The article discusses how genres shape identity and authority. It focuses on a case study of Alan, an IT employee in a university's humanities department. Alan struggled to adopt the expected identity and gain authority within the discourse community. The faculty saw Alan as a "tool" to manage computers rather than a full member, which limited his ability to enculturate and align within the community. Authority is socially constructed based on factors like language use, participation in genres, and perceptions of one's role.

1. Identity, Authority, and Learning to Write in New Workplaces Elizabeth Wardle

2. Write: Genres and Identity Wardle writes that “workers’ identities are bound up in myriad ways with the genres they are asked to appropriate” (634). Think about genres you have been required to write (5 paragraph essay, lab report, ethnography). How did these genres shape your identity? Have you ever resisted the identity assigned to you by these genres? What happened?

3. According to you, what is the main point of the article?

4. The inside scoop on Alan

5. Genres and Identity: Alan What kind of identity was Alan supposed to adopt in the community? How did he resist? What happened?

6. Modes of belonging Engagement Imagination Alignment What did Alan have problems with?

7. Authority Institutionally ascribed + language use How did Alan lose authority? Have you ever witnessed someone in a position of institutional authority lose authority through their language use?

8. Help Alan enculturate Alan had trouble enculturating into the humanities department, but maybe you can help him join your discourse community. Act out a scenario telling him what he needs to know to fit in. Modes of belonging: engagement, imagination, alignment Goals, participation, intercommunication, lexis, genres, expertise

9. Discourse community vs. activity system Goals Intercommunication Participation Lexis Genres Expertise

10. Alan’s a tool? Wardle seems to suggest that Alan was never supposed to become a full member of the department, because the faculty members saw him as a tool. What do you think?

11. Are the waiters at Lou’s diner tools? Wardle claims that the faculty members “expected a type of servitude” from Alan (636); do you think Mirabelli would say the same thing about the waiters at Lou’s diner?

12. Are you a tool? Have you ever been part of a group in which you’re expected to be a “tool”? How did you respond? (Did you experience “alignment,” or not?)

13. Wardle, Mirabelli…Grant-Davie Socio-historic (Wardle) Socially embedded (Mirabelli) Rhetorical situation (Grant-Davie) How is authority constructed in Wardle’s article? Rhetor=Alan Audience=humanities department Exigence=manage computers Constraints=spelling/grammar, listservs, bias against him, seen as a tool

14. Authority in Academics How much authority do you think you have as a writer in your college classes? What are some ways that you can gain authority? What are some ways you can (or have) lost authority?