Rebecca Moore Howard’s “Cultural Work of Plagiarism”

After some initial struggling to find an article which related to theory, pedagogy, and sex/gender and writing, thankfully Dr. Rouzie recommended Rebecca Moore Howard’s “Sexuality, Textuality: The Cultural Work of Plagiarism.” Admittedly, I was reluctant to “buy into” RMH’s gendered notion of plagiarism, but if absolutely nothing else, this article is fascinating. Further, it can have valuable implications to our discussions of gender, sex, and writing.

If you have not read RMH’s article yet, take a moment to think about your definition of “plagiarism.” If you have read her article, then take a moment to think about your previously held definition of the word. In class, I’d like to discuss how our own definitions of plagiarism might have gender/power/sex implications (according to RMH’s article). Is there a possible definition of plagiarism without these constructs? RMH would say “no.” Nor does she believe that a better metaphor than the bovine metaphor from page 476 exists: “metaphors of gender and sexuality are part of our economy of authorship because our economy of authorship is part of our cultural regulation of gender and sexuality” (487). Do any of you have a metaphor for plagiarism and/or authorship free from gender/power/sex constraints?

RMH asserts that we cannot have a concrete universal definition of plagiarism because “teachers cannot possible formulate and act on a definition of plagiarism that articulates both its textual and sexual work” (474). While these sexual implications of “plagiarism” are interesting to read about, do you buy into it? Since the word “plagiarism” has such a prominent place in academia, how realistic is RMH’s call to use the words “fraud,” “excessive repetition” and “insufficient citation” instead?

I’d like us to think about how RMH compares to our other authors for Tuesday. What does her call to action regarding plagiarism do for the feminist pedagogy that Sanchez/Casal & McDonald discuss? In terms of Reynolds, how can we think of re-defining plagiarism as "interrupting" the gendered notion of the term? Does freedom from “plagiarism” give women writers the agency to practice their gendered position as Bridwell-Bowles suggests? Are there other connections you noticed?

Ecological Language Education Policy - Discussion

The article that I am going to lead the discussion about is titled "Ecological Language Education Policy", which is an article from the book "Handbook of Educational Linguistics" written by Nancy Hornberger and Francis M. Hult.

The first author, Hornberger, is a professor of education in University of Pennsylvania as well as the director of educational linguistics program. Her research interests are mulilingual language education policy and practice, focusing on inndigenuous and imigrant heritage language education

 

The second author is Francis M. Hult. He is an assistant professor in applied linguistics in University of Texas in San Antonio. His academic interests include language planning and curriculum development. He is also a co-editor of Handbook of Educational Linguistics.

This article mainly talks about the ecology of language in relation to language planning an policy. The authors discuss the basic principles of language ecology, its application to language policy and planning, followed with short discussions of their research on this area.


Originated from the from natural sciences,  the ecology of language, according to the authors, has been influential on the study of multilingualism (p. 280). Haugen as the first person using that term in the field of multilingualism proposed it as an approach to study the interaction of language  and users as interdisciplinary. 


While currently this approach has developed into diversified branches of sciences, it holds some key points in its analysis. Language ecology maintains that languages create their own 'metaphorical' ecology in which languages interact with each other as well as with their society. Societal multilingualism is interested in how such relationships and interactions occur in the minds of multilingual speakers. Hornberger ad Hult, further state that the language ecology theory allow linguists to see investigate theinteaction between societal multilingualism and individual behaviors. 


From the perspective of language ecology, languages "evolves in the context of social environment (p. 282) and it metaphorically show characteristics of living things: They grow, change, develop, as well as die. This is, in my perspective is not really something new in linguistics. Since long time ago, historical linguists have contended that language  evolves,  it showed characteristics of living things. However, ecology of language enables us to see how such evolution occur as a result of interactions between languages as well as their social environment. 


Hornberger and Hult, are interested with this concept as it can help them to understand and investigate language planning and policy (LPP). So in this article they discuss some applications of ecological approach to some studies of LPP in different places. Using their own studies as examples, the authors describe how languages interact with with other dimensions such as polictical, sociological psychoogical, etc. 

As far as I am concerned, this article perhaps is not really much related to this week's dicussion of complexity theory and ecology of writing. However, I also see that we can see some similarities between them. First, we can see that writing has its own ecology where many component interact with each other to create a certain complexity. This also happens to languages and their social environment. So, in a sense they show similar characteristics in that they create such 'metaphorical' ecology where the component interact with each other. Even, I think the ecology of writing is, to some extent part of the language ecology, in that there is a relationship between writing and the linguistic environment, especially in the multilingual situations.


So, for our class discussion, I would like to invite us all to contemplate on this, trying to see how multilingual situations might complicate the ecology of writing? How, in such linguistic environment as in US this thing matters? As a non-native speaker of English as well as a non-resident of US, I view US as multilingual country where some different languages (not only English) interact with each other to create ecological niches (Calveat in Hornberger and Hult 2008, p. 281). I also would like to invite us to take a short look at the phenomenon of World Englishes and the fact that the number of non-native speakers of English learning English is increasing rapidly (For example, Harmer 2007). How would this fact impact, if any, the composition class?

References

Harmer, J. (2007). The practice of English Language Teaching (4th ed.). Essex: Pearson Education, Ltd.

Hornberger, N., & Hult, F. (2008). Ecological language education policy. In B. Spolsky, & F. Hult, The Handbook of Educational Linguistics (pp. 280 - 296). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, Ltd.

Prestige and Open-Access Publishing...

I thought I'd jump right in and do my post for this block of time early. I was really fascinated by Aaron's assertion yesterday that publishing in online journals doesn't (at least in his field) carry the same prestige as publishing in print journals. First, because Dr. Rouzie and I had just had the same conversation yesterday, except that Dr. Rouzie reassured me that the real differentiation, at least in Rhet/Comp, was the peer review process and not the medium. So I imagine there is some significant difference among disciplines on this issue.

However, I'm very interested in the potential impact of Harvard's recent open letter on the cost and limitations of publishing to non-open access journals. In this "Faculty Advisory Memorandum on Journal Pricing," Harvard urges several fairly radical moves with a variety of potential outcomes. Here are the action steps listed in the letter (F = Faculty and Students, L = Libraries):

1. Make sure that all of your own papers are accessible by submitting them to DASH in accordance with the faculty-initiated open-access policies (F).

2. Consider submitting articles to open-access journals, or to ones that have reasonable, sustainable subscription costs; move prestige to open access (F).

3. If on the editorial board of a journal involved, determine if it can be published as open access material, or independently from publishers that practice pricing described above. If not, consider resigning (F).

4. Contact professional organizations to raise these issues (F).

5. Encourage professional associations to take control of scholarly literature in their field or shift the management of their e-journals to library-friendly organizations (F).

6. Encourage colleagues to consider and to discuss these or other options (F).

7. Sign contracts that unbundle subscriptions and concentrate on higher-use journals (L).

8. Move journals to a sustainable pay per use system, (L).

9. Insist on subscription contracts in which the terms can be made public (L).

First, it's important to point out that while items 1-6 might indeed be moves toward making scholarly writing more widely available, items 7-9 might actually reduce access to scholarly writing in smaller fields that produce low-use journals. They might, in fact, cause such journals to cease to exist! But, having acknowledged this danger (and believing, in my rose-colored-glasses sort of way that the scholarly pursuits of smaller fields will find their way into academic literature even if there is an upset in the current journal structure), I want to look at a few key elements of the first six action items.

I believe that the second action item is the most significant for the future of open access journals, though others are more significant to academic publishing in general. It suggests that faculty--at least faculty at Harvard--can indeed shift "prestige," that nebulous word that haunts P&T Files, from established print journals to open access, online journals by choosing to publish their work in the latter. According to Harvard's Open Access Policies, "Research has repeatedly shown that articles available freely online are more often cited and have greater impact than those not freely available, and this trend is increasing over time." Taken together, these arguments, you can increase the prestige of open access electronic journals by publishing in them and publishing in open access electronic journals will increase the prestige of your work by making it more likely that other scholars will cite it, suggest greater agency in determining the "prestige" of certain publication venues and their usefulness than I think most graduate student and faculty believe themselves to possess. How much is this an artifact of the prestige of being a faculty member or graduate student at Harvard, and how does it translate for those of us working in (really fabulous, truly wonderful, but most assuredly non-Ivy) colleges and universities? Does this agency rest equally with "celebufaculty," tenured faculty at institutions below the Research 1 designation, non-tenured faculty, contingent faculty, and graduate students? (Obviously not.) Do those of us in less privileged positions need to wait for those in more privileged positions to "blaze the trail" by publishing in currently-less-prestigious journals until this "prestige shift" has been realized? What are the risks to us if we don't?

Here is language from "A Model Open-Access Policy" offered for use at other universities:

The Faculty of (university name) is committed to disseminating the fruits of its research and scholarship as widely as possible. In keeping with that commitment, the Faculty adopts the following policy: Each Faculty member grants to (university name) permission to make available his or her scholarly articles and to exercise the copyright in those articles. More specifically, each Faculty member grants to (university name) a nonexclusive, irrevocable, worldwide license to exercise any and all rights under copyright relating to each of his or her scholarly articles, in any medium, provided that the articles are not sold for a profit, and to authorize others to do the same.

What does this move to grant the university at which we are producing our work the right to "exercise the copyright in those articles" and in addition, that we would be compelled to "authorize others to do the same?"

I can't speak to what this means for scholarly writers, but I can speak to what it would mean to creative writers working within the academy if our creative works were to be included under the umbrella of scholarly writing by virtue of our being academicians. (And, as someone who just went through the fight to permanently embargo her MFA thesis, this is not a clearly drawn line. In addition, several literary journals are currently available through JSTOR or Project Muse.) Publishers do not want books, or for the most part essays, short stories, and poems for anthologies, which are also freely available online. And publishing books is critical to the job search and tenure process for creative writing faculty. I imagine this is true, if not equally true, for faculty in other fields.

This is not to say that I'm arguing against moving to open access for all scholarly works, even those that might fall into the category of creative works generated by academicians. I am, however, interested in the intersection of privilege as embodied by Harvard, the "information wants to be free" ethic of the early internet (and of which I am still a HUGE proponent), and the individual risks and costs to faculty and graduate students who make the move to open access publishing before the academy and its hiring and tenuring processes have caught up to this shift.

I'm very interested in your thoughts!

Works Cited:

"Faculty Advisory Memorandum on Journal Pricing." The Harvard Library Transition. Harvard University, 17 04 2012. Web. 25 Apr 2012.

"Open Access Policies." Office for Scholarly Communication. Harvard University, n.d. Web. 25 Apr 2012.

Shieber, Stuart. "A Model Open-Access Policy." Office for Scholarly Communication. Harvard University, n.d. Web. 25 Apr 2012.

Post-Barton

Thank you all for a really interesting discussion of the article by Matt Barton. I realized a number of insights during our discussion, and made some interesting connections too. I'm going to discuss a few moments of our discussion and may even bring in names, so please excuse any misappropriation or omission of the discussion.

It's really fascinating to me to think about how Barton repeats some of the same moves made by Habermas in that he constructs this pre-corporate network culture that (may) have never existed. Aaron helped us along here, pointing out that, by the time most people had internet access, it was already subject to corporate hegemony. This articulation reminded me of a piece by Dennis Baron: "From Pencils to Pixels: The Stages of Literacy Technology"  in which he theorizes that new (literacy) technologies are at first only available to a "priestly class":

Each new literacy technology begins with a restricted communications function and is available only to a small number of initiates. Because of the high cost of the technology and general ignorance about it, practitioners keep it to themselves at first -- either on purpose or because nobody else has any use for it -- and then, gradually, they begin to mediate the technology for the general public. The technology expands beyond this “priestly” class when it is adapted to familiar functions often associated with an older, accepted form of communication.

In Baron's assessment, however, once a technology becomes available beyond the priestly class, it can still be manipulated and directed in new, original ways. It's not limited to exclusive control by oppressive and hegemonic entities: 

As costs decrease and the technology becomes better able to mimic more ordinary or familiar communications, a new literacy spreads across a population. Only then does the technology come into its own, no longer imitating the previous forms given us by the earlier communications technology but creating new forms and new possibilities for communication. Moreover, in a kind of backward wave, the new technology begins to affect older technologies as well.

Sarah also provided a counterpoint to Aaron's articulation, pointing out that early users were often actually those that have been previously marginalized by other modes and venues of expression. I like to think of homeless schizophrenics making use of internet access in public libraries as the real "priestly class." Indeed, optimistic narratives of communications in network culture often describe online venues as places where traditionally marginalized voices can find voice. 

Identifying a pre-corporate network culture as inherently democratic is obviously problematic, but does it really matter? If discussion boards, blogs, and wikis do help to educate students to be active rhetors in online spaces, isn't that a sufficient rationale for their use? Of course, since this article was published, political activism and activity on the internet has increased dramatically. We can link web 2.0 technologies like blogs and wikis to these increases, but social media has played a role as well, as is evident in social media activity that coincided with the Arab Spring. In "Composing to Change Nations: Teaching New Media and the Arab Spring in FYC," Bryan Lutz extends the work of Barton and others by realizing the connections between blog technologies and social media:

[Blogs] can be used in partnership with other social media as conduits, allowing students to question the ethical stakes of an issue by allowing students to construct what the issues mean to them, as well as to become part of a global network of citizens who are arguing for the world they wish to see. When combined with critical engagement and access to the affordances of technology, this pedagogy has potential to allow students the opportunity to exonerate themselves from their positions as passive recipients of knowledge and as passive consumers of media and technology. ("Conclusion")

A final critique of the article by Barton I'd like to address is this idea that his argument suffers by the fact that he's arguing for the use of  blogs, wikis, and db's in a very traditional academic form that doesn't itself utilize those technologies. While I can sympathize with this argument, I think it's important to remember the exigencies and constraints operating in academic culture(s) that contribute to Barton's choice of form and medium. Academic hierarchies and promotion processes insist on perpetuating scholarship that panders to certain methods of knowledge production. Scholars interesting in disrupting these institutions have to work inside them in order to disrupt them I think, both in terms of reaching an (academic) audience, and perhaps in the case of  this article, securing a (tenured) position from which to continue the argument. In short, change  (at least in the initial stages) must come from within the institutions we seek to subvert.
Overall, our discussion of this article was productive and interesting. I like thinking about online writing technologies as readily accessible spaces in which to create and inhabit productive writing ecologies. If I could turn back the clock and change anything, it would be my own leadership of the discussion. I would have liked to structure the discussion in a way that would include more voices and also create opportunities for different interpretations and reactions to the work.

Blowing It All To Hell And Gone: Kill, Heilker, and Kenneth Patchen

Lately, as an instructor of writing (call it grandiosity or the bottom-drop feeling of an exercise in futility), I've been thinking about an old poem entitled "In Order To" by Kenneth Patchen--a native Ohioan and seldom-taught precursor to the beats.

You can listen to a recorded version of Patchen reading the poem here (he's got a great voice):

What has me thinking about this particular poem is not the Sisyphean task of teaching writing, but rather the tasks that we often set out for our students when we ask them to be thoughtful, critical, sometimes wary, but always diligent writers. Our task-lists are many. Our writing prompts, exercises, project sheets, and learning outcomes--when taken out of context--might sound like the demands of a therapist with a particularly clever and/or twisted sense of humor. But always the task seems to be designed for the express purpose of breaking through the barriers of business-as-usual thought processes, razing the complacent attitudes that stand between passive observation and meaningful exegesis, and instilling in the student the need to "put it all back together again" in some meaningful form. At the end of a section of composition, or a literature seminar, or a creative writing workshop...I always want the student to "want the job that bad," even after the barrage of experiments and maneuvers that I concoct to challenge what they understand coming into the classroom might reduce them to a quivering pile of vacillating protoplasm. I have to admit, this makes the idea of being one of my students sound like a terrifying prospect, which I don't think is the case, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed each time a student doesn't seem to want the job that bad. I do take it personally on some level, and though this does not bode well for the amount of ego invested in my role as an instructor, it does bring up some interesting questions when it comes to tying practice in the classroom to personality.

I got to thinking about this again during our reading for last week, particularly with regard to the Kill and Heilker articles regarding genre, personality, and the formation of writerly selves. Two quotes in particular stood out to me:

"In the context of first-year composition, the metaphors of role rehearsal and fluid selves are appealing in that they frame the subjectivities that writing instruction prescribes as provisional. Nevertheless, although postmodern notions of performativity may seem to downplay the effort involved in shifting between roles, it is important not to overlook the potential severity of challenges posed to one's sense of self even when one chooses not to fully commit to a given subject position" (Kill, 231).

"I am beginning to think that all genres we attempt, especially all new genres, may be sublime or at least potentially sublime, that they may all have the potential to invite us and require us and compel us to come up and out of our previous ways of being in the world, to become something new, something more" (Heilker, 29). 

In Heilker's notion of genre practice as a potentially sublime activity, and Kill's plea to not underestimate the challenges to self and identity posed by the presented-as-provisional context of class-room assignments, I see an impetus to acknowledge that there is something more going on in the classroom beside the acquisition of intellectual skills like so many tools in a future-professional toolbox.

I'm wondering, how would some of you characterize this "something more" that Kill and Heilker seem to be groping towards? Do you think about this in your classrooms?

Also, though Kill speaks to the ways we may position ourselves as instructors in the classroom, I was wondering what impact the "provisional" nature of our assignments and exercises might have on our attitude toward them when it comes to assessment and evaluation. In other words, does evaluating these provisional incidents of genre practice have any impact on our identity and personality? If so, what does that impact look like?

Kind of a weird question, but it totally freaks me out sometimes and I was wondering if any of you think about this.

Well...sorry for the late post and hope some people get a chance to respond.

Best,

J

Genres: Existential and Sublime?

 

Hey everybody, I know I’m a little late to the discussion on last week’s readings, but I didn’t want to write unless I had something to say.  (The meaning of this text rests with you anyway, right poststructuralists?) Anyway, I'm no composition specialist, so thank you for reading despite my limitations.

Every time we discussed the best ways to communicate genre related knowledge in our classrooms, I kept thinking of myself as an undergrad.  I was an unfocused student, and genuinely had no desire to “connect” with my teachers in any way.  I would get to class at the last second and think, “The moment the bell rings to go; I’m out”.  If my instructors did do something differently in the class that I knew would demand relational commitment, I always thought, “I’m out”.  In fact, I was looking for excuses to disconnect. Thus, when we discussed creative ideas to grant new ways of thinking about genre, I asked myself “What do we do with those students who come with an a priori conception of class, and an uncooperative attitude”?  Can teachers just create interest?

When I read about the generative nature of genres, I thought, “Is that objectively so”? When students have a comfortable approach to writing, and we aim to undo it, we will as Kill has suggested, “face resistance” (216).  This resistance can be both good and bad. Kill quotes Lu who suggests a “productive resistance” that arises from sensing the ability to have voice (216).  However, voice is only appealing to those who are committed enough to speak it.  When I thought of myself as an undergrad, it bothered me that all our wonderful creative lesson plans would probably not have worked on me.  Interestingly, Heilker’s Genre as a Way of Being, the article that did not seem to enthrall anyone else, addressed my concerns pretty squarely.

What worked for me as an undergrad?  When I really got into a class, it was usually because we left the classroom environment and used our knowledge in the public. Because of that I felt torn at how much I liked Heilker’s article. I really respect what Bawarshi said about genre, but it was different than Heilker. In fact, I noticed two distinct, yet related differences between Bawarshi’s and Heilkers articles.  One difference was ontological and the other had to do with invention.  The ontological focus was brought up by Heilker (20).  I would add that his perspective of genre is positively existential. Heilker privileges the sense of becoming that arises out of experiencing the creation and completion of an assignment.  In other words, Heilker wants his students to perform genre related learning outside the cloistered classroom in order to experience a more real knowledge (whatever real knowledge might be).  Bawarshi dismisses Heilker’s claim that “Writing teachers need to relocate the where of composition instruction outside the academic classroom” and into “real rhetorical situations” by stating bluntly that the classroom is a “real rhetorical situation” (131-132). 

Another difference concerned invention.  Rhetorically, Bawarshi addresses invention as “the world the speaker lives in” as “…not so much an act of turning inward as it was an act of locating oneself socially, a way of participating in shared desires, values, and meanings already existing in the world” (104).  When Heilker addresses the way of being associated with genre, he states, “…in writing an essay, our acts of discovery are inward journeys as much as they are outward expeditions” (26). 

So the differences were in the questions of where and how.  That is pretty significant.  I have to side a bit with Heilker though.  We just have too much in common. I as well am an amateur in a room full of experts, or at least people who are far more proficient than I am.  I also am unafraid of being wrong or embarrassing myself.  Without getting too biographical, I felt with Heilker”s perspectives allowed me to “experience” the article in a profound and real way.  That experience is at the heart of the difference between Heilker’s and Bawarshi’s conceptions of genre as applied pedagogy.  It also gets at what was troubling me.  I think rhetorical creation in environments other than the classroom are not as exclusive as Heilker let’s on, but are still more important than Bawarshi lets on.  More importantly, I also think that we as teachers need to be ready for change, but students just have to be ready as well.  For instance, Heilker describes his own experience

 “I had to be sick and tired of being sick and tired, completely beaten down, utterly defeated, hopeless, powerless, and coming up pretty damn quick on death’s doorstep before I was willing to read and write and dwell in these discourses” (23). 

Heilker goes on to describe experiencing a new way of being.  He is committed to the new genres and the sublime and important sense of change that comes with a new way of being.  He wants to see this in his pedagogy.  Bawarshi sees becoming rhetorically agile the goal of the assignment in class.  Know how to approach a genre creatively in a few rhetorical situations, and you learn to adjust to rhetorical situations.  However, Heilker sees something intrinsically valuable in the personal reactive experience of the moment in situ—physically.  Whatever that experience is, is valuable to learning for Heilker. Bawarshi’s perspective is that of the teacher trying to come along a student to help them become a better, person/citizen/thinker.  Heilker focuses on “ideologies, values, ideas about what we should believe, what we should want, and how we should be” (Heilker. P. 24).  So both approaches to genre are value laden, but one puts onus on the teacher, and the other sees value in existential experience of genres both from student and teacher.

Sometimes, rhetoric in social criticism can be pessimistic because of its understanding of power, subjectivity, and sophistry.  When all our desires to influence become suspect, driven by capital, or driven by oppression, the “rhetorical situation” can feel like another expression of opportunism, and we have difficulty orienting ourselves in the classroom.  I wonder if all along, what we were looking for was some hopeful invitation to experience the good stuff that comes with new situations.  I think I was looking for an answer to how we motivate the disinterested (e.g. undergraduate me). Maybe the students need what I needed—the possibility of experiencing the existentially sublime while learning. Though I’m not convinced yet, if new genres are capable of existential, sublime change…I’m in. 

Works Cited

Bawarshi, Anis. Genre and the Invention of the Writer. Logan, Utah: Utah State University Press, 2003. Print.

Heilker, Paul. “On Genres as Ways of Being.” Writing on the Edge 21.2 (2011):  19-31. Print.

Kill, Melanie. “Acknowledging the Rough Edges of Resistance: Negotiation of Identities for First-Year Composition.” College Composition and Communication 58.2 (2006): 213-235. Print.

Discourse, Literacy, and Power

Even though I am not in total agreement with Paul Gee's ideas about Discourse, as a student of linguistics, I am more or less familiar, but not necessarily in agreement with, his ideas that he explained in his article "Literacy". So, this writing should not be seen as an arguing for Gee's sake, but more about my way of interpreting his work from the perspective of a student of linguistics.

The first thing that came to my mind when reading this article was that his notions of Discourse was no more than an expansion of how linguists--at least under some traditions--understand language. First, what I understand from his idea of Discourse is extended from the notion of language. There were times in the history of linguistics that language was attempted to be separated from its social context. Under Saussurean's tradition, for example, language was divided into two aspects: langue and parole. While langue is defined as the abstract system of language, parole refers to its actualization in the real world. Saussure and his proponents was more interested in studying langue instead of parole. One of the problem was Parole was often considered heterogeneous and less stable (see for example, Fairclough, 2001). However, by doing so linguistics had abandoned social structure as a factor that influenced its heterogeneity and unstability. Later, linguists started to understand social factors as influential in the use of language and started to learn those factors to account for language. Gee's proposal of Discourse was not really new,  as under Hallidayan functional tradition, language is considered as a social practice and thus cannot be separated from social structure.

Second, Gee's dichotomy of primary and secondary Discourse is parallel to the distinction of first and second language (As he admitted himself). He characterizes primary Discourse as being acquired through primary socialization and covert instruction. This resembles the ideas of first language acquisition in much sense. Secondary Discourse(s), on the other hand, are acquired through our interaction with other social institutions where we start as an apprentice. Even though immersion to a non-home institutions is not necessarily connected to acquisition of a second language, many sociolinguists believe that such interaction with other institutions may expose an individual to different linguistic repertoire (for example, Holmes, 2001).

Third, dominant and nondominant discourse which very much resembles the polarity between standard and vernacular language (Holmes, 2001 p.74-5). As stated by Gee, dominant Discourses are secondary discourse which mastery entails 'social' goods  while nondominant (primary) discourse represents solidarity within a society (8). This is also what happens to standard and vernacular forms of language.

Furthermore, I agree with Mathews who argues that Gee's ideas are too deterministic for saying that being a member of a Discourse is a "to be or not to be" matter. Yet, I still think that there is some degree of truth to this claim in a sense that Gee's idea seems to be to deterministic and not ideal, but not  necessarily wrong.

What I am more interested about Gee's article is that how power and ideology is embedded in language. Following the tradition of Critical Discourse analysts (For example, Fairclough, 2001), I always believe that there is such a latent power that controls social interactions. We should question, for example, how a certain Discourse is considered to be dominant while the others are not? Who actually determines this dominance and subordination? Why do we HAVE TO comply with these rules?, etc.

Let me discuss about literacy to exemplify this argument. Gee defines literacy as "a mastery of or fluent control over a secondary Discourse" (p. 9). Not really so long ago, in many places, including my country, Indonesia, literacy was commonly defined as three R's --Reading, wRiting, and aRithmatics'. During that period, those who did not have a mastery on this would be considered illiterate. Who determined this? Why should a person master the three R's, otherwise denied their membership of literate society? Who actually 'forced' them to master these literacies?  Furthermore, the advancement of technology gave birth to computer which in turn gave birth to another kind of literacy: Computer literacy. I remember how around 1990s when computer became popular in Indonesia, everyone was forced to learn to use computer or else would be considered ineligible for many--most of them privileged--positions in companies, institutions, etc. Those who were not able to use computer were simply left behind, being denied of their rights to get 'decent' jobs. This is what also happens with languages. English, being one of the most widely spoken language in the world and considered as the language of academia, is growing into a greatly important and valued. Those who master English, in many developing countries, are highly valued and English illiteracy may lead to deprivation from labor force. One of my classmates, Ranga Kalugampitiya, in a class discussion once articulated this in a very interesting manner: "For native speakers of English, learning a foreign language is much of a choice, while for non-native speakers, learning English is a necessity. And then again, who determines this? Why are native speakers of English, not feeling necessary to learn another language?  And, I believe, one of the possible answer is a latent power which is called ideology. So, once again, it indeed sounds too deterministic but not necessarily nonexistent.

Another argument proposed Gee is that there is often a conflict when one learns a secondary Discourse. I think I agree with this. If we agree that Discourse is the way we live and view life, then there should always be a conflict when one learns a secondary discourse, especially one which is very much different from our Primary Discourse. This notion is very much influenced by linguistics' notions of interlanguage and transfer: The idea that first language may interfere the acquisition of a second language--and later some linguistics such as Pavlenko and Jarvis (2001) argues on the bidirectionality of this process, and during the acquisition process the learner will develop a system that might not resemble any of the language. So, once again it shows how Gee's article is very much an expansion of what linguists understand about language, or at least under some tradition, and I think this is very much influenced by the discourse in linguistics during the year he wrote the article (1989). It might not be necessarily true and acceptable, but perhaps represents the scholarship in that era.

References

Fairclough, N. (1989). Language and power. London: Longman.

Gee, J. P. (1989). Literacy, discourse, and linguistics. Journal of Education, 171(1), 5-176.

Holmes, J. (2000). An introduction to sociolinguistics. Harlow: Longman.

Pavlenko, A., & Jarvis, S. (2002). Bidirectional transfer. Applied Linguistics, 23(2), 190-214

Identity, Genre, and Paul Heilker

I was most interested, among this weeks’ collection of readings, in Paul Heilker’s “On Genres as Ways of Being,” both as an alternative to a typical journal article and for some of the connections we might make to continental philosophy.

I enjoyed reading the essay for a few reasons, not the least of which is that his piece potentially could give “noobie” teachers more confidence in their presence in the college classroom. That is, “being” a teacher as participating in and subscribing to a cohesive set of genre conventions seems terrifying and at the same time reassuring:

“Oh, no. I knew since the moment Christina McDonald graciously invited me to be a part of the Spilman program that writing and presenting my paper was going to call me up and out of my previous way of being in the world that I would need to be more than I was…” (Heilker 20; Heilker’s emphasis). 

Perhaps we could interpret Heilker’s entire essay as a negotiation or perhaps embracing of risk. That is, according to Heilker (or at least my reading of the essay) one seems to have to lose (or forget, suppress, etc.) in order to “be” something different in the world. For Heilker’s purposes, this loss seems to be beneficial (according to an academic’s viewpoint, that is). Inhabiting different genres allowed Heilker to advance through academia—and to, more audaciously, begin to combat alcoholism and drug abuse. The question for me becomes, then, if the world is simply a conglomeration of texts, of genres to be inhabited, do we ever, and if so when, do we encounter genres or texts or ways of being that are destructive. 

Is there such a thing as a destructive genre, text, way of being? 

Heilker might say maybe:

“What would it mean to truly discover something about yourself? And to then communicate that to an audience? What would it require of us? It would mean acknowledging that we don’t know ourselves, that there are parts of us that remain mysterious, outside our consciousness, outside our control. It would mean acknowledging that there are parts of us that may be buried—and if we acknowledge that anything is buried we face the possibility of hordes of things being buried” (26).

And thus, the real question that I think I’m attempting and apparently failing to articulate—does Heilker’s theory erase “agency” or “agent” or “free-will” or "identity" I would say that he obfuscates it: that is, only through inhabiting genre does one come to “know oneself.”

Despite this tension within the article (which some of you might be able to clear up) I enjoyed how the article more fully allows for the incorporation of the author in the finished product:

“We must be willing to make and record and share with an audience all of our ‘mistakes,’ all of our wrong turns, and dead ends and mis-steps. We must be willing to stand before an audience as deeply flawed, incomplete, untrustworthy narrators whose authority is always suspect…” (27).

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Heilker, Paul. “On Genres as Ways of Being.” Writing on the Edge 21.2 (2011): 19-31. Print.