primary discourse – E367: Writing and Diversity

Hunger for Education

Richard Rodriguez had an interesting upbringing paired with his academic experience. In his piece, “The Achievement of Desire: Personal Reflections on Learning ‘Basics,’” Rodriguez creates this interesting notion that his primary discourse – or what it should have been – is in fact not his primary discourse at all. He grew up in academia. He loved it. He forced himself to read about and learn about subjects that he did not like because he felt as though he needed to have all of the information available. It was also no secret, he was far better off in the classroom than either of his parents had been. He makes an ample amount of remarks regarding how his parents were always discrediting him and his intelligence as he got smarter because they were not entirely sure how to handle it. Despite him noting that he absolutely had the love and support of his family, he was uncomfortable at home. He loved the language of his teachers and mentors. He often found himself trying to mimic them and be like them. These were the people, he thought, that knew what they were doing. I just want to finish this thought with, no, I do not believe that he thought his parents were not doing anything right, he just adored his hunger for learning and had to keep feeding it and the teachers were the ones with all the knowledge.

To continue, I found it interesting how he ends up coming full circle and he begins to learn to appreciate his past and his parents and everything. Rodriguez understands that he does not act like those of his family at home. He is different, he chose a different path than them and felt as though the discourse that he picked up along the way was what felt comfortable to him. Rodrigues highlights his eventual longing of the past when he notes ,

“I remembered in my parents, growing older—before I turned, unafraid, to desire the past, and thereby achieved what had eluded me for long, the end of education.”
Rodriguez, 254

I found this to be an interesting way to finish off the piece because he recognizes the differences in himself from his family and he attributes it to his hunger for education and always wanting to learn more. He does not denounce it or even say it was negative, but he understands that what should have been his primary discourse and first course of language ended up being an uncomfortable secondary discourse for him because he never truly embraced it for what it was.

Smart Cookie: Scholarship Boys and Discourse Translation

The “scholarship boy”—lets translate it to “scholarship student” since this isn’t the 1970s anymore—is a student that becomes obsessive over academic success and becomes changed by this education obsession. They separate themselves from all distractions—mainly their family and the things they once loved. Richard Rodriguez illustrates his time as a scholarship student and how he found himself isolating himself in book, finding that he was distancing himself from his parents in favor of studying. He was distancing himself from his primary discourse—from his home and family and first learned behavior, in favor for a non-dominant secondary discourse.

The scholarship student is driven by success, the approval of superiors, and the knowledge they gain—social goods. However, because it is a secondary discourse, it’s hard to insert themselves into this space—they have to develop the body language, the values, and language associated to this new space. But, because it’s not their primary identity and discourse then it’s not going to be easy for them to conform. Rodriguez was forcing himself to read books he didn’t like because it was on some smart-sounding list and felt he would further understand the space he had sat himself in. He idolized his teachers and found himself trying to speak like them, mimicking them. It was all imitation and through that imitation he nurtured a secondary discourse that seemed to have overtook his primary one. He became so immersed into his secondary discourse that he forgot how to perform in his primary discourse. But, was his primary language truly replaced or was he just adding new behavior to his primary discourse?

In trying to support this thought, I stumbled upon a whole long paper written by Taylor Weeks, Understanding Discourse Transition. I only read a little bit of it because its 47 pages long and I’m not that crazy, but the gist of what Weeks is trying to propose in his paper is basically figuring out what Rodriguez and other scholarship students go through with their discourses. He questions “if a discourse can be changed slightly over time, is it the same discourse that person first learned as a child?” And he also asks, “if we do indeed change any small parts of our discourse over time, then can we replace the initial discourse we learned as children with a completely new discourse or has it become a strong dominant secondary discourse?” He decides to explore these questions by looking at military veterans and how their time in the military had affected them over time and how they interact once they are placed back into civilian life—specifically looking at how they adjust to college.

Throughout boot camp, a recruit’s initial discourse language begins to be replaced by a military discourse language. This military language is about sameness, about being indistinguishable from their peers appearance-wise, body language-wise, speech-wise, and so on. Once dropped into a different situation, a civilian situation, like a classroom, there is a difficulty to act within this discourse full of uniqueness. They don’t understand their place in this “new” world. This is like how education—a space that’s organized and quiet and full of logical—and then going home to a space full of disorganization, loudness, and more emotional. Even if the home space is what they grew up with, someone so enraptured by education has made their initial discourse language foreign to themselves. They can no longer function in that space the same way they did before. Weeks equates this process to baking cookies. “Depending on the recipe, you can make different cookies. Like a person’s discourse, we all learn at least one way to make cookies when we are children. As we develop our social language, we sometimes add things to our primary discourse. As with baking cookies, if we add any new element to our cookie recipe, we have changed our cookie recipe. No matter what we added to our cookie recipe, we will not make the same type of cookie that we learned how to make when we were children.”

Taylor Weeks’ Understanding Discourse Transition: https://scholarworks.uark.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=4000&context=etd

Class, Mon, 9/16

Gee, Discourse

James Paul Gee argues for the usefulness of thinking in terms of discourses rather than languages or codes or literacies. I’d like us to spend our time today thinking about what doing this might mean. Let’s start by trying to figure out exactly what Gee means by discourse—and what the differences between a primary and secondary discourse are. Here are some terms I highlighted in my rereading of the first half (pp. 5–9) of his essay:

social practice, saying (writing)-doing-being-valuing-believing combinations, ways of being, identity kit, second language, enculturation, apprenticeship, conflict and tension, primary or home discourse, family, clan, peer group, non-home-based institutions, secondary discourse, dominant and nondominant, interfere and transfer, literacy as mastery of a secondary discourse

Groups

With a partner (or two): See if you can use these terms to define what you think Gee might mean by discourse, primary discourse, and secondary discourse. Pay particular attention to terms that you find hard to integrate into your definitions. Why do these terms pose problems for you?

Fastwrite

Think back to your reading of Lu, Mellix, Pratt, and/or Lambeth. Are there any ways in which Gee’s idea of discourse helps you see their work in new ways? Are there any ways in which their stories and ideas pose problems for Gee?

To Do

Mon, 9/16, 4:00 pm: Group C posts responses to Gloria Anzaldúa’s “How to Tame a Wild Tongue”.
Tues, 9/17, 4:00 pm: Everyone else reads Group C’s responses and posts comments on at least two.
Wed, 9/18, class: We will use those responses and comments to structure our class discussion of Anzaldúa.
Wed, 9/18, 4:00 pm: Group A posts responses to Richard Rodriguez’s “The Achievement of Desire”.
Thurs, 9/19, 4:00 pm: Everyone else reads Group A’s responses and posts comments on at least two.
Fri, 9/13, class: We will use those responses and comments to structure our class discussion of Rodriguez.
Mon, 9/23, class: Read Jay Dolmage’s “Breathe Upon Us”. I will lead our discussion.