Queer Texts, Queer Contexts

SUMMARY:

 In her article ‘Queer Texts, Queer Contexts’ Harriet Malinowitz talks about the change in the classroom climate around the subject of sexual orientation. Students now seem to regard the issue itself with much less suspicion or surprise than they used to. Malinowitz wants the field of composition to find out about its lesbian and gay students. She goes on to talk about how she herself is a lesbian and how she dealt with coming out. She said that she feared the loss of the warm, open, supportive relationship that she liked to have with her students, even if it was shakily based on false premises. Malinowitz talks about how she dealt with the subject “gay” in her classroom with her students. She also talks about the idea of a lesbian and gay culture, and how gays form a community. 

CONNECTIONS:

This article reminds me of our last reading assignment, ‘Materiality and Genre in the Study of Discourse Communities’. That article has three authors, but the reading assignment for today has one author. Each author wrote their own article. In their article it talked about a discourse community that they were aware of. I stated in my last reading response what discourse community each author was dealing with. In ‘Queer Texts, Queer Contexts’ Malinowitz is talking about the discourse community of lesbians and gays in the classroom. I connected all of the articles because each author 

explained a community.

OPINIONS:

I found this article more interesting than most of the articles we have read. I found it interesting because I think that people need to be aware of the difficulties of coming out and being open about being a lesbian or gay. It was interesting to hear Malinowitz story and her own experiences dealing with being a lesbian herself, and working with kids in the classroom. I think that it was a good example of a discourse community that  people should be aware of.

ROW: 98-109

SUMMARY:

In ‘Materiality and Genre in the Study of Discourse Communities’ there are 3 authors that are apart of this article, Amy Devitt, Anis Bawarshi, and Mary Jo Reiff. They use the idea of genre to study discourse communities. They examine several contexts of language exchange in which the use of genre theory may yield insight into teaching, research, and social interaction: legal practice, medical practice, and classrooms.

In Amy Devitts essay she examines jury instructions as a genre, considering how the genre affects the interactions of jurors in ways that inhibit the successful execution of their duties. Anis Bawarshi uses the patient medical-history form to suggest how a specific textual genre works in and provides critical access into doctors offices. Mary Jo Reiff discusses how the combination of ethnography and genre analysis can give teacher, researchers, and students clearer ways to understand their classrooms. The essays are all put together into one article because they suggest how genre analysis contributes to the use of ethnomethodology as a research technique that focuses on language and society and that is especially eligible to contribute to the pedagogy of text-dependent subject matters. 

CONNECTIONS:

 Personally I connected this one to Swale. I felt like they went about the same way of talking about discourse communities. They each talked about different things that make up a discourse community. They also explain what they think a discourse community is. 

OPINIONS:

I liked how the reading was broken up into sections. It makes it easier for me to read and follow. I personally liked the Reiff article the best because it talked somewhat about teachers and their classrooms. My major currently is education, so I found this article most interesting compared to the other two.

Project 3 Proposal

For project 3 I was going to do mine on the discourse community of cheerleading. Cheerleading has a lot of rules and skills that you don’t know about unless you are a part of that discourse community. I chose it because I already know a lot about it, so I thought it would be easy for me to write about. I was a member for 5 years, so I know a lot about cheerleading. There are also different types of discourse communities within cheerleading that I thought I could write about. There’s competitive cheerleading, then cheerleading for a school, which would be cheering for football or basketball. I would research some more facts about cheerleading. I could interview my friends that are cheerleaders, or one of my cheerleading coaches. 

Wardle

WAW: Wardle (520-537)

SUMMARY: 

In her article “Identity, Authority, and Learning to Write in New Workplaces” Elizabeth Wardle mainly talks about her beliefs on discourse communities. She is researching a guy named Alan and he is struggling to enculturate in a new discourse community. In her article she describes a new employee, fresh out of college trying to communicate with a new workplace community and failing miserably. He had a hard time adjusting to the new conditions and communicating with other member. He ended up leaving the company.

CONVERSATION: When I was reading this Wardle article I made a connection with Gee’s discourse article. Wardle went into detail about how the workplace is a whole different discourse community, and how one must get adjusted to the new environment and conditions. Gee talked about more of the sociological aspect of discourse and how to connect your mind to Discourse concept. Both of these authors went on about how discourse should be connected to apprenticeship and the functioning of language and the importance of communication within. Gee and Wardle both stress how important it is to get familiar with whatever discourse there is in your life, and to gain the knowledge to be prepared for the discourse communities.

BEFORE YOU READ:

Since I’ve come to college I have started using new phrases and have created my own discourse communities. I live on South Green, the farthest you can be from everything. Everyone along with myself calls it the “dirty south”. That was not a phrase I used before I came to college. When I came to college I didn’t know any sorority or fraternity names. Now I am in a sorority and have become familiar with all of the others. I would associate the sorority I’m in with a new discourse community. I learn things and go to things that only people in that sorority know about. 

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

3.I think that Allan was not as cooperative as he could have been. I think he needed to try harder to communicate with the people at his work, and spend more time getting to become familiar with their discourse community. I think he could have handled this better by being more patient and understanding and it could’ve resulted in a more positive way.

5. I agree more with Wardle because I think it is easier for someone to become adjusted to another environment. Then there are always those stubborn people that will not change their ways of thinking and will not adapt to the new conditions. His Discourse might have been a little different from the start, but I think it is always possible to have less resistance in order to start something new.

OPINIONS:

I personally think that this reading wasn’t that bad. To me it seemed more simple to read, it wasn’t as hard to follow as some of the readings are. The whole story about Allan was a nice read. The language that was used in this article seemed easier to understand compared to some of the other readings on discourse communities.

Gee

WAW: Gee (481-497)

SUMMARY:

In his article “Literacy, Discourse, and Linguistics, James Paul Gee attempts to explain his term discourses. Gee uses a variety of examples to make his definitions clear. Gee argues that you can’t “more or less” embody a Discourse, you’re either recognized by others as a full member of it or you’re not. He also explains that we are never “purely” members of a single Discourse but, rather, that a given Discourse is influenced by other Discourses of which we’re also members. 

CONVERSATION: I relate this article to the last Swales article we read, “The Concept of Discourse Community.” They both discuss discourse. However they use it in different ways, but yet they are related. They both talk about being a part of a discourse, either part of a discourse community or a member of discourse. 

BEFORE YOU READ:

Mushfake: prison slang for items owned by an inmate that may be legal to buy, but were constructed or obtained through illegal means, hence they are contraband

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

3. Discourses with a capital D means combinations of what is important is not language, and not grammar, but saying (writing)-doing-being-valuing-believing combinations. Discourses with a little “d” to him means connected stretches of language that make sense, so “discourse” is part of “Discourse”. No, it doesn’t really make sense to me. I just don’t really understand what he is talking about with the language and combinations.

13. A Discourse to which I don’t belong, but want to belong to is a team. I have been a part of a sports team my whole life, and I no longer am. You have to meet the requirements to be on that team, and they are much harder to meet in college. My own experiences aid me the most in becoming a part.

OPINIONS:

I personally found this article to be somewhat confusing. I don’t fully understand the difference between Discourse and discourse. The rest of the article wasn’t that bad of a read. I don’t really think it was that interesting or helpful to me.

Swales and Glenn

SUMMARIES:

SWALES: In his article “The Concept of Discourse Community”, John Swales attempts to describe what he thinks a discourse community is. His article is a chapter from his book that he wrote called Genre Analysis. He refers to the argument over the social constructed nature of language use and to arguments about what a discourse community is and how it is different from a speech community. Swale goes on to define his 6 characteristics of a discourse community.

GLENN: In her article “Constructing Consumables and Consent: A Critical Analysis of Factory Farm and Industry Discourse” Cathy B. Glenn discusses animal rights, the specific discourse surrounding factory farms, and the implications of said discourse to the larger culture. She argues that the factory farm discourse has implemented doublespeak to mislead audiences by being misleading and disingenuous.She also looks into the different rhetorical methods used to construct discursive practices and the conventions that have helped us to create this discourse. 

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

1.QD #5 on WAW page 480

A discourse community that I have been involved in would be a competitive cheerleading team. As a team we had a set of goals, intercommunication, and a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content. To be a successful team you have to have all of these characteristics. It’s lexis would be the entire routine that we have to be able to memorize and perform. It’s genre would be using music in the routines that are popular songs that people can relate to. 

2. For example all of the commercials for acne medication. They show all of the before and after pictures of people, with a lot of acne, then with perfect skin. Most of the time the medicines don’t work and you still end up having acne. I find these ads annoying and frustrating because they are so fake and try to make it seem like it will help you.

OPINIONS:

SWALES: I didn’t find this article very interesting. It just wasn’t that appealing. It wasn’t really something that I enjoyed reading. I don’t think it will be helpful to me. I don’t think that the information is important for me. These ideas compare to my own experiences somewhat though because I’ve been a part of a discourse community, most people can relate to that.

GLENN: I found this article more interesting than Swales. I liked how it showed a specific discourse community. I like animals so it wasn’t that boring to read about. These ideas don’t really compare to my own experiences. I didn’t really like when they talked about killing and eating the animals. I don’t like meat that much. 

5 quotes

When I downloaded your document all I could see was 3 blank pages. To make it easy to follow without columns, I will write my explanation under each quote.

1. “Williams offers four “design principles”-contrast, repetition, alignment, and proximity- for visual arrangement.”

I picked out this quote because Wysocki refers to Williams “The Non-Designer’s Design Book” to describe how her eyes travel through Peek layout. Williams principles are important in this part of the article. William’s principles allow for the creation of a clear visual hierarchy of elements in this layout.

1. “At best, Williams’ principles allow us to talk about this body (as I did above) as yet another-as only another-formal aspect of this layout.”

The more essential goal that visual arrangement will make easy one’s access to what is most important in the layout. By teaching William’s principles it can encourage people to forget that there is someones body in that layout. 

1. “..., I don’t think any of us will judge the Peek ad as being about a woman alone with her own thoughts.”

The woman’s butt is at the center of the layout, and she has on tall boots. We are meant to see this layout aligned with men of power. Judgements will be given because we have knowledge about the articulations among women, sex, nudity, advertising, facial expressions, coffeetable books, and black thigh-high boots.

1. “If we want to change how we see women, then, or if we want to change how we see any group of people who are treated unfairly by our visual practices, it is therefore not enough to push for magazine covers and advertisements and catalogues and TV commercials that show (for example) women with fleshy and round and imperfect and aged flesh.” 

We need to try different and new formal relations in our layouts. We also need to see beauty as a kind of communication. Wysocki also states that if we see beauty as a quality we build, then we can potentially see beauty.

1. “...:what Foss describes - what Shklovsky describes- is a process by which we can change relations we build with each other through the communications we make for each other.”

If we think of beauty, we can develop not only strategies for teaching about it but also how we might go about making changes in the formal approaches to lives and detatched bodies. Wysocki believes that Shklovsky’s arguments go beyond “images”. 

Dennis Baron

WAW: (422-441) “From Pencils to Pixels: The Stages of Literacy Technologies” Dennis Baron

SUMMARY: 

In his article ‘From Pencils to Pixels: The Stages of Literacy Technologies’ Dennis Baron attempts to explain the history of writing technologies. He states how we used to think of pencils as state-of-the-art technology. Now pencils can be manufactured for a unit cost of a few pennies. He also believes that every writing technology has taken time to become established, and that writing technologies must be learned. He also believes that the computer is simply the latest step in a long line of writing technologies. Baron goes on to write about writing technology. The intended audience could be anyone that has seen technology advance, or are familiar with it.

CONVERSATION: I made a connection between Baron’s article and Deborah Brandt’s article on Sponsors of Literacy. The connection I made between the two of them is that they are both about advancement. In Baron’s article he talks about technological advancements and how they have affected writing. In Brandt’s article she talks about how literacy is sponsored by other things. You learn from the things around you, you gain knowledge over the years. By gaining knowledge you are advancing. In a way they both have to do with advancing and evolving. 

BEFORE YOU READ:

To me technology kind of means advancements. The most advancements are made through technology. For example, there are always new phones, computers, and televisions coming out. To me things that count as technology have to do something with electronics. When I think of technology, I mostly think of electronics, like I said before, phones, computers, and televisions.

QD: 

5. New literacy technologies present new opportunities for fraud. Baron states that “Not only must the new technology be accessible and useful, it must demonstrate its trustworthiness as well.” He goes on to say how procedures for authentication and reliability must be developed before the new technology becomes fully accepted. He compares this to pencil writing. He says how the authenticity of pencil writing is still frequently questioned. He brings up the point that we prefer anything permanent to be in ink, verses pencil. 

MM:

No, it doesn’t help me to think of writing as a technology. I don’t think it changes how I understand writing. I don’t think of writing as technology, although I do agree with some of Baron’s points. I agree how he talks about how aspects of education have evolved. The way teachers teach, and the types of equipment they use based on the technological advances.

OPINIONS:

I thought that this article was interesting. It made you realize how much everything has evolved. It also makes you realize how everything is computer based now. You never have to turn in papers that are written in pen and pencil. I don’t think this article will be that helpful to me because I am aware of the technological advances and how it compares to the way things used to be. I can compare it to my own experiences because I don’t trust technology or like how fast everything advances. I’m not good with computers and I don’t like how everything is done online now.

Malcolm X, Alexie, Hooks

WAW: Learning to Read, Malcolm X (353-361), The Joy of Reading and Writing:Superman and Me, Sherman Alexie (362-366)

ROW: Writing Autobiography, Bell Hooks (177-180)

SUMMARIES:

Malcolm X: In Learning to Read, they use a piece from ‘The Autobiography of Malcolm X.” It is used to show a comparison to Deborah Brandt’s article about sponsors. In Malcolm’s autobiography is very inspirational. It shows the role of motivation in literacy and learning. He also goes on to talk about how literacy sponsors affect the kinds of literacy that we eventually master. This articles goal is to make the audience be able to make a connection between their own experiences and Malcolm X’s. 

Alexie: In Sherman Alexie’s article ‘Superman and Me” he discusses how he came to literacy. He also makes a connection to Deborah Brandt’s article. He uses her term sponsorship and relates it to Superman comics and his dads love for books. He also talks about how he taught himself how to read at a young age by observing the pictures in comic books and assuming what they are saying in the picture. The audience to this article can be anyone, however it would help if you read Deborah Brandt’s article, so that way you have an understanding of literacy sponsors. 

Hooks: In Writing Autobiography, Bell Hooks writes about her childhood. She refers to herself as Gloria Jean. Hooks thought that it would be a simple task to write about ones life, an autobiography. Her autobiography is kind of sad and depressing. It dwells on the past and all of the bad things that happened through out life. However she feels better after writing the narrative because she feels as if she saved Gloria. The audience for this article is older students. This would be complicating to understand for children. 

CONNECTIONS: All three of the articles had the same kind of theme. They were all autobiographies. They all had a sappy kind of story in the beginning. At the end of all of them it turned out good and for the better. All of their lives all started out hard and they all went through a lot and didn’t have as many opportunities as others. However they all worked through it and created novels, and are now writers. 

OPINIONS:

Malcolm X: I thought that this article was very different than others. I found it to be interesting because they used a real life story. I thought it was interesting to read about what Malcolm X had to say, and how it related to Deborah Brandt’s article. I don’t really think it will be that helpful to me, it didn’t really tell me anything that I don’t already know.  I do agree when he says that college has many distractions. There are so many distractions here and sometimes it is hard to get things accomplished. 

Alexie: I personally liked this article because it was really short. I don’t enjoy the readings when they are a lot of pages. This one was quick and easy to read. I also liked how he talked about the Superman comic books and how he taught himself how to read. It can be compared to my own experiences because I would always try to read children’s picture books when I was little. When my parents would read them aloud I would try to memorize what was on each page, and I would eventually be able to read it. 

Hooks: I didn’t really like this article. I thought it was kind of depressing. Her life seemed to not be that good and she only pointed out the bad things. I didn’t really think it was that interesting. I can’t really make any comparisons between this article and my own experiences. I liked the other two articles better personally.