Dissecting Discourses
Mechanisms to acquire a Discourse
Everyone has a unique set of ways to do things and express themselves. In addition, everybody has a different set of values. The union of an individual’s behavior and values is recognized by James Gee as a Discourse in his journal, “LITERACY, DISCOURSE, AND LINGUISTICS: INTRODUCTION.” A Discourse is a set of beliefs properly paired with behavior to express a personality.
“Discourses are ways of being in the world; they are forms of life which integrate words, acts, values, beliefs, attitudes, and social identities as well as gestures, glances, body positions, and clothes.” (Gee 7).
The Different Types of Discourses
Primary vs. Secondary Discourses
There are two types of Discourses, Primary and Secondary. The Primary Discourse is contingent on the interactions each individual experiences during his or her life in the household. It is used to first understand our environment.
Secondary Discourses are additional Discourses imperative for applying oneself outside his or her home. Gee claims that secondary Discourses are, “institutions in the public sphere, beyond the family and immediate kin and peer group” (8).
Dominant vs. Non-Dominant
Secondary Discourses are further divided into two categories, dominant and non-dominant Discourses. Dominant secondary Discourses tend to give desired social goods such as wealth and status while non-dominant Discourses are centered around social networks.
What it takes to get another
Acquiring another social group can be very challenging. It is said that there are no middle standpoints in gaining a Discourse, “You are either in it or you’re not” (Gee 9). However, both Gee and Amy Cuddy in her TED talk, “Your body language shapes who you are” both present a variety of successful examples of how a person can attain another Discourse.
Relating Helps
Learning a Discourse opens up the opportunity to understand additional Discourses. The acquisition of Discourses is much like learning languages. Like a main language, the aspects of a primary can positively transfer to the Discourse that is being learned. Gee describes the use of one Discourse to better understand another as “meta-knowledge.” Meta-knowledge is, “seeing how the Discourses you have already got relate to those you are attempting to acquire” (Gee 13).
Not only can meta-knowledge be used to learn a secondary, but it also reflects on the primary Discourse.
“exposure to another language, can cause you to become consciously aware of how your first language works (how it means). This “meta-knowledge” can actually make you better able to manipulate your first language” ( Gee 12).
Amy Cuddy’s ted talk, “Your body language shapes who you are,” is exemplary for this version of meta-knowledge. In Princeton, Cuddy struggled with public speaking. After arduously applying herself to talks, she was able to not only pick up a new Discourse, but she was able to re-evaluate her primary Discourse. Cuddy herself noticed this,
“Oh my gosh, I’m doing it. Like, I have become this. I am actually doing this” (17:02).
Prior to her acceptance into college, an accident impaired her overall IQ. Her loss her identity of impressive intellect was crippling. After she obtained her secondary Discourse was she able to regain her confidence and primary identity. Meta-knowledge is a great first strategy to entering and understanding Discourses. However, after first exposure additional methods are needed to fully grasp a Discourse.
“Faking” it further
The ability to fake is imperative to moving further into a Discourse. After relating to the primary, a person needs to improvise in order to cover the new aspects of the targeted Discourse that he or she are not familiar with. Described as “mushfaking,” a person must, “make do with something less when the real thing is not available” (Gee 13).
Especially when learning a new Discourse, mushfaking is essential to “make do”. Amy Cuddy was able to incorporate mushfaking to acquire a new Discourse. When she first began teaching at Princeton, she struggled speaking in front of a large crowd. Overwhelmed, Cuddy told her advisor, “I am not supposed to be here. I am an impostor” (17:02). In response, her adviser said, “You are going to fake it” (Cuddy 17:02)
After taking her adviser’s advice to mushfake, Cuddy was able to make do until she fully immersed herself into the Discourse. As a lesson from her experience Cuddy says,
“don’t fake it till you make it. Fake it till you become it” (19:14)
An individual in the faking phase of learning a Discourse may be an “imposter” but they are in a necessary stage of acquiring a Discourse.
A Disagreement with Gee…
This contradicts Gee’s mechanics of Discourse acquisition. Gee calls those who cannot fully display a discourse as, “a pretender or a beginner” (9). That may be true, but in Cuddy’s eyes, it is one of the vital steps a person must take to learn an identity.
When she was working at Princeton, she struggled with public speaking in her classes. Her advisor told her, “You’re going to do every talk that you ever get asked to do. You’re just going to do it and do it and do it, even if you’re terrified and just paralyzed and having an out-of-body experience, until you have this moment where you say, “Oh my gosh, I’m doing it. Like, I have become this. I am actually doing this.” (Cuddy 17:02). Pretending to have a discourse should not be looked down on.
Even though they are faking, practicing is the only way gain a Discourse that is unlike the primary Discourse. But where does a person practice a Discourse?
Nurturing the Discourse
Apprenticeships in a proper environment are essential to practice and enter a social group. The reason why everybody enters a primary Discourse easily is because it is practiced daily early on in the household. However, a person must venture out of his or her home-based community in order to expose him or herself to additional Discourses. The need for an outside apprenticeship to enter a social group was especially apparent in Cuddy’s experience. Daunted over her new position at Princeton, Cuddy was uncomfortable in her new environment. However, after faking and tweaking she was able to enter her new community’s Discourse through practice and interaction.
Cuddy’s experience showed that the classroom was an important factor to entering her new Discourse. This supports Gee’s statement that, “classrooms must be active apprenticeships in “academic” social practices” (13). For those to successfully gain Discourses, they must practice in beneficial environments that provides apprenticeships. A student approached Cuddy with a similar difficulty participating in class. Cuddy advised her to participate saying,
“you’re going to go into the classroom, and you are going to give the best comment ever” (18:07).
The student’s later success showed that apprenticeships are important to learning a Discourse. Her classroom opened the opportunity for her to experience and become part of the classroom’s social group.
The Importance of Discourses
But so what? Why should people care about entering new Discourses? There are many incentives other than societal norms that propels people to join new social groups.
To create a magnificent persona
Additional Discourses creates people is by giving them individuality. As said by Gee, “The various Discourses which constitute each of us as persons are changing and often are not fully consistent with each other” (7). Every person germinate his or her own values and morals that separates them as individuals. Many of people’s core values evolve as they pick up new Discourses. This creates a more mature and abled person. As well as individuality, a person needs to have appropriate values to be accepted into their communities. Secondary Discourses are needed to keep behavior appropriate for society.
A “Discourse leads to the incorporation of a set of values and attitudes (about gender and the naturalness of middle-class ways of behaving) that are shared by many other dominant Discourses in our society” (Gee 17).
Through secondary Discourses, people pick up shared values that are accepted by society. Secondary Discourses are needed in order for people to adapt into new surroundings. They are valued to better round an individual so he or she can thrive in their environment.
In order to survive
People strive to enter additional Discourses in order to better enhance themselves. Primary Discourses are first used to understand the world and learn basic human interaction. As individuals develop, they are exposed to more of their surrounding communities. It is imperative for them to enter new social groups in order to better adapt to their environment. Otherwise, they will become unsuccessful. Gee explains when he says,
“Social groups will not, usually,give their social goods-whether these are status or solidarity or both-to those who are not “natives” or “fluent users” (10).
Such social goods at stake are social interactions. A person disassociated involved in no additional social groups creates a stale individual. On an extreme level, such non pro activity can ill advertise a person for a stable job and can ultimately lead to financial instability.
Discourses are needed to enrich people’s self values and equip them for the real world. Before one fully expresses their Discourse, they first need to relate the Discourses that they already have to those that they are acquiring. After, they must mushfake until they become fully acclimated to their new Discourse. Prolific environments are essential practice grounds for apprenticeships. Entering new social groups is difficult indeed, but through Gee and Cuddy’s methods it is possible to enter new Discourses.
