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 spark conflict between them. June Jordan, a professor at the State University of New York, directly illustrates the ways in which having multiple Discourses can spark conflict. In the passage, “Nobody Mean More to Me Than You and the Future Life of Willie Jordan” she describes the pressure put on her students to convey an important message about justice, and how hard it was for the class to decide how they wanted to present themselves through writing. His theorems were proved to be somewhat controversial though, as Lisa Delpit critiques his beliefs in her essay, “The Politics of Teaching Literate Discourse”. Unlike Gee, Delpit thinks Discourses can be directly taught, and that claiming anything else is oppressive to women and people of color (545). All of the passages have merit and value, but I don’t fully agree with any of them. I agree with Gee that actively participating in a Discourse is the only way to enter said Discourse, but Gee excludes school as a path to become literate in a primary Secondary Discourse, which is wrong. Delpit actually includes anecdotes of successful people that were born into a nondominant primary Discourse in her essay and all of the people learned, and mastered, a dominant Discourse in a school setting. That’s not to say Delpit is ultimately more right than Gee; Delpit is overly optimistic about the teachability of primary secondary Discourses. Gee also did a good job highlighting the value of having a nondominant primary Discourse. Jordan’s class provides an example of students thriving while using their nondominant primary Discourse. Ultimately, Discourse can only be acquired through exposure to and experience in a given group. These training periods can happen anywhere though, including school. Though it’s easy for people to get caught up in developing a dominant secondary Discourse, there are advantages to being born into a nondominant primary Discourse.

 

Before: 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”. Primary Discourses (initial Discourses) are oftentimes different than Secondary Discourses (learned Discourses). He believes that having multiple Discourses will inevitably spark conflict between them. June Jordan, a professor at the State University of New York, directly illustrates the ways in which having multiple Discourses can spark conflict. In the passage, “Nobody Mean More to Me Than You and the Future Life of Willie Jordan” she describes the pressure put on her students to convey an important message about justice, and how hard it was for the class to decide how they wanted to present themselves through writing. His theorems were proved to be somewhat controversial though, as Lisa Delpit critiques his beliefs in her essay, “The Politics of Teaching Literate Discourse”. Unlike Gee, Delpit thinks Discourses can be directly taught, and that claiming anything else is oppressive to women and people of color (545). All of the passages have merit and value, but I don’t fully agree with any of them. Gee is wrong to exclude school as a path to become literate in a primary Secondary Discourse, but Delpit isn’t quite right that a secondary Discourse can be taught either. The value of primary Discourses is underrated by both Gee and Delpit. Only in Jordan’s text does the true importance of mastering one’s primary Discourse shine through.

 

My revision is stronger than the original because I was more explicit about how I was going to be using the texts with each other to stake my claim.