A Lifetime of Knowledge
“Knowledge is the food of the Soul”- Plato
Language, politics, aspects of the economy, and simply the way a person lives are Discourses. James Paul Gee introduces the concept of Discourses as a critical portion of a persons life. They help to build an individual's personality and shape the way one moves through life. The process of getting in isn’t a short one, but rather an exploration of knowledge.
Filtering
Knowledge and understanding are two key aspects one must have about a Discourse in order to be accepted. Throughout our everyday lives we gain parts and pieces of information that help us to enter or stay in a given Discourse. At first we get our understanding of how the world works from our primary Discourses: our home lives. The remainder of or knowledge comes from the various secondary Discourses; which we acquire through our everyday activities like school or work. Often ideas and theory’s we learn play a role in the way we see the world work or our primary Discourse, and this is seen through Gee’s concept of filtering. Parts of a persons secondary Discourses, like how we form sentences correctly or what is appropriate to wear to work affect how we are at home. Often children begin to talk in a more sophisticated manner and we used appropriate work wear as a standard for professional environments.
Being in a Discourse means a person takes the basic skills of listening, observing, and applying what we have just seen, and use that to our advantage. In other words we use the being, valuing, doing aspect of discourses to get into the secondary discourses of our lives. Cuddy supports this idea when she reflects on the experience she had when she was 19:
“When I was 19, I was in a really bad car accident… I woke up in a head injury rehab ward, and I had been withdrawn from college, and I learned that my IQ had dropped by two standard deviations…They say, ‘ You’re not going to finish college….’” (Cuddy 16:06)
Cuddy’s experience was one like no other, she was in a Discourse and then she wasn’t. She had to relearn all the ways and knowledge she had gained and make do with what she had left. And low and behold Cuddy’s concept of “fake it till you become it” comes to life. She used the information she had left and what she could remember about getting into the Discourse to ultimately re-enter.She used her meta-knowledge to convince not only her self but those around her that she was part of the Discourse.
Through the real-life example presented by Cuddy and the contextual evidence from Gee, it is clear that in order to join any discourse one must be able to filter. By filtering we develop a standard for learning, we use the simple skills that we gained from our friends and loved ones to help us grow as humans.
What it means to be in..
The knowledge needed to be in a Discourse is far from consistent. An individual must first acquire the specific set of knowledge associated with the Discourse they are pursuing, in order to have and understanding of the Discourse. Gee explains this as the “..saying(writing)-doing-being-valuing-believing combinations” (6) of a given Discourse. A person must effortlessly perform all of the necessary parts of the discourse, lacking just one of the characteristics can make a person, by Gee’s definition, not in the discourse:
“Discourses (and therefore literacy) are not like languages in one very important regard. Someone can speak English, but not fluently. However, someone cannot engage in a Discourse in a less than fluent manner. You are either in it or you’re not” (9).
Gee explains here that being in a discourse is an exclusive privilege. There’s no way in from the outside, there is a clear line between those in the discourse and the “ pretenders”(10) in the words of Gee. In this way Cuddy’s ideas and research disagree. She focuses on the idea of faking the knowledge to help better your experience.
When one is able to “fake” an understanding of a Discourse, they will ultimately increase their ability to not only be seen as a part of the discourse but also join the discourse. A person isn’t simply in it or not, there are in between stages. One must learn how to interact with others in that discourse. Whether or not the means “faking it until you become it” or simply becoming an “apprentice”: there’s no clear cut way in. In this way Gee contradicts himself. Being an apprentice is the learning stage of a Discourse. Making your way into a Discourse requires one to learn and gain the knowledge necessary to understand the ways of the Discourse. There has to be in-between stage, a Discourse is not clear cut.
Life without Discourse…
There would be no one knowledgeable enough in one respective aspect of life to advance medicine or rule a country. Being a part of a functioning discourse means much more than being a politician or a pro athlete, it’s the ability to face the challenge of new concepts head on and stick with it until you know the information well enough to share it with others. There’s no easy way into a discourse, but no one really stops joining new ones. Discourses grow with us, they are a never ending fountain of knowledge. To jump in and pretend you can swim and hope for the best.
