Gee, Swales, and Johns

By now, we have read both pieces by John Swales and James Paul Gee regarding their respective ideas about discourse communities and their function. Writing About Writing suggests that a dialogue or conversation is occurring between the two writers as we read. On the one side we have Swales and his systematic breakdown of what he views as “the six important features of any public discourse community”. Among his key points are that a discourse community has to be centered on the idea of operating in an inclusive manner (as opposed to an exclusive manner).

In Gee’s view, a discourse community functions in a manner opposite to that of Swales’ community. In other words, Gee’s communities operate in an exclusive manner where those included are part of the “dominant group”. To me, it seemed implied that this idea is generally tied in with power and socioeconomic standing. Gee talks about the dominant group using “tests” to feel out the literacy of outsiders as a means to exclude them, as well as to “get the right person” when seeking someone for a position or job.

Then along comes Ann Johns. She backs up Swales points regarding his six key traits of a discourse community, even directly referencing them early on in her own article. She then goes on to relate the various aspects of Swales’ points to instances where they occur in her life; her mother’s AARP membership, her husband’s international bicycling group, to name a couple. Johns also brings more to the table for discussion. She makes mention of the topic of convention vs. anti-conventionalism, where she compares the tendency for established writers to part ways with what is considered conventional while students are required to learn and write in a rigidly conventional manner, ‘lest they be “torn apart” by their instructors. Johns also discusses the issue of authority in communities: asserting that those who are considered the “authority” in their community could (either consciously or otherwise) impose their values and beliefs on the rest of the community. 

Gee and Discourse

    In Literacy, Discourse, and Linguistics, James Paul Gee discusses, among other things, the key differences between language, grammar, discourse, and Discourse. Gee also makes mention of "tests" imposed upon users of a certain language or literacy. These tests are based on their knowledge and usage of what is considered to be the "dominant Discourse" in a community or society. The primary outcome of these tests is that one can see whether this person is "native" to this Discourse or not.
    In other words, you can see whether a person has learned the proper usage of a language that is considered the primary language of an area. An example that Gee gives is the focus on superficial features of a language that only one who is "native" to it would grasp. His example is "middle-class mainstream" Discourse, which presupposes that is in opposition with those of lower socioeconomic standing. These "non-native users" don't have as firm of a grasp on the proper use of the language and can thus be pointed out and denied access to greater opportunities (such as a better job). I think this is an example we can all relate to as, for better or for worse, we are taught from a young age to articulate our thoughts in such a way as to imply that we are well educated and intelligent.

Six Discourse Communities

1) “A discourse community has a broadly agreed upon set of common public goals.”

In other words, all discourse communities have a framework of what they’d like to change or accomplish. For example, a student group centered on “going green” has the ultimate goal of inspiring significantly more people on campus to recycle and reduce their carbon footprint than were previously doing so before the group existed.

2) “A discourse community has mechanisms of intercommunication among its members.”

There exists a means to communicate and keep in touch in all discourse communities. In my above example, this could mean an emailing list that all the members of the group are apart of. It would also mean the meetings this group holds to discuss new topics and ways to further their goal.  

3) “A discourse community uses its participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information and feedback”

A discourse community discusses new information and ideas in its meetings or other instances where the community is able to participate. In my example, the “green group” would utilize meetings to discuss new ideas relevant to “going green” as well as different ideas as per how to spread them throughout their campus and student body.

4) “A discourse community utilizes and hence possesses one or more genres in the communicative furtherance of its aims.”

Discourse communities make use of certain genres, or types of writing, to help communicate its message and, by extension, accomplish its ultimate goal. My “green group” would, in this instance, probably utilize print (posters, flyers, ads) to keep ideas about recycling and using less energy at the forefront of the student bodies’ mind. 

5) “In addition to owning genres, a discourse community has acquired some specific lexis.”

A discourse community will make use of certain words and phrases specific to its cause and operation. In my “green group”, this could mean the use of the words and phrases like green, environmentally friendly, and others that pertain to recycling and such.

6) “A discourse community has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discoursal expertise.”

Within the discourse community is at least a certain number of people who are credible in the knowledge and direction they provide. In my example, this could be a group of knowledgeable students studying fields relevant to “going green” (i.e., environmental health, environmental sustainability, green energy, etc).

Pencils to Pixels

In his piece, Denis Baron talks extensively of the leaps and bounds technology has made in regards to communication. From the advent of writing and cuneiform, to our modern age of computers and telephones, Baron discusses the implications and responses to these technologies. In the process of covering all this, Dennis Baron seemingly to “shrug” at the idea of technology changing the fundamental shape and nature of writing. His overall thought seems to be that new technologies have come and innovated our means of writing and communication time and time again, and yet writing is still writing. Honestly, I have to agree. Whether it comes from a pencil, typewriter, or computer word processor, writing is still fundamentally the same as it was years ago. The advents of “backspace” and “spell-check”, for example, have helped to aid in the creation and revision of writing, but they have not fundamentally changed how it is done. Baron does point out that technologies, as they become outdated, also become “automatic and invisible”. He points out that we incorporate older and established ideas and methods as we take on the new and “cutting edge” of technology. One could potentially make a case that this could be the aforementioned fundamental change, but I feel that it is actually just the process of absorbing established tools and methods into our everyday use.

The Future of Literacy

While each case was in essence unique, all of them generally had similar backgrounds: white, middle to upper-middle class family with access to one or more computers in their home. This I can relate to, as it essentially details my own home life. The story that I connected to most was that of Charles Jackson. Charles, much like myself, was exposed to computers at a young age. As a result, the growth of his literacy went hand in hand with the growth of his computer skills. Charles also mentions how video games, specifically online games, helped further his reading and writing abilities. This is also true of my own past. While I did read as a child, I did also spend time playing games. And, as Charles bluntly puts it,  “You are going to have to read to learn to play the games.” In this way, the use of technology helped to better my own reading, writing, and general skills of communication; not to mention typing skills.

Some of the things that really got me going on reading were early book series available to me at that age (the Redwall series, Harry Potter, etc.). I remember being especially fond of these books, as they were part of a larger series. For this reason, I was much more motivated to learn the details about the characters and places, as well as to keep on reading more of the books!                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

Malcom X and Sherman Alexie

           

Both Malcom X and Sherman Alexie overcame a great deal of adversity and strife to acquire the literacy that they did. I found the prominent difference to be in their motivations to learn to read, as well as why they read. Malcolm X viewed literacy as a means of gaining knowledge, and by extension, power. He implies that because of his race and social standing that he would not have been able to acquire this power; though he was able to while in prison via a prison library. Sherman Alexie aspired for literacy because of his own father’s obsession with books and reading. From there, he developed a great thirst for what we would call literacy. This was largely because the Indian reservation school system didn’t seem to work. Children didn’t learn to write and, as a result, often times didn’t amount to much. Sherman says of his intense drive to read and reading abilities, “If I hadn’t been an Indian boy on a reservation, I may have been called a prodigy. Instead I was an oddity.” He was using his literacy to help him get out of the reservation and out into the world.

Malcolm and Sherman both struggled with their race when becoming literate. Their race and socioeconomic statuses made it incredibly difficult for them to learn to read, and thereby improve their situation. For Malcom X it took a stint in prison to gain the access to literacy and literature, while Sherman had to go outside of the school system and ultimately his own culture to do the same.

Literacy and You

At the ripe old age of twenty, I have been exposed to many a “sponsor of literacy”. If I were to consider my primary sponsors, I would have to say that mine would be various levels of schools (of course), Church, and my family.

Obviously, high school strives to expose us to a certain variety of literacy. This includes poetry, plays, and certain novels that they want us to read and comprehend. The literacy they provide to us is tightly restricted, as per what they feel is ok for teenagers to read about. As you get into college there is obviously a much wider exposure to virtually any and all literacy. This time around, the instructors typically choose texts that will expose you to different and new ways of thinking.

Church is in a similar vein to school in how it handles literacy, though with a much narrower range of exposure. In my own experience with Catechism classes when I was young, the literacy you are exposed to is (obviously) only the Bible. They don’t really strive to expose you to anything else, but are intent that you have your facts straight on what they do teach to you.

My family has been by far the most dynamic of my literacy sponsors. Naturally, when I was very young they were careful about what I was exposed to and had access to. As I grew and matured my parents were increasingly less restrictive about what I was allowed to read, watch, etc. In this way, they exposed me to arguably the largest amount of literacy by sheer virtue of progressively allowing me more freedom as I grew up.

Any of these sponsors on their own would probably be far from adequate access, but together they contribute to a great deal of my own acquired literacy and knowledge. 

Submit for Review: A Retrospective and Reflection of a Wikipedia Editor

Wikipedia: The much-maligned fount of information that we have been warned to avoid since our days in high school.  In my opinion, the negative reputation surrounding it is largely unwarranted. I found the process of creating a new Wiki page to be a fantastic window into the world of social and collaborative writing: a world that I have had little to no exposure to.

In choosing my article, I first attempted to think of things I was interested in that were not already apart of Wikipedia in some capacity. This was an immensely difficult task, as most anything one can think of is already archived in Wikipedia in some capacity. Even after I had some semblance of a list, I had to consider whether I could contribute substantially to any of these subjects. And thus my list diminished further. Then I decided to approach from a different angle: I could peruse the list of requested articles on Wikipedia for topics that were interesting to me. After several investigations and “trial-runs” I settled upon the Slim Phatty: a stripped down and relatively simple synthesizer made by Moog. I scoured the Internet for information, and soon found my work was cut out for me. Being a new piece of hardware it was challenging to find many unbiased sources and references. I mainly had to settle for articles displaying the technical specifications for the hardware. After wringing my sources dry, I was left with about 200 to 300 words short of the requirements. I decided the best way to remedy the situation would be to create another, shorter article to augment my lacking word-requirement. Using a method similar to how I found the Slim Phatty, I chose another digital instrument. This instrument was a synthesizer in the shape of a guitar: the Misa Kitara. With this, I was able to easily bulk out my overall word length with ease by using templates I had already established in my Slim Phatty article.

Typical though this process may have been, it was often times an excursion into unconventional writing practice. Before I even wrote my articles, I examined existing articles that related heavily to the ones I wanted to write. For example, I read pages on synthesizers when brainstorming for my own synthesizer articles. In doing so, I picked up on the type of language and even structure I should use to approach them. A piece by James Porter from our textbook Writing About Writing comes to mind. In it, Porter makes the case that all writing is “intertextual”. In other words, all writing is made up of bits and pieces borrowed from a variety of sources to which the writer is exposed. The writer then assembles these borrowed pieces to create their own unique work (Porter). This is very true to my experience, for I wished to sound as professional and as credible as possible, and as such, opted to use similar formats and phrasing to the existing pages I had examined. This included how I presented the information, as well as the use of tables and “info-boxes” to display technical information for the electronics. A distinction should be made between this process and overtly copying work that has already been created. The driving point behind intertextuality is that while you may borrow bits of other writings, you incorporate and contextualize them in ways unique to you and your message.

As I mentioned above, writing for Wikipedia necessitates a completely unbiased tone. Obviously Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, which brings with it distinct connotations for the type of writing and tone that should be used. This was especially tricky, as every writing and work of a writer has his or her own personal bias and tone to it; a point made by Donald Murray in his article All Writing is Autobiography (Murray). Murray describes at length how unique and personal any work by a writer is to the writer in question. Thus, a new obstacle had been created. Thankfully, the remedy was simply to be mindful of the style and tone of my work, and to sound as “encyclopedic” as possible.

When it comes to writing, even the most informal of work is multifaceted, with at least some degree of review and rewriting occurring. The method for authoring Wikipedia pages is an intensely multifaceted process on several levels. As with any writing, you must first have a draft of sorts to work from. Then, you must proceed through the Wiki article creation wizard. Most people will also work from their personal “user space” to see what the article will look like before submission. After a lengthy session of toil and work refining your page, making sure citations are correctly in place is the last step. You must incorporate your sources and citations to make it a legitimate article, as your page won’t stand up to scrutiny if proper sources aren’t in place. All of this finally culminates in the submitting of the article, which opens it up to the public for review from editors on the website; any one of whom may shoot down your piece and have it removed from the published pages of Wikipedia. Looking through an articles history page can divulge a wealth of insight into the creation of an article. This is a profound luxury that isn’t available in many (if any) forms of writing. This can benefit other writers/editors, as it allows for one to examine the “life” of an article and see how far it has progressed and evolved since its inception: creating writing that is so dynamic, that it is essentially alive. I say this, as articles never stop being edited. Some of the oldest articles on Wikipedia have edits numbering in the tens of thousands and spanning up to a decade of time. As we saw in class, the page for Shakespeare has been edited an inordinate number of times and as early as 2001.

What do I have to say after authoring two Wiki pages? I stand by my comment at the beginning of this paper. Wikipedia is undeniably a fountain of information that can (and has already) put an infinite amount of knowledge at the fingertips of any whom would choose to investigate its many articles and pages. Some question the credibility of a knowledgebase operated by anyone and everyone. To that point, I recall Joseph M. Williams’ article The Phenomenology of Error, which discusses the nature of error as social construct. Here, he essentially argues in favor of the validity of language usage that a rigid interpretation of a language may consider “incorrect”, stating that they are the products of society and almost a higher (and acceptable) form of slang (Williams). Not only that, but Wiki pages are kept open for constant and perpetual revision; allowing for the accumulation of additional knowledge by means of new pages and new revisions to existing pages. This gives it, and similarly socially geared websites, a major edge when compared to more traditional sources of information. That people can contribute new pages, and countless others may come behind them and polish their fledgling article to a professional sheen is simply remarkable.

Murray, Donald. "All Writing is Autobiographical." Writing About Writing. Ed. Elizabeth Wardle and Doug Downs. Boston: Bedford/St.Martin’s, 2011. 57-65. Print.

Porter, James. "Intertextuality and the Discourse Community." Writing About Writing. Ed.    Elizabeth Wardle and Doug Downs. Boston: Bedford/St.Martin’s, 2011. 87-96. Print.

Williams, Joseph M. "The Phenomenology of Error." Writing About Writing. Ed. Elizabeth Wardle and Doug Downs. Boston: Bedford/St.Martin’s, 2011. 38-54. Print.

"Shitty First Drafts"

Anne Lamont’s essay is essentially a response to an assumption made by many writers, and especially new writers. This assumption is that when a talented writer sits down to write, they simply start cranking out their work in its developed form straight onto the page. Why this is such a prevalent misconception isn’t entirely certain, but nonetheless it exists. Lamont firmly believes the actual process of all writing to begin with the titular shitty first draft. She asserts that even established writers must simply get out any and all thoughts onto the page; things that most likely won’t be used in the end. You are to write anything and everything even if it accumulates into several pages. Through this, the writer gains a sort of foundation that can be refined and particularly effective or desirably “bits” can be removed. Lamont beautifully illustrates this point:

“There may be something in the very last line of the very last paragraph on page six that you love … but there was no way to get to this without first getting through the first five and a half pages.”

Wikipedia’s history function comes to the rescue once again in our learning. The early entries into the article history are, in many ways, the shitty first drafts of any article. They show the early stages and even the first stage. In many ways, the earlier stages of a wiki article could be likened to a shitty first draft as many users will pass through and edit and revise as time goes by.

Revision and Writing

There were several metaphors that closely resembled my process in general, not just the Wikipedia project. These included the refining, casting and recasting, and finally painting. The common theme between these styles is the dynamic writing and near constant state of revision. From the first sentence, until submission/publication: revision and alterations occur whenever it is deemed appropriate. I enjoy this style, as it is simply what occurs naturally to me. I am perpetually rereading, altering, and augmenting that which I have already written.

From Wikipedia, I think we can see first hand how dynamic a piece of writing can be; especially with the potential for perpetual revision and alteration. The author will write and revise until he/she feels the article is complete (at least for the time being). Once their article is posted, others will come in to review and scrutinize; making adjustments and revisions of their own. Furthermore, additional writers will come in and add more information as time goes by, necessitating additional revision and review from more editors.

By examining Wikipedia, I think we ultimately learn how dynamic a process writing, and specifically revision, can be. The revision and rewriting is happening all the time in a wiki. And to a certain extent, the same can apply to our own works. The revisions and alterations of a wiki page are innumerable in most cases: ranging from a minute change in phrasing to a drastic overhaul of an entire section of an article. Revisions occur all the time and could potentially occur for decades to come.