Alexis' ePortfolio

After: Discourses are people’s way of presenting themselves in different environments. Linguistic researcher James Paul Gee introduces and defines the idea of Discourse in his research article, “Literacy, Discourse, and Linguistics: Introduction”. He says Discourses are “saying-doing-being-valuing-believing combinations”, or “ways of being in the world,” (6). In other words, Discourse is the way people present themselves in a given situation. Primary Discourses (initial Discourses) are oftentimes different than Secondary Discourses (learned Discourses). He believes that having multiple Discourses will inevitably…

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                  In his research article, James Gee maintains that the only way to learn any Discourse is to be completely immersed in it and complete an “apprenticeship” of sorts (8). What Gee means is that it’s impossible to learn a Discourse without first being immersed in it. Gee’s theory of the way Discourses can be developed is extremely useful because it sheds light on the difficult problem of making sure everyone has…

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I really struggled with writing my introduction because I wrote my body paragraphs without really having a clear claim. I had to make up a claim that I forced to fit my body paragraphs which was difficult. I didn’t even know where to start for my conclusion, so I haven’t written it yet. GianCarlo said my argument was “supported very strongly.”        5. My peer told me I should state my claim in the first paragraph before I…

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1) Delpit finds some of Gee’s ideas “problematic”. One idea, that, “people who have not been born into dominant discourses will find it exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to acquire such a discourse,” (Delpit) really bothered her. In other words, Delpit believes anyone can learn a new dominant discourse, regardless of what their primary discourse is. She proves this when she describes Marge, a girl that got into a doctoral education program she was previously rejected from after being taught how…

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Gee’s first theorem is that literacy is black and white; you’re either literate or you’re not. Being literate enough to make do, so to speak, isn’t literate enough. This is controversial because there are people, especially when learning a third or fourth language, that may never be perfectly literate, but they can still make do. The same goes for Discourses- it’s easy to pretend to be someone you’re not to fit in. Gee’s second theorem is that Primary Discourses can only…

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Engaging others’ views is crucial in academic writing. This is because writing may seem pointless without a direct reference to a source text to elaborate or argue with. Readers may not even know why the writing was written if it’s not at least indirectly stated (Graff and Birkenstein 4). Another reason why the They Say/I Say format is used is to stir up an argument or challenge a long-held belief (Graff and Birkenstein 9).  Since academic writing is typically argumentative, it’s not…

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Gee believes that Discourses are a combination of “saying- doing- being- valuing, believing”, opposed to just saying or writing. Even the correct dialect will seem forced if it’s coming out of the wrong person’s mouth. Fitting in and being accepted by a group requires the right clothes and opinions, not just the right jargon. Throughout my life, I’ve been in many situations in which not only my dialect but my actions have been scrutinized. One example in which my Discourse had…

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I made this question annotation because I was confused about why the students found this excerpt funny. I made the first purple “challenge” annotation because I thought it was odd that Jordan didn’t realize her student was talking the way The Color Purple was written. A couple of paragraphs down, Jordan does acknowledge this similarity, so I made note of that as well. This is an understanding annotation. I didn’t really realize the scope of Discourses until I read the highlighted…

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This narrative is about the way I learned how to read. In making this post, I learned how to write a script, record, edit, and upload a podcast.