you are proud of and intellectually invested in what you
have to
say, and you want to arrange it in reference to others’ voices:
“Many
scholars have used psychological frameworks to interpret the
Batman
movies, but I would argue that a historical perspective is more
produc-
tive . . .”
. . . you are unsure of your interpretation of a source, or you
feel that
the claim you’re making may be bigger than your level of
expertise: “If
I read Wagstaff correctly, her conclusions imply . . .”
“I” Is a Bad Idea When . . .
. . . you use it only once. You don’t want to overuse the first
person,

but if you’re going to assert your position or make a transition
with “I,”
give the reader a hint of your voice in the introduction. An
introduc-
tion that anticipates structure with “I will,” for instance, works
well
with transitions that use “I” as well. If you use first person only
once,
the tone shift will jar the reader.
. . . The assignment is a simple summary. In that case, you need
only
report; you are “eye,” not “I.”
. . . you’re writing a lab report for a science class, as a general
rule.
But you might ask your teacher about the issues of objectivity
I’ve ad-
dressed above, especially in terms of objective methodology.
Discussion
1. Can you remember a writing task during which you struggled
to avoid using the first person? What about the nature of the
content made “I” hard to avoid? Can you link the difficulty to
one of the four values that first person “supports,” according
to this essay?
2. McKinney Maddalena claims that scientists use “I” more of-
ten in research reports, nowadays. Find a scientific article in
your school’s research databases that employs first person: “I”
or “we.” In what section is first person used, and how? Does its
usage reflect one of the values this essay points out?

Works Cited
Clark, Susan G. “An Informational Approach to Sustainability:
“Intel-
ligence” in Conservation and Natural Resource Management
Policy.”
Journal of Sustainable Forestry 28.6/7 (2009): 636–62.
Academic Search
Premier. Web. 22 Mar. 2010.
Kraemer, Jennifer M., and David X. Marquez. “Psychosocial
Correlates and
Outcomes of Yoga or Walking Among Older Adults.” Journal of
Psycholo-
gy 143.4 (2009): 390–404. Academic Search Premier. Web. 22
Mar. 2010.
Terrill, Robert E. “Put on a Happy Face: Batman as
Schizophrenic Savior.”
The Quarterly Journal of Speech 79.3 (1993): 319–35. MLA
International
Bibliography. Web. 22 Mar. 2010.
IOURNAL OF EDUCATION, Volume 171 Nurnber i, i989
LITERACY DISCOURSE, AND LINGUISTICS:
INTRODUCTION
fames Paul Gee
Department of Lingtistics, Universitl, 6f ;outhern California,
Ins Angeles

What I propose in the folio'adng papers, in the main, is a way of
talking
aboutliteracy and linguistics. I believe that a new field of study,
integating
"psychd' and "socid' approaches to language irom a variety of
disciplines, is
emerging, a field which we might call liceracy studies. Much of
this work, I
think {and hope}, shares at least some of the assumptions of the
{ollowing
papers. These papers, though written at different timeg and for
diffierent pur-
poses, are, nonetheless, based on the ciaim that the focus of
literary studies
or applied linguistics should not be langriage, or literacy, but
social practices.
This claim, I believe, has a number of socially important and
cognitively inter-
esting consequences.
"Langu.agd' is a misleading term; it too often suggests
"glamrnarl' It is a
truism that a person can know perfectiy the glammar of a
language and not
know how to use that language- it is not just r,r'&a; ;'ou say, but
how you say
it. If I enter my neighborhood bar ancl say to nry tattooed
drinking buddy, as
I sit dowrr, "May I have a match pleaselj' my grarnmar is
perfect, but what I
have said is wrong nonetheless lt is less otten rerrrarked that a
person could
be able to use a language perfectly and str-l? nqt make sense. It
is not lust how
you say it, but what yon are and cJo when yo say ir:. If I enter

my neighbor-
hood bar and say to my drinking buddy, as sit down, "Gime a
nratch,
wolldyaij'while placing a napkin on the bar stool to avoid
getting my newly
pressed designer ieans dirtli I have said the right thing, but my
ayingdoing"
r:ombination is nonetheless all wrons.
I am deeply indebted to Candy Mitchell ior editing this collecl
ion of papers, and to fim OBiien
lbr copy€diting ihe papers appearin3 here {or the first tim:. The
following people are responsible
{they may be aghast to hear) Ior having helped to lead me to the
views I bold. First, a set of people
whose writirqgs harre irupired me: ll'allace Cha{e, Michsel
Cole, k'lul Gumperz, Shirley Brice Heth,
Dell Hymes, William hbov, Roger and Su:rurne Scollon, Bri;ur
Street, Gordon ldblls, and fim
{'ertsch. Second, a group of people not only whose writings
hare inspired me, but whose discus-
sion of the issues in these paners witb nre, a.lrell as whose
friend-ship, has left me aln"ays in their
debt: Elaine Andersen, Maria Brisk, Chip Bruce, Courtney
Cazden, David Dickenson, Stert
Krashen, Stele Gordon, Stere Griffl'r, Henry Girorrx, Donel lo
Macedq Sarah Michaels, Bea
Mikulecky, Eliiot Mishler, Candy Miti:hell. Catherine Snow,
and Dennie 14blf. These papen ulti-
mately all hale their origin in the kindness that Sarah Michaels
and Courtney Cazden extended
to me when I first arrived irr Boston try rnviting mc to ta-ke an
interest in their concems.
lor-rrnal o{ Education, Vo}umt l,tl, i".lrrniber l. t989. (:-,

Trustees of Boston University
F. Niyi Akirrnaso and Cheryl Aiirctuti1lf9!)'. nteylt "simulated
iob
interviewg' from two lveifare mothers in a CETA
job training Pro8ram' r ne
;;-;;, asked whether she has ever shown initiative in a
previous job,,
r""p"rarhit"ff, y-es, therds this Walgreerls Agenlv, I
*"tk"1i:,1T-:::17
opJr"tor, OK. A;d it lvas a snow stonn, OK' And it was usually
srx
people
workir/ in a group. . :' *J* forth {p' 34}' This woman is simply
using
the
;;"s t*;- {ihe wrong 'tiiabcrffor this tvp".of
(t*dttt:;tl":,tlT:::ltl
It's a fJrfectly good grarnmar {diatect}, it iust wodt
get you th-ls type ot loD m
BOSTON L]NWERSIT}-
*"k ."rr"t, ,o "discoursd' is part of "Disc"*d:
'Di5orrrs9!e1e]^/:l)nlg!!g!{}g
in thelrorlG; !hef'are

this type of societl'.
The second woman {the authord "succesd' case} respondt- 19.t
.t*"]?t
question by saying: ". . .I was lett alone to handle the office' ' ' '
l clrclrIt
reaxy
frarr. a tot of
"*p.ii.tt""'
But I had enough experience to ded with any situa-
;;a; ;;.'up. . . and those trrat t coutdat handle at the
time, if there-was
someone rn-ho had more erperience than rnyself, I asked
qlSstronsto find out
what procedure I would use' if something came up encl lt
I drddt Know wno
io ,""fiy So to, I would iot it down . . . o', a pie"e of
paper, so ttrat I rvouldr/t forget
itr"i if iiy""" that was more qualified ihanrnysclf, I could
alf them about
i .rra n *:l *ruid go about so^lving it. So I feel I'm capable of
hrndling iust
JU""i*y .i*ation,"whether it's on hy ovrn or rurder superviti"d,'
!p , 111}^r].t
woman ha^sr1t got a real problem with her grammar
(remeab:r,thls

ls speecn'
not wziting), nor is there any real problem with the use to which
she puts tlat
srasrmar, but she is expressing the wrong vaiues' She views
beingleft
in charge
f.;;;;il;-;;;; ;'a';;;sion, nairelv., supervision bv "other
peopldd'
knowledg"an<lexpertise.^aoa'h"failstocharacterizeherownexpert
isein
it*
"*.:i
.p,imisiic form called for by such interviews' Using this
response
""
,n.*"*pit oi "successful trainingl; is only possible because the
authors'
o*rr" th"t i"rr5uage is more.than grammar {namely, 'trsd'}, are
unaware
that
communicatiorr is more th language use'
At any !non'].ent r€ aie
"tlg
t"rrgu"g-e we-must say or write the rightthing

in ttt" ,iglrt *"y while playing tf,e right iocial role and
(appearing|
to hold the
;i-d;
"rfur,
b"ti*ts, and attiiudes. Thus, what is important is not language,
:nid surely not granrmar, but s aying (writing)-doing-being-
valuins-belieuirtS-"iiiioA""r."These
combinaiions I call'Discoursesi'with a capital 'Tl' {'$s-
;;"*.,, w-ith a little
,dj, to me, means connected stretches of language that
.A combined reierence list for all the articles m this issue of the
/ournal
is bund at the back-of
,ft;;i.,i];.h;.*; ,X pi"i'ir"rU: p"ffr"ir.a ,tticles that are reprinted
here, citetions t}at originailv
,rrJt" o*ts it"rre b.in ,.,pd"tea'*lie.. ,pptopri"te' ll.l.the cist of
multiple
iistings for the same
;;J;f#,il"*.l.ot]tn" t"tt.i'"rj' 'b';' ,"a t" iontt ha',e been added
to tlre original citations'
- " Editols ncte: "Dissourse" lrsused here rv ith a capital
"D'rnarksa
sligbt shift from Geds eallier
use of the term. Set rhe essav "Whar Is Literacy?" in thrs
volume'

[email protected] well
as gestures' glances' -bod1'
posliTl-
gjao*ffi*se
is a sort of "identitv kit'' which comes
complete with the
appropriate costume and ii't*ct
io"' ot' t'ow to act' talk' and often
write' so
as to take on ilpartrcurar;t^b;;;;;.Yry
ttto,c"o: 'B*"H
"tt"-"1':it-1
il;ff;;;,,'f" r r".*"i "-'p""t'
fiink' and act like a linguist' ano to
recogrize otheo *nt" t"o]"Jo 'i-o'
5o*t ot ntr-exam. rrles of Discourses:
(enact-
ing) being an Amencan or a Russian' "
t"* o'.
" ""oman'
a member of a cer-

rain socioecono*" .r""",'"ir..;;;;;k;
a-boarrlroom e:acutire' a doctor-
or a hospital patient, "i""i""
an admrnistrator' ()r a student' a
student ot
ohvsics or a st,ra."t or iit'Jltt]t:t' ;;;t"il.tf
a setins circle' a club a strcet
!ans, a lunchti-" 'o"ia
J"ti'JiiJ o' " "s'1" "' "
tocalbar' ut atl harr martv
TURNAL OF EDUCAflON,
Volurne l7l }trumber l' 1989
in the Discourse, you oorrr navc
rr' '"*
*-'-',o**s
are not bodies of
ijt*."*.,
"
,.i,"'oo* ?t ":tv*'!:t*tt ,Dffi"
Discourses'
' o rlisc'lr trqef lt tums out that
much that is claimed'" ^"-io*
ao." one acquire a Discounie i It tums

outr
controversiar.ry, to be true oi second
la:rgua, ge acquir;ition or socially
situatec
cosrition tseebe, rgss; DJav];;';;##n'
tpsr Crosiean' 1982; Krashen'
i e-82. l 9 8 sa, t98sb; xrash*#'; e;; li' 1 983;
Larre' ipga ; nogoff e' Lave' 1984)
is, in iat:t, more obviousli;; ;;;;'^"quisitionof
Discou$es' Discourses
are not rnastered by ot'ent#tt"ti'"" t"*^"
less so ttran languages' and hardly
anyone ever fluently atqJiJ "
t""ot'a t"t]gtt"gt sirtins in a classrooml'
but
by encuttuatior, ('app"#i*'h'lii;1t*fi tltTttt
thnottgh t"affold"a atta
supponed intc'"""oo *'iti-nto-i3lt
*5" tti'i
lreadv
rrastered the Discourse
tCazden, 1988; Heath, f lSai' fno'
ts how we all acquired'ournatillanguage

and our home-based oittontt"' ft
is how we'acquire all later' rnole
puDuc-
oriented Disco""t'' Ily#t^i'"t' '"tttt
t() trte Jocialpractice' youdodtget
in the Discourse, vou;;;;;;= it' voi lflj^::::t"'TTl, ffilJ;
know like phYsicqPl
x you ca!th€F to be a
in them].
The qlost You l4rl do is to
'
a -'- -' ' initid Discourse': initial Disccurst:' lms
. .^ ^n7',' cense- o{
'r"H#tif"ffi iiY.nff :T"T":ff;The various ljlscounies w urL'
LUuq*' e-- -i- ' rer; theie is often conflict
i"s *i.t"; not ftdlv cons"ll:-,T'L:,*3in,,,r",r.tioo"l $yres, usesing
and often are not luly Lwrrrrollr i.nteractional styles, uses
;?;;*;t",*"t the.values' b"lt'ltfl1llfl?li"'.,-,., .rr ,.,,,ore
Discoursesili"ff ;:,nffi ;#ffi ;,;";l;r{1111*::*;X":i"-"1;"""1iffffi
iol language' an., wavs "^
;ili
-;e
in which we humans are consislenj

or
represent. Thus, there is r - ---,:+:.6 ^r c^"irl "i';;;;th;oC',
in hct,'#,"?".:il.::?'H".:"::'i";:;'**+:{"jl*:ffi T:*ffi
'*T:wellintegrateocreaturssuur;
J;; {rrJthus rve do
too, whjle we are
most Discourses assum(
ffi
)of
n., rrrro.ul, our pnl'nrzry socicirz{tft
on-ea1-ry#r*-r;r*t*ff.r*
peer gro{]p,
which I c;rll
the world and inte with
itrt"t. to make sense of
BOSTON UNTVERSITY
originai asd home-based sense of identity, and, I believe, it can
be seen
whlnerrer ie are interacting with "intimated' in totally casual
{unmonitored}
social interaction. l{b Discourse, not
insamember

Further a"cariet''
later in l!$. PrimarY Discourses
,@"*tf""ross various social lcultural, ethnic, regional, and
economic)
groups in the United States.
-
ift"t o* initial socialization fur our home colnmunity, each of us
inter-
acts with various non-home-based social institutions-institutions
in the pub-
lic sphere, beyond the family and immediate kin and peer group'
These may
be local siores and churcheq schools, community groups, state
and national
businesses, agencies and organizations, and so forth. Each of
these social in-
stitutions commands and demands one or more Discourses and
we acquire
these fluently to the extent that we are given access to these
institutions and
are allowed apprenticesbips within them. such Discourses I call
secondary
Discourses.
We can also rrake an important distinction betweendominant
Discowses

and nondominant Dticourses. Dominant Discourses are
secondary Dis-
courses the mastery o{ which, at a particular place and tirne,
brings with it
the (potentiali acquisition of social "goodd' {mc'rrey, prestige,
statuqetc'}' Non-
doruinant Discogrses are secondary Discourses the mastery of
which often
brings solidarity with a parricular social network, but not wider
status arrd
social goods in the society at large.
findb, and yet more importantly, *e can always ask about how
much
tension or conflict is pfesent between a y two of a persods
Discourses
(Rosaldo, i989). We have argued abovc that some degree of
conflict and ten-
iion {il only because of the discrete historical origins of
particular Discourses)
wilI almost dways be present. Howevel, some people experience
more o'lert
and direct conllicts between two or more of their Discourses
than do others
{for example, urany r/omen academics feel conflict between
certain
feminist
bis"o,o..r artd certain standard academic Discourses such as

traditional liter-
ary criticism|. I argue that w-hen such conflict or tension exists,
it can deter
acquisition of one or the other or both of the conflicting
Discourses-, or, at least,
affect the fluency of a mastered Discotuse on certain occasions
of use {e.g', irr
stressfi.rl situations such as interr.ier+'s).
Very often dominrnt groups in a sociery apply rather constant
"testd' ol
the fluenry of the dominant Discourses in which their por*er is
symbolized.
Tnese testi take on two frrnctions: they 41e tests of "natiled' of
at least, "fluent
userdr of the Discourse, and they ete Sates toexclude "non-
natived' {people
whose very conilicts with dorninant Discourses show they were
not, in fact,
"borrf' to them]- The sorts of tension and conflict we harrc
mentioned here are
particulariy acute when they involve tension and conflict
between onds
primarl' Discourse and * dr-rminant secondary Discourse.
OURN,L OF EDUCATION, Voi':rne l7l Number l, 1989
Discourseq primary and secondary, can be studied, in some
ways, like
Ianguages. And, in fact, some of what we know about second
language acqui-
sition is relevant to them, i.{ oniy in a metaphorical way. Ttaro

Discourses can
tnterfete wirh one anotheq like tw-o languages; aspects o{ one
Discourse can
be tansferrcl" to another Discourse, as one can tr.rnsfr.r a
grammatical fuature
from one language to enother. Iior instance, the primary
Discourse of many
middie-class homes has been influenced by secondary
Discourses like those
used in schools and business. This is rrruch less true of the
primary Discourse
in rnany lower socio€conomic black hornes, though this primary
Discourse
has inlluenced the secondary Discourse used in black churches.
Furthermore, if one has not mastered a particular secondary
Discourse
which nonetheless one must try to use, several things can
happen, things
which rather resemblewhat can happen when one has fuiled to
fluendy master
a second tanguage. One can fall back on r:nds primary
Discourse, adiusting
it in various ways to try to fit it to the needed functions; this
response is very
cornmon, but almost always socially disastrous. Or one can use
another,
perhaps related, secondary Discourse . Or one can use a
simplified or stereo-
typed version of the required secondary l)iscourse. These
processes are similar
to those linguists study under the rubrics of /angr age contact,
pidginization,
and creolization.
I belierc that efiy socially use ful definition of "litereqy'' must

be couched
in terms of the notion of Discourse. Thus, tr define "literacy'' as
the mastery
of or fluent control over a secondary Drscourse. Therefore,
literacy is always
plwal: fiteracr'es {there are many of them, since there arc many
secondary Dis-
courset and we all haw some and hil to haw others). I{ vre
wanted to be rather
pedantic and literalistig then r+e could define "literacy'' as
"mastery of or fluent
control oEr secondary Discoursas lrra./v:ngpnnl' {which is
alrnost all of them
in a modem society|. But I see no gain foom the addition of the
phrase "involv-
urg printi other than to assuage the feelings of people
committed {as I am notf
to reading and writing as decontextualized and isolable skills.
Wb can talk
about domina nt litetacies and nondominailt literacies intemrs
of whether
they involle mastery of domin'nt or nondominant secondary
Discourses. We
can also talk atrout a literacy b engliberating {"powerful"f il it
can be used as
a "meta-languagd' ia set of rneta-words, meta-values, meta-
beliefsf for the
critique ol other literacies and the way they constitute us as
persons and sit-
uate us in society. Liberating literacies can recon-stitute and
resituate us.
IvIy definition of "literad' rnay seem imrocuous, at least to
someone al-
ready corwinced that decontextualized views of print are
meaningless.

Nonetheless, several 'theorems'' follow from it, theorems that
have rather
direct and unsettling consequeirces.
First theorem: Discourses {and therefore literaciesl are not like
languages
in one very important regard. :.-rmeone can speak English, but
not fluently.
However, someone carinot cngage in a Discourse in a less than
fully fluent
manner. You are either in it or vodre not. Discourses are
connected with dis-
10 BCSTON I.INIVERSFY
plays of an identit7j failhg to fully display an identity is
tantarnount to an-
nor-rncing 1cu donlt harc that identity, that at best yor.rlre a
pretender or a
beginner. Very often, learners of second languages "fossilizd' at
a stage of de-
velopment significantly short of fluenry. This cadt happen with
Discourses-
If yor/w fosilized in the acquisition of a Discourse prior to full
"fluel{' {rtta
are no longer in the prcrcess of apprenticeship!, then your verv
lack of fluenry
marks you as a nonlmembe.r of *re group that controls this
Discourse. That
is, you dodt harrc the identity or social role which is the basis
for trhe existence
of ttre Discourse in the fust place. In fact, tle lack of flr'rency
may very well
mark you as a pretender to the social role instantiated in the

Discourse {an
outsider with pretensicns to being atinsiderl.
There iq thus, no t'orkable "affirmative actiorl' for Discourses:
you carlt
be let into the game after missing the apprenticeship and be
expected to have
a tair shot at playing it. Social goups will not, usually, give
their vrcial goods-
whether these are status or solidarity or both-to those who are
not "natiw:d'
or "{luent lrsery' {though "mushIake," discussed below., may
sometimes pro-
vide a way for non-irritiates to gain access|. While this is an
empirical clatrn,
I belierie it is one rastly supported fu the sociolinguistic
literature {Milroy,
1980, 1987r Milroy &, Milroy, 19851.
This theorem {that there are no people who are partially literate
or semi-
literate, or, in any other tr'ay, literate but not fluently so) has
one practical
consequence: notions like "functional literad' and 'tompetenry-
based
literad' are simply incoherent. As far as literacy goes, there are
only "fluent
speakers' ard "apprenticed imetaphorically speaking, because
reme:nber, Dis-
courses are not iust rvays o{ talking, but ways of talking,
acting, thinking, valu-
ing, etc.).
Second theorem: Prirnary Discourses, no Inatter whose they are/
can never
really be liberadng iiteracies fur a literary to be liberating it

must contain both
the Discotuse it is going to E'ritique and a set of meta-elements
{language,
words, attitudeq values| in terms of which an analysis and
criticism can be
carried out. Prirnary Discourses are initial and contain only
themselves. They
can be embedded in later Discourses and critiqued, but they can
nelrer serve
as a meta-language in terms of which a critique of secondary
Discourses can
be carried out. Our second theorem is not likely to be wry
popular. Theorem
2 says that ali primary Discourses are limited. 'Liberatiod'
{"powe1'}, in the
sense I am using the term here, resides in acquiring at least one
more Discourse
in tenns of which ow own primary Discourse can be analyzed
and critiqued.
This is aot to say that primary Discourses do not contain critical
attitudes
and critical language {indeed, nuny of thern contain implicit
and explicit
racism and classisml. It is to say that they cannot carry oro;t ert
authen;tr'c criti-
cisrn, because *rey cannot r,erbal ize the words, actt values, and
attitudes they
use, and they cannot nobi-lize enplicit meta-knowledgc.
Theorem 2 is quite
traditional and conser tive-it is the analogrre of SocrateCs
theorem that the
1
' { r
d

* J
s r I
f,i' I
N r 1
JOURNAL OF EDUCAfiON, -',blume 17i Nurrrber l, 1989
uncxamined hfe is not *'orth living. tnterestingly enough,
'ygotsky (1987,
chapter 6| comes very closely to statlqg this theorem explicitly.
Other theorems can be deduced from the theory of literacy here
de-
veloped, but these two shor.ild make clear what sorts of
consequences the
theory has. It should also make it quite clear that tJre theory is
not a neuttal
meta-language in terms of which one can argue for iust any
conclusions about
literacy.
Not all Discourses involve w::ithg or readiag, dtough many do-
However,
all vrnting and readir.g is embedded in some Discc,urse, and
that Discourse
always involves more than writing arrd reading {e.g., ways of
tdking, actinS,
valuing, and so fonh). You cannot teach anyone to write or read
outside any
Discourse (there is no such thing, unless it is cdled "moving a
per/' or "typ-
ing" in the case of writing, or "movilg onds lipd' or "mouthing

wordd' in the
case of reading|. Within a Discourse )'ou are always teaching
more than writing
or reading. When I say "teacH' here, I mean "apprentice
someone in a master-
apprentice relationship in a sccial practice {Discourse} wherein
you scaffold
their growing ability to say', dc, value, beliele, and r;o forth,
within thet Dis-
course, through demonstratirg your mastery and supporting
theirs e'ven when
it barely exists [i.e., you make it look as if they can do what
they really carlt
do)1' That is, you do much the same thing middleclass, "super
bab/' produc-
rng parents do when they €o books' with their child1sn.
Now, there are many Discourses connected to schools {different
ones for
different rypes of school activities and dilferent pans of the
curriculum) and
other public institutions. These "middle-class mainstreant'' sorts
of Discourses
often carry with them power and prestige. It is often ftlt that
good listeners
and good readers ought to pay attention to maaning and not
Socus on the petty
details of mechanicg "correctness/' the superficial fuatures of
language. Un-
fortunately, many middle-class mainstream status-giving
Discourses often do
stress superficial teatures o{ lalrguage. ,!try? Preciselybecause
suchsuperficial
f':atures are the best test as to whether one was apprcnticed in
the "righf place,
at the "righ/' tirne, with the "righf' people. Such supe.rficial

batures are exactly
the pans of Discourses nrost irnpervious to owrt instruction and
are only fully
mastered when everytJrilg else in the Discourse is rnastered.
Since these Dis-
courses are used as "gated' to ensure that the "righC' people get
to the "righf
piaces in our society, such superficial features are ided. A
person who writes
in a petition or office me'mo: "If you cancel the show, all the
performers would
have did all that hard work for nothingl'has signaled tbat he or
she isdt the
"right sort of persorf' (was not frrlly acculturated to the
Discourse that sup-
ports this identity). That signai stays meaningfui long after the
content of the
memo is iJrgotten, or even when the content r^/as of no interest
in the
first place.
Now, one can certainiy encourage students to simply "resist"
such
"superficiai featurc.s of languagel' And, indeed, they will get to
do so from the
l l
BOSTON UNTVER.SITY
bottom o{ society, where their lack of mastery of such
superficialities was
1t:T: p pl"o

them anyway. But, of course, the problem is that such ,,super_
hcralitieg' cannot be taught qr a regular classroorn in any case;
they car{i be
"picked u1' later, outside the f'll context of an early
apprenticeship(at home
and at schoollin "middleclass-likd' school-based *lo
"f
a"ing
"rra
tii o. tu",
is preciselywhy they work sowelles "gatesf'This is alsoprecisety
tire tiateay
of E' D. Hi:sch, |rls much-talked-aboui book culrarai tit"-or
i;ssi1.*rni"ipoints out that without having mastered an extensive
list of Lir.i"riii", p.o-
gte. ;an
be
Janaoftenaref oaluded from "goodC, contron"d by ;rr-.r:l-rrt;;"p,
m the society. Hirsch is a'rong-in thinking that this can be
taught {in a=ciass-room.of all pla""ul)
."p"tt.ft9T the sociariyiituated practices thai rhese groupshave
rncorporated into their homes and daily lives. There is a real
coritradic-
Ionh9f,-engwe ignore it at theperil of ourstudents andour** "ga
f"liV
(no middle-class 'tuper bab'y', producing parelrs ignore it!.
!*y""4 slenging thesocial structurg is there much hope? No,
there is
39t. so -we

berter get on about the process of changing the social structnre.
Now, whose iob is t}'at? I would say, people who have bien
allotted the job of
teaching Discourses, 6or example, English teacherq language
teachers,'corn-
position teacherq TESOL teachers, studies-skills teachers. we
can pause, also.
to remark-on the paradox that eren though Discourses
"rt
,,ofb" overtly
taughg and carrnot readily be mastered late in the game, the
university **,.
teachers to olertly teach and wants students to demonstrate
mastery. riachers
of Discourses take on an impossible iob, allow themsehrs to be
eviuated on
how wellthey do it, and accep {airly low status all the whire for
doing ir.
So what can teachers of Discourses do? WeIl, tlere happens to i-
. *
advantageto failing to master mainstream Discourses, that is]
ihere is an atl-
vanuge to being socially "maladayrtedl' {hen we have really
mastered arrythrng
{e.g., a Discoursef, r*e have little or no conscious awareness of
it lindeed, tikJd3*"*s, Discourses wouldrlt work if people were
consciously aware of what
they were doing while doing itl. uowevei when we come across
a situation
where we are unable t* accommodate or adapt (as many
mfurority students do
on being faced, late in the game, with having to acquire

mainstrearn Dis-
courses), we becorne consciously aware of wh"t w" at tryorg to
do or ,r. b"org
called upon to do. Let rne girre an example that works similarly,
that is, the caG
ot classroorn second language leaming. Almost no one really
acquires a second
laqguage in a classroom- Howener, it can happen that exposrire
to another
languap, hevins to uanslate it into and otGrwise rehL it t. 1=o,
u*r,
fanguage, c:ut cause you to b9c9me consciously ar,r.are of frow
yo* fioi
language ramrks {horv it means}. This "meta-lorowledgd, can
actualry make you
better able to manipulate your first language.
.
Vygotsky {1987} says tJrat iearning a foreign lauguage %llows
the chiid to
*9:ry*ld
Fgnative language as a single instantiatiorrif
"hrrgrriJi; t;;""1,{p' 2221. Anti here we have a crue- crassroom
instruction 1in 6nguage, co;-
|OURNAL OF EDUC.{tr*ION. Voiume lZi Number l, 1989 -tJ
position, study skillg l{Titirrg, critical thinking, content-based
literacy, or
*t
"t"*.t "rtr

iead to metak.to-l.dg., to seeing horr the Discourses ),rou harE
already got relate to those you are atteiiipting to acquire, and
how F o*
yo{
are tryirig to acquire relareto self and society. Metaknorvledge
is libe.rationand
po'*a UJ"".6.it leade to the ability to manipulate, to anallze, no
resist while
advanclng. Such metaknowledge caa make "maladapted'
students smarter
than %daited , ones. Thus, the liberal classroonr that arpids
oven talk of form
and supei{icialities, of how thiags work, as well as of their
socio-cultutal-
politlcal baslq is no help. Such talk can be por*erful so long as
one never thinks
that in talking about gr-amr raq fcrm, or superficialities one is
gettlng Peo_Ple
to actually aJquire Dit"onts"r {or laaguageq ior that matter}.
Such talk is
always political talk.
il.ri, ttt bg qn"stion: If ore cannot aequire Discogrses save
ttroug5 actirie
social piactic.,
"''a
lt is di{ficult ta compete with the mastery o( those ad-

mitted early to the game when one has entered it as late as higlr
school or col-
lege, what can be done to see ro it rhat meta-
knor,[email protected] *d resistance are
colupled with Discourse developmentS The problem is
deepenedtry the -fa9t
thai true acquisition oi many mainstrerm Discoulses involws, at
ieast_while
betng in them, active complicity with values that conflict witt
onds home-
and Jommunisy-based Discourses, especially for masy r pmen
and minorities.
The question is too big for me, but I harre two views topgsh-
nonetheless'
First, true acquisition (wbich is always full fluency) will rarely
if oier happen.
Even for
"qtitti"s
close to acquisition to occur, classrooms must be active
apprenticeships in'hcademiC social practices, and, in most
cases, mu* co-n'
n".t *ith thise social practices as they are also carried on
outside the
'tompositior/' cr "languagd' clasg eisewhere rn the Unirarsity'
*con{ though mre acquisition is probably not possible,
"mushfrkd' Dis-

course is possible. Mack {in press) detines "mushfakei' a term
hom
prison
culture, ai making "do wiih somethrng less when the red thing is
not avail-
able. So when prison inmates make hats {rom underwear to
protect their bfil
from lice . the hats ale mushfake. Elaborate craft items made
ftrom used vooden
rnatch sticks arc another exanrple of mushfakej' "Mushgke
Discoursd' means
partial acquisition coupled with meta-knowledgp and strategies
to "make dd'
fstrateges-ranging from alwal's having a memo edited to ensure-
no
plwal, pos-
!"sLrJ, atrd third-person ,d, agreement errors to active us€ of
black culture
skils at "psyching out'' interviewe$, or to skategies of "rising to
the meta'lerel
in an intiwiew so the interviewer is thrown off stride by having
tlre rules of
the game implicitly refurred to in the act of carrying them outf'
- ,;'M*hI"k
;' toistance, and meta-lcnon'ledge: this seems to me like a
good

combination for successful students and successful social
clrange. So I propose
that we ought to produce "mush{akingi resistitg students, fulI of
meta-
knorvledge. but isrlt that to politicize teachingl A Discourse rs
an integration
of sayingfdoing, and va.iuing, and ail socially based valuing is
political. All suc-
BOSTON LINTVERSTT
"'I +
cessful teachin'g, that is, teaching that
inculcates Discourse and not iust
con-
tent, is political. That too is a trursrn'
As a lirguist L* pt"";; ;;sted
in.the functioning of language m
Discourses and u,",""i"tlnia?r[i:n"iti"" +
this sort of linguistics is how
language-within-urr**'"lii ;t'q:,li,id 6
;iarv situated apprenticeships)
arrd horr the languages r'orn aiffetittt Diicoursgs
transfur into' intertete wt -rr'

and otherwise un "o""'i"#;,h;;;-f"t*
the linguistic. ,"-:*: "1^**l:
L"i.ai*
"tJio
i*"t'"u*l-u"t"* gtottpt rl.sgci;w' To
see what is at stake
here, l will briefiv ai'"t'"I ;;;;J
which clearlv brings out a host of
important issues in *ris d"J*"i"' ittlt tto'
with an explanation oi its context'
i#;; b"il. n "
,"*.i, J"msrcated in terms of "lines" and "stanzas;'
umts
*riJ"u i Lri"* are the basis oi speech:
CONTEXT OF TEXT: A yourg middiell-ass-mottter
rerularlv reads storybooks
to both her s- t ,a t v""tJia*al"friJ"' tieiJ-v,e"t--otd
h"d had a birthdav partv'
whichhadhad so*t p'oUit* i'ithe next fw {ays
the s-year 9ld'has
told seve:al
;il;t#;bJi*; ui*fr*"v p*iy' "pon-s'tttt^e'ents
in the language ol her

primary Discourse
"v"tt*'
A i* tiiq"
-l'ater' when the mother rvas reading a story-
book to her T-ve""'o, ti'? il>i"'-Ji Gaittt
t '*ted to "read" {she
could not cie'
code), and pretena,,i
"'L-'iffi*"
*C^yP:::]hng what had.haipened a;
il.iili"f,iiv p"tty Ht' oifoitt"l'ti"rnpt at this
was not very good' but eventual-
lv after a fev*'ui"', **ti#iJJ*-th'the.mo'ht'
te"dins to the other girl'-the
'd#Ji_i,iJii"a"*a ,i,. ̂
r.irir*Grlory-*hi.h ir ttot {iust} ul the languase ot ner
Primary Discourse sYstem:
STAIrZA ONE (Inttoductionl
l. This is a story
;. G;G;kid'*how' once friends
3. But got into a big f$ht
4- And wlere not
STANZA TWO {Frame: Signal hng of Genre}

5. You can read along i'n your storyDooK
6. I'm gorura read aLoud
{story-readi4g prosody
irom norv onl
STANZA THREE ll itle)
7. "F{orr'the FrienJs Cot Untriend"
SINZA FOUR {Settir^g,: tntroduction of
CharactersJ
8. Once upon a tlme ihE" *"t *uee boys.'n
three girls
- -L ̂ ̂ :,r^
;. iG.;;
"amed
Betty Lnu, Paliis' and Parslun' were the Srrrs
I0. And Michael, Jason' and Aaron wcre tne
Doys
I l. TheY were kiends
STANZA Fl€ {?roblem: Sex Differences}
12. The boys would play lianstormers
i5. A;d;hA girls would play Cabbage Patches
r;ilil

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