Reading Response (Anzaldúa)

In her article, "Tlilli Tlapalli: The Path of the Red and Black Ink," Gloria Anzaldúa explains what writing means to her and how her writing process works. She feels her writing process is deeply influenced by her cultural believes and identity. She likes to think of her stories as performances and not as dead objects.

Her process begins in her soul, she sees these stories before she writes them. In her mind she is the director, the performer and the audiences of these stories. After she 'sees' them, her work is to find the perfect words to describe what she saw.

This piece reminded me of the others readings we've done about identity. First I thought about Cixous who wants women to write as women. In this case Anzaldúa want as to write from our souls and not to ignore our origins and believes. Then I thought about Villanueva who was sad about having forgotten his background an so many stories and memories that he had left behind. Instead of that, Anzaldúa embraces her culture and 'exploit' it in every was possible.

I liked this article because it was short and easy to follow. The topic was interesting and I liked learning about her culture. I was also happy to see that I'm not the only person who sees things in her head before they happen. I have a similar creative process when a make paper mache toys. First I see in my mind what I'm going to do every step of the way and then when I actually do it, it goes mostly the same way as I pictured it in my mind earlier.

APPLYING AND EXPLORING IDEAS

1. Her definition of individual and communal art is based on how culture is shared. She argues that Western culture is becoming more and more selective or elitist. If you want to see a painting or a sculpture you have to go to a museum hence you have to pay. On the other hand, communal art is there to be reached by everybody who wants to get in contact with culture. Like aborigines who painted in caverns.

2. I don't think it would have been more effective. In fact I think that writing that way helps her make her point. Also, it she had written it in a traditional academic format, it wouldn't have  been her writing it, it's not who she is and is not what she believes.

Reading Response (Cixous)

In her article, "VIEWPOINT The Laugh of the Medussa," Helene Cixous has a single objective: she wants women to write as women. She has a strong feminist point of view. She believes that writing is ruled by men and that women are being oppressed by men's literature. She wants women not to be afraid of writing as themselves and showing who they really are and what they really think.
This article made me think about Alexander's transgender theories. It's funny how he wants us to embrace differences and understand others while she is so focussed on separating men from women.
I didn't like this article. It felt like I was reading a transcription of a motivational speech. She makes herself clear but I don't like the way she expresses herself.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION AND JOURNALING
1. The reading didn't make me uncomfortable but I didn't like it. I'm a woman but I feel that her ideas are way too feminist. I can't imagine what men would feel while reading this. I think they would feel uncomfortable or maybe upset in a way.
2. I think she wants women to write without keeping anything to themselves. She thinks that women keep thoughts in secret because they feel ashamed or scared to show what they really think and feel.

Reading Response (Alexander)

In his article, "Transgender Rhetorics: (Re)Composing Narratives of the Gender Body," Jonathan Alexander intends to demonstrate how transgender theories along with feminist compositionist approaches can help us understand the narration of gender as a social construct. He explains that gender is "neither natural nor essential, but rather the performance of self-expression within any dynamic relationship" (201).
Like Gee, Villanueva and Delpit, Alexander focuses on identity and its importance in the writing process. He believes that how we understand ourselves as gay or straight is socially infected by labels that can stigmatize certain behaviors and reify others.

APPLYING AND EXPLORING IDEAS
3. I believe "normally" gendered students can gain a new perspective about transgender lives and maybe relate to them somehow. We can apply this to other social constructs or minorities.
4. He describes gender as a construct because people have an idea of what gender is and most of the times that idea is wrong. I think that gender is both personal and political because, as he explains, "there are many ways to be a human being" (200) and we all get to choose how we live our lives.

Reading Response (Delpit)

In her article, "The Politics of Teaching Literate Discourse," Lisa Delpit explains that even though she agrees in a lot of aspects with Gee's theory and ideas about Discourses, unlike him, she believes that enculturation is not absolutely necessary to acquire a new Discourse. She thinks that students can be taught and Discourses can be acquire in a classroom if the teacher is committed enough to teach them what they need to learn and in the way they need to learn it.
I liked what she said because I felt the same way when I read what Gee thinks about people not being able to completely acquire new Discourses. I like the examples she uses to prove her point and how she shows that people can learn new Discourses without loosing their identities.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION AND JOURNALING
3. I agree with what she's arguing because I believe that people's identity is important but is not the only thing. People should learn about other things besides their own history and values without loosing them and I believe Delpit explains this really well with the examples she uses.
4. She thinks that teachers should acknowledge and respect their students' backgrounds without limiting their work to it. They should be committed to teach.

Reading Response (Villanueva)

In his article, "Memoria Is a Friend of Ours: On the Discourses of Color," Victor Villanueva explains how including our own experiences and memories in our written work can help us consolidate our identity as writers. He argues that "the personal does not negate the need for the academic, it complements, provides an essential element in the rhetorical triangle, an essential element in the intellect-cognition and affect" (174).
Like Gee and Wardle, Villanueva feels that identity and how identity as a writer is formed is really important. In his article he shows how his identity was formed among different Discourses.
I liked what he had to say in this article, I found it interesting and I agree with his point of view but I didn't like the way he chose to say it because it got confusing at times.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION AND JOURNALING
7. Using Gee's concept of Discourse we would think that Villanueva's primary discourse is Puerto Rico but he has lived his whole life in America and Puerto Rico is now a memory. So I would have to say that his primary Discourse is now America and Puerto Rico is a secondary Discourse that he is trying to acquire.

Project 3: Introduction and Conversation

The concept of discourse community is discussed constantly among scholars who try to define it. While Swales talks about discourse communities that share knowledge if rules of the conduct and interpretation of speech, and defines it according six specific characteristic, Gee introduces a much broader term which is Discourse (with capital D). To Gee what's important is not language but saying-doing-being-valuing-believing combinations, language is just another part of the Discourse. Gee introduces the term Discourse as an identity...

When I was a kid, I had never thought about the idea of playing a sport outside of what I did in school during Physical Education hours. I had never heard about field hockey either. Anyway, when I was ten years old, my older sister started playing field hockey in a club near our house and I decided to go too. I loved it from the first moment I hold a stick in my hands. First I learned how to hold the stick, then how to move the ball and push it in the direction I wanted it to go. I learned dribbling, passing and shooting on goal. I also learn to play defense and to be part of a team. And all of the sudden I was part of it, I was part of a team, and I also was part of a new discourse community. Gee would describe it as a Secondary Discourse since my club was one of the non-home-based social institutions with which I interacted. 

Along with learning how to play, I learned new words, new definitions, new uses for words that I already knew. I also learned values and acquire a new way of thinking. I started to think for the team and not just for myself. 

Project 3: topic proposal

For my project 3 I would like to study the discourse community of a field hockey team. I think it would be really interesting to analyze it from my perspective since I've belong to this community since I was ten years old. I intend to analyzing by comparing my experience during my time playing field hockey in Argentina and the last few months as part member of a team in the USA. I plan on interview Rosario Villagra who is my closest friend and is living the same experience at Old Dominion University. Also I’m thinking about interviewing my coaches to compare their ways of belonging to the discourse community.
Just like Branick explains that american football is a discourse community, I also think that field hockey is a discourse community because I can identify Swales’ six necessary characteristics. 1. Field hockey teams have goals that go from doing a certain number of shots on goal per practice to win the national championship.
2. The team has mechanism of intercommunication that includes emails, group text messages, facebook groups, meetings with the coach, conversations during practice, etc.
3. The team uses a participatory mechanism to provide information and feedback. When you are part of a team, saying that you are is not enough. You have to show up to every practice, meeting or game and do your best.
4. and 5. Field hockey possesses a specific genre and it’s own lexis. People who know nothing about this sport most likely won’t know the meaning of terms like drag flick or short corner.
6. Field hockey has a threshold specially at college level, you have to know how to play field hockey to belong to this community.

Reading Response (Devitt et al.)

In their article, "Materiality and Genre in the Study of Discourse Communities," Amy J. Devitt, Anis Bawarshi and Mary Jo Reiff explain how genres determine the exclusivity of the discourse community and how they can sometimes restrict access to these communities. They argue that members and nonmembers of certain community have "different beliefs, interests, and purposes as well as levels of knowledge" (99). To support this idea they use examples of legal practice, medical practice and classrooms to show, among other things, that the difficulty lies in technical language.

Genres is one of the indispensable characteristics that a discourse community must have according to John Swales. He also explains how discourse communities acquire some specific lexis which means that they have their specific lexical items, and as Devitt, Bawashi and Reiff argue, the most difficult barrier is the technical language.

I liked this article because as I was reading it, it reminded me of how I pretend to understand the legal terminology every time I read a book written by John Grisham or how I need doctors to explain their technical terms with metaphors when I watch shows like Dr. House or Grey's Anatomy on TV. 

Reading Response (Branick)

In his article, "Coaches Can Read, Too: An Ethnographic Study of a Football Coaching Discourse Community," Sean Branick explains how sports, more specifically football is an unexplored discourse communitity in which coaches and players not only have to read play books, scouting reports and play-calling sheets but they also need to read people. To support his theory he presents the characteristics explained by Swales in "The Concept of Discourse Community, like goals, lexis and genres, among others. 

Branick also support the idea that literacy in not only about reading and writing. He argues that football literacy is formed by interpersonal literacy like reading players and knowing how to deal with them, and situational literacy like reading the game in the moment so they know how to react.

I like this reading because I was able to relate it with the sport that I play and as I was reading it, I was analyzing my own sport and comparing what I though with what Branick thinks.

Reading Response (Wardle)

In her article, "Identity, Authority, Learning to write in New Workplaces," Elizabeth Wardle explains the struggle that people face and have to adapt to a different way of communication She argues that this process of enculturation depends on how much authority the new worker possesses and in their issues of identity and values. Wardle thinks that both identity and authority are dynamic, they are continually negotiated within communities of practice. She illustrates that learning to communicate in new communities consists in a "process of involvement in communities, of identifying with certain groups and choosing certain practices over others" (533).

This piece reminded me of Gee's idea about joining new Discourses and the process of apprenticeship that it takes, how new workers need to learn not only to write in a specific way but also they learn and acquire new values, manners, etc. 

I didn't find this reading attractive. Instead of that, I found it confusing at some points but the example she sets with her story of "Alan" helped me understand what she was saying.

Reading Response (Gee)

In his article, "Literacy, Discourse, and Linguistics: Introduction," James Paul Gee introduces the term Discourse (with capital D) in which "what is important is not language, but saying-doing-being-valuing-believing combinations" (484). From his point of view, discourse is just "connected stretches of language that make sense" (484).

Unlike others authors like Swales and Porter who focus their attention of interpreting discourse communities in a sense of membership, Gee consider Discourse as people's identity, specially when he talks about our "primary Discourse"(845).

Reading this piece I was able to analyze my current situation living in a different country, speaking a different language and doing different activities. I realized that I'm constantly apprenticing social practices but I haven't mastered this Discourse. For me it's a "mushfake Discourse".

Reading Response (Swales)

John Swales feels the need to clarify what discourse community means and how it is different from the speech community. In his article, "The Concept of Discourse Community," he explains that, unlike the speech community, which is a "community sharing knowledge of rules for the conduct and interpretation of speech" (470), the discourse community is defined by six characteristics. These characteristics make his concept of discourse community broader than Porter's who argues that a discourse community is a "group of individuals bound by a common interest who communicate through approved channels and whose discourse is regulated" (91).

I didn't find this reading interesting but I did like that I was able to identify the different discourse communities that I belong to while I was reading the characteristics that Swales describes.