oh, Gee

My first thought, on assigning Gee, was that he's easier than Swales. Of course he is! He's easier!

Okay. But now when I go back and read him again, I'm actually unsure about that. I think he is easier in terms of being more readable -vocabulary and stuff. And I think his project is more interesting. But I'm no longer convinced that this makes him "easier" in the sense that my students might understand it.

Swales is pretty straightforward. We've got this term, discourse community, which he feels is being thrown around willy-nilly (awful phrase) and he wants to clear up two things. 1. Are discourse communities really just the same as speech communities (or whatever he calls them)? and 2. What are the characteristics of a discourse communities. Once we get past the posturing, the lit review, the setting up his project, Swales boils down to a list, and I have no doubt that most people can latch onto that and let the rest go.

But Gee. When he says Discourses are "ways of acting, interacting, valuing, feeling, dressing, thinking, believing with other people and with various objects, tools, and technologies, so as to enact specific socially recognizable identities engaged in specific socially recognizable activities" my brain is like "Right? Right???"
But I wonder if that's my grad school showing. What I do want people to get out of him, though, is that idea. That Discourses use language, obviously, but they are more than language. They are ways of valuing/doing/believing.

Gee can also be kind of long, but I like his examples. He talks about his own experience as a teacher, bird watcher (seriously, who bird watches?) and video gamer. I think it's a clear example that is helpful for people struggling with these ideas. The Indian and Law School examples are longer, more complicated. But they can maybe still assist. The point is that being part of a Discourse is a way of recognizing and being recognized. I am reminded of a guy who danced with me at a blues event in Chicago -he said, "You're a lindy hopper, right? I can always tell." There was something in how I moved, the way I responded to his leads, and the way I improvised, that "spoke" to him and allowed him to "recognize" me. Lindy Hop has ways of doing and ways of valuing that are similar to, but not the same as Blues Dancing.

I told students they didn't need to bother with the acquisition and learning section, although part of me hopes they do. I realize that's me beating my own dead horse though. Gee needs those terms to talk about his ending (perhaps major?) point, which is about Discourse and schooling and social class. He is arguing ultimately that some families (largely middle/upper-middle class families) that prepare their children to speak the Discourse of education, of schooling. By the time those kids are in school, they're comfortable with it, and that Discourse is reinforced at home as they move forward. But Discourses are ideological, and a secondary Discourse (like academia) might be at odds with (one of) our Primary Discourses. How can we teach students to get by, he seems to be asking, without colonizing them, forcing them to adopt the importance of what this secondary Discourse values, although it may disagree with what they value at home?

Gee's Discourses, in spite of what he says, are usually not about being a video gamer or a bird watcher. They're about my social class, my religion, my ethnicity, etc. I think that's good to know. I think it's useful for us to discuss how Discourses are ideological (in the sense of determining my imaginary relationship to the world). But, long story short, I suspect I owe everyone an apology tomorrow morning for having told them (and myself) that this was easier.