PostNYCcCC

About a month ago we discussed and defined several terms that I—at least—used as synonyms without understanding each terms nuanced meaning prior to our discussion. The terms were acculturate, appropriate, cultural dissemination, co-opt, and assimilation. In this week’s reading, we get another term that belongs to a group of terms I am worried that I do not use technically and lump together. In fact, I am pretty sure I have used these terms inappropriately in conversation but was found to be more intelligent in the particular situation because of my in-appropriation—one of those “I never thought of it like that” responses or mistakes I will always take credit for (my ethos is a delicate rhetorical flower). The term I refer to comes from the Lyons article. He gets the term—interpretive communities—from Stanley Fish. The term reminds me of discourse communities, affinity groups, and communities of practice.

Definitions I have found online and otherwise
Discourse community= a ‘discourse community’ is a
group of people who share certain language-using practices” (Bizzell).

Affinity groups=Learners constitute an “affinity group," that is, a group that is bonded primarily through shared endeavors, goals, and practices and not shared race, gender, nation, ethnicity, or culture (Gee).

Interpretive Community=social groups and institutions whose discursive formations, rules of intelligibility, worldviews and meaning-making laws limit the sense we can make of any object—a poem, a gesture, a fish (Lyons 93).

Communities of Practice=The concept of a community of practice (often abbreviated as CoP) refers to the process of social learning that occurs when people who have a common interest in some subject or problem collaborate over an extended period to share ideas, find solutions, and build innovations (Wiki).

What I read as a major difference or categorization possibility with these terms is that some are captive or they are not by choice—interpretive communities and possible discourse communities. Affinity Groups and Communities of practice, rather, involve participation and choice. I am not sure how to distinguish between terms within these categories, however.

To bookend this first topic, I return to the discussion we had a few months ago distinguishing terms. I am uncomfortable with Flynn’s language that distinguishes transculturation events. She claims to be summarizing Lyons and Pratt so maybe my problem is with their conceptualizations. Anyway, she writes, “Minorities select and invent from the dominant culture, and the dominant culture, in turn, appropriates the marginalized group’s cultural forms” (116). Specifically, I dislike how she uses a term—appropriation—that has permissions attached to it with terms—select and invent—that do not have permissions denoted. What is Flynn getting at here? Is it implied that minorities culturally disseminate from the dominant culture?

Another issue I have with Flynn involves the notion of outbursts (“a moment when the often latent conflicts among faculty and among students, between students and faculty, or within individuals bubble to the surface, erupting in class discussions, small-group work, office hour conversations…an outburst is a response to a conflict that expresses a person’s orientation to that conflict and to the social and political conditions that underlie it” (xi). I am not sure I fully understand the concept because writing an argument is an outburst. Discussion is always an outburst. I am not sure how her example of dealing “with the pervasive conservatism of many Michigan Tech students” (117) is an example of an outburst. The student, judging by Flynn’s description appears to be following directions. Is it an outburst because Flynn’s lens conflicts with it? If we consider Bizzell’s adding to the term power relations them does Flynn’s example qualify as an outburst because the dominant group—Flynn and the class—disagree with the minority—the student?

Stephen Dilks is arrogant. I dislike his superior tone—“Thus she has a good go at complicating received understandings of ‘the other,’ recovering it for use as a triadic term…” (162). In defense of Starke-Meyerring’s arguments and offense to Dilks who says, “This reductiveness and hostility, of course, is produced by a media-dominated culture that is hugely invested in monculturalism, monolingualism, monopolitics, and monoeconomics” (163), I add “of course, it is not just the media that does this but is the schools and the way in which multiculturalism is perceived and taught in the academy.”

NewYORK

I can’t help but wonder at Gee’s rhetorical sorcery when he describes an enchanting moment in learning. He types, dictates, or writes, “If learners in the classrooms carry learning so far as to take on a projective identity, something magic happens—a magic that cannot, in fact, take place in playing a computer game. The learner comes to know that he or she has the capacity, at some level, to take on the virtual identity as a real-world identity” (115). When Gee conjures up these identity categories, I want to believe him and see this magic, but I feel (for you, Bizzell) that the identity categories are false. I especially dislike the distinction between virtual and real-world identities. Virtual is not really virtual. These are experiences. These are real-world identities where real-choices are made. He defines a “real-world identity” as “my own identity as ‘James Paul Gee,’ a non-virtual person playing a computer game. Of course in the real world I have a good many different non-virtual identities. I am a professor, a linguist…” (112) and I’ll add a video-game player whose Arcanum character is a half-elf named Bead. A virtual identity is “one’s identity as a virtual character in the virtual world of Arcanum” (111). Now I am not sure where exactly “one’s identity as a virtual character” ends and the “real world-identity begins.” It seems that the major difference between a virtual and real-world identity is the presence of a computer.

I am at a computer typing or was typing this for my class blog. So please help me analyze this in using Gee’s terms—virtual, real-world, and projective. Where am I virtual, real-world, and projective? Also, since I have produced and created this blog, I have product. What type of products are created in each type of identity? I ask because I am curious about how to assess the magic in a projective identity.

In “Hybrid Academic Discourse” Bizzell is also charming especially when she writes, “Thus, unlike a neighborhood in which people encounter one another face to face, a discourse community casts its discursive net over boundaries of geographic location, cultural background, socio-economic status and even time—the dead may participate in discourse communities if their ideas and their texts survive” (10). The “dead” participating. NO WAY. Bizzell is creating a relationship that does not necessarily exist—at least in my paradigm. Is this assumption that we are actually getting what the dead have said a virtual reality being created? In other words, we never really know what anyone ever said or meant thought we may be close. But add on geo, cultural, and temporal differences, then it seems even more difficult to determine what they meant or even said. Anyway, what I mean is and what this charmed me into thinking is does act of writing and reading mean that we are creating virtual realities? Keep in mind Gee’s definitions.

I am toasting ya’ll right now at Paul Simon’s Birthday party at the Hilton in New York City. He is singing “Kodachrome” for ya’ll.

Did I just create reality? Paul

Whattya know it, I am not a poet. But I am a person who is troubled by a couple parts of Gee’s narrative. I am a person who tried poetry to express him/myself about this issue. In my extended, non-poetic argument, I wonder when considering how certain economic classes are better prepared for school because of familiarity with or situated literacy in academic language, I have got to wonder if there is more to it than just discursive literacy at play here. I mean what about the practice or the situatedness in sitting for long amounts of time like one would in a classroom environment. What about a situated literacy regarding how one is allowed to interact with an adult as we have previously read about? Maybe I am being a bit unfair. Gee is emphasizing verbal ability, but I do recall he does mention the importance of modes of communication, he does have a chapter called Simulations and Bodies, and he does have a good quote about the body, “Don’t just check bodies at the door like guns in the old West” (39). But, but, but, if practicing (not sure if this is the right verb) situated literacy is the way to go to promote or improve or generate literacy, I’ve got to know is it really possible to create this in a classroom in which all residents are captive? Gee’s examples where students are situatedly learning and manipulating portals, it seems as if choice is always part of the equation. Pokemon, Deus Ex, World of War Craft, and THE Jim Haendiges’ baseball cards are all choices. The learners are choosing—I think Gee notes this too—to learn. They can also choose not to learn or quit or try a different game. In other words, they are not captive. So I’ve got to ask, “Does being a captive in a school affect the practice of situated learning?” And “Does the physical layout of a school affect this practice?” And, lastly, does anyone feel that Gee gives a compelling answer for these young people when he asks, “Why school?”

When I called James Paul Gee on the phone last night (his number is on the Internet), why did Kenneth Burke answer?
Gee:
“I argue that throughout this book that learning is about identity and identification” (37).
“So something has to come even before good learning principles. What has to come before is motivation for extended argument” (60).
Burke:
“you persuade a man only insofar as you can talk his language by speech, gesture, tonality, order, image, attitude, idea, identifying your ways with his” (not at school so source is http://bradley.bradley.edu/~ell/burke.html).
Rhetoric is “The use of words by human agents to form attitudes or induce actions in other human agents” (http://bradley.bradley.edu/~ell/burke.html)

Would a melding of these intellectual giants reveal anything for further study?
Examples:
I argue that throughout this book that rhetoric is about identity and identifcation
Learned=Rhetoric is learning
You learn a man only insofar as you can talk his language by speech, gesture, tonality, order, image, attitude, idea, identifying your ways with his
Rhetoriced=Learning is rhetoric
Overall reflexive arc: R(hetoric)—M(otivation)—L(earning)—R.

DEAR

Dearest, Wisest, Kennedy,

What happened? Why would you compare “Eskimos” courtship to red deer stags? Why don’t you understand that “Eskimo quarrels over women: insults, threatening gestures, and fights in the form of butting or wrestling contests” (460) are not different from ivory tower intellectual man quarrels over women. And if there is a difference I would say it is in medium—maybe that’s the message you are trying to make here. In your wisdom you assumed we would understand you mean that certain mediums of communication have taken on meanings as communication has changed. Some have come to mean prestige and others primitive.

Apologies—I just needed to re-interpret. If I don’t my world will be destroyed.

Truly,
Paul Muhlhauser

Dear Mr. Lyons,
After reading and agreeing with the information you presented about how Kennedy’s generalization that locates Indians in a subordinate position in the Great Chain of Speaking, I must know how your use of Indian rhetoric, Indian sovereignty, and an Indian “we” does not commit a similar categorical error. I think I am confused because of how you agree with the idea that Indians think of sovereignty in terms of peoples, and how when you speak of Indians it is always Indians and not Indian peoples. Am I being ridiculous? Maybe there is no other way to write about this.
Another item that troubles me is your assumption about Indian voice and that it “Ideally, that voice would often employ Native language” (462) because “ ‘Language in particular helps to decolonize the mind…Thinking in one’s own cultural referents leads to conceptualizing in one’s own world view which in turn leads to disagreement with and eventual opposition to dominant ideology” (462). I read Sapir-Whorf’s ideas about language here and it frightens me because it reads as if you assume languages mean there are different kinds of thinking. Also, couldn’t it just as easily be typed, “language in particular helps to re-colonize the mind”?
Lastly, I am curious about locations in your conception of rhetoric that are sovereign. Your examples are legal examples of Indian—not federal—law. I am curious to know if your conceptions of rhetorical sovereignty include style sovereignty and genre sovereignty. I wonder about this because your examples use legalese. I read that though they are promoting and generating new ideas, they just seem to be doing the same things the same way as any other legal writing. At any rate, I want to know if in the generation of rhetorical sovereignty for schools, the medium of rhetorical sovereignty is not rhetorically sovereign. You define rhetorical sovereignty as “the inherent right and ability of peoples to determine their own communicative needs and desires in this pursuit, to decide for themselves the goals, modes, and languages of public discourse” (194).

Sincerely,

Paul Muhlhauser

Dear Jim Haendiggity,

I appreciate that Lyons includes in his definition of rhetorical sovereignty “modes.” I appreciate this because I am beginning to think all types of communication can be considered material. What I mean is—and here is the tough one to buy—there is no discursive. All text is non-discursive or bodily. Even writing when read produces feelings—affects the corporeal. Haendiggity, help me out here. Is this worth anything? I am trying to go dissertation here.

Love,

Paul

Mao
This may be a misinterpretation of what he means by “we.” So when this “we” happens it may be the beginning of the end for my understanding of this reading. Mao writes, “That is why we do not find fortune cookies in restaurants in mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, or Europe at all—and we don’t feel cheated, either, for not eating them at the end of meals over there” (430). If I am part of the we of he, then I vehemently disagree.

I would feel cheated. Cheated because of a slew of experiences and assumptions created about Chinese restaurants in the US. And, regardless of whether or not I feel cheated by this exclusion, I doubt I would agree with the continuation of Mao’s fortune cookie discussion especially in the continuation of his “cheated” idea where he writes, “In a sense, Chinese fortune cookies become a product of contradictions: they are born of two competing traditions and made viable—not to mention their tastiness—in a border zone where two cultures come into contact with one another…” (430). I have trouble understanding how these two uses of fortune cookies (describes earlier on the same page) as a contradiction. Perhaps, when I felt cheated at a restaurant in China, I might have viewed this as a contradiction—how can it be possible for American Chinese restaurants to do this when authentic (“real” Chinese) restaurants do not (this assumption denies Chinese American culture/rhetoric or places it as lesser—a poser). But if I did not feel cheated and was part of that we of he, then I suppose I would not view it as a contradiction because Chinese American restaurants (cultures) are not the same as Chinese restaurants (cultures). What contradiction is Mao writing about?

Getting a Facial: A brief comment on face
Western interpretation=a public-self image that people across discourse and culture want to claim for themselves in face-to-face communication” (435).
==> Positive=the desire that one’s wants be appreciated and approved of (435).
==> Negative=the basic claim to freedom of action and freedom from imposition (435).
Mao’s interpretation of Chinese face=a public image that the self likes to claim or enhance from others in a communicative event
==> Lian=respect of the group for a person with good moral reputation and by embodying the confidence of society in the integrity of ego’s moral character…it becomes both a social sanction for enforcing moral standards and an internalized sanction (435).
==> Mianzi=connoting prestige or reputation which is either achieved through getting on in life or ascribed (or even imagined, I might add) by members of one’s own community. Mianzi in this sense becomes a property obtained and owned by the individual in a public space (435-36).
I get the feeling we are being taken on a rhetorical joyride here. Very little time is devoted to developing the notion of Western face and how it does have to do with “society” and “members of community.” I am unclear what the differences are regarding all these faces and wonder if it is a question of motivation regarding face maintenance. Please help me understand.

Bizzel
I wonder why she chooses such dramatic examples of hybrid discourse and the use of rationality as a rhetorical strategy in unequal rhetorical “games.” In other words, I read her as trying to show how power differences in discourse mean that no discursive playing field is level or fair. Yet her main example in this work to showcase this inequity is so far removed from any real-world experience my students (my assumption to deal with) are having I find this point is lost. Her example does not fit what she claims to be doing.

intercultural communications
I want to remind many that media is not necessarily forced down our throats anymore. It is a choice. What does it mean to choose a Fox broadcast over a CNN broadcast? Does this mean we are constructing (controlling) our identities and ideologies—not the media?

What does it mean when people choose to represent stereotypes?

And I still want to know: Considering Hall’s notion of a “grammar of race” (103), I was wondering if race can be defined as a symbol system. Can it? What does it read like?

out of conTEXT

Lunsford Interviews Anzaldúa
Some of Anzaldúa’s—or at least Lunsford’s interpretations—ideas do not make sense to me. Please help me understand. When Lunsford writes that Anzaldúa means, “it is possible to take in the labels of society to transform them, to find all others in one’s self; one’s self in all others” (44), I am unsure how this paradigm works. By transforming, does she mean creating new semantics from existing symbols and symbol systems? By finding all others in one’s self mean some kind of generalization about being human—that we all have something inherently in common? What is finding one’s self in all others? Is this projection?

Another thing I am confused about is the notion that we should “tolerate contradictions” and “tolerate ambiguity.” Is it fair to tolerate in all conditions? For instance do we tolerate a mother-in-law’s insistence that she loves her daughter-in-law’s visual image in a couple’s portrait though later the son finds this image ripped in two so that the son is now the featured visual image? And here’s me being silly—does contradiction bring to mind binary oppositions? How about “multradictions”?

Also, when I read “Until I am free to write bilingually and to switch codes without having to translate…my tongue will be illegitimate” (46), I want to know more about this context. Does this mean free to be published and earn money? Is her freedom capitalistic? Or is it more a comment on educational systems and the privilege of academic discourse?

Finally, for one who seems to be a social constructionist, I find it funny she states in comparing her sense of identity to students states, “ You and I have already passed mid-life. We can have a sense of identity and of self that is not so much based on other people’s reactions anymore” (61). It is not just age that has done this. It is her success and her power, which allows for this ability to this sense of identity. Moreover, this indifference to “people’s reactions” is not accurate. My assumption regarding identity and self is that it is always informed by audience—other people’s reactions.

Monroe’s Works
What is “critical literacy” exactly? And whatever “critical literacy” is is it an occidental construct?
I was thinking about how I would add to the classroom implications section. I think that instead of just talking and writing about movies, students should storyboard and create movies. I don’t know. I reckon instead of being vicarious about movies, it might help to experience this sort of textual production. If access to technology is a problem, I think plays, theatre, acting might be another way to approach writing for those with a more developed TV or film literacy.

intertextual communications
Considering Hall’s notion of a “grammar of race” (103), I was wondering if race can be defined as a symbol system. Can it? What does it read like?

It read like an instruction manual and it read like you could replace the phrase “real Indian” with “real country club member” or “real cheerleader” regarding many of the stereotypical behaviors they were describing. Weider and Pratt’s generalizations of Indian behaviors—for example, the silent Indian—appear to violate a Holliday, Hyde and Kullman’s suggestions regarding intercultural communication. It doesn’t read like Weider and Pratt were “aware of the media, political and institutional influences in our own society which lead us to see people from other cultural backgrounds in a certain way” and they didn’t “see through these images and fictions when we encounter people from other cultural backgrounds, and always try to consider alternative representations” (41). That insider troubles me though. I feel influenced by that credibility—not sure how to criticize it. Help.

I also disliked the objective writing stance of Weider and Pratt in “On Being a Recognizable Indian Among Indians.” This tone made it seem like an observation about how White American chattiness on an airline is absolute Truth. It really made it seem like they had gone onto airlines and done an empirical study about these communicating differences.

I didn’t read “Concerted Cultivation” this way. I think the less objective tone and the acknowledgment that what they studied came from a limited set of experiences helped. HOWever, I always wish there was a statement that said something like, “This is a study regarding how these families behave when this set of researchers comes to study them and create information.” Here’s me trying to control. Are there any studies being done on families by recording them with video cameras? Would this be a better way to create such information?

I liked the last page of “Concerted Cultivation” because of the importance of context and relativism—“In other historical moments, a ten-year-old child who gave orders to a doctor would have been chastised for engaging in disrespectful and inappropriate behavior” (13).

Bizzel’s essay, I liked the most. I like that she writes, “I don’t think we should encourage them to think that each one has a unique, “authentic-voice” sort of hybrid discourse that he or she must discover” (20 or 56). But I wonder if this works with or against what Corbett writes about. In different words, does not encouraging a hybrid voice lead to resistance to writing? What do you think? Am I crazy? Lastly, she emphasizes the use of imitation in a writing class. Why? What are the assumptions here?

In Bliss’ article, I only have one question. Are any researchers talking to writing teachers from other cultures in an effort to understand how students from other cultures are being instructed? And if this isn’t happening, why not? Seems like it could be a good way to interculturally communicate about writing.

THInk my thoughts

I am going into this with blog prejudice. I am an inexperienced blogger who essentializes blogs as a medium that is less formal than WebCT, printed pages, critical responses, and even writing journals. The bloggles I wear allow me to see blogs as a form of weblishing (web-publishing) diaries where bloggers create stream of consciousness products for their own pleasure. It is a medium centered on the writer and what pleases him or herself where meaning, like audience, is secondary. It is a place profound thoughts have been thinked before and where colonies of rants infest as though digital was sugar.

In more of my words, I know I do not yet understand the nuanced intricacies of the True blog medium. As I stumble and crash around in this culture, I hope to move past the neophyte position called blahgger and become a seasoned veteran—a blogger with a black-belt if you will—whose bloggles adjust and allow me to see acronyms and ☺ ☹ as subtle strokes in the creation of high art.

At any rate, here I go messing around with rhetorical freedom trying to get down from my high horse.

Definitions I need (Please define as you see fit):
Culture
Rhetoric of Authenticity

Confusions:
intercultural communications
They say, “…the aim is not to describe what someone from a particular culture is like and then suggest how to communicate with them” (2). And then they say, “The purpose of this book is to engage in a dialogue with the reader. We do not believe there is only one route to intercultural communication” (3). And after that they say “1.Take what people say…”, “2.Avoid…”, and “3.Understand…” So how should I read this book? Isn’t it a guide? They are describing situations where particular someones from different cultures are meeting in contact zones. And they are explaining what can be done to avoid essentialism and misunnoncommunication.

Also, for a text which discusses the pitfalls regarding essentializing, I was surprised to read the following positivistic statement, “However, Units A2.1, A2.2 will look more deeply at the forces prevent us all from seeing people as they really are” (21). As if it is possible to “see” people as they really are. My question, which I put to you: What would be a better way to say this? What would be constructivist? I refuse to write the refuse I created to answer this question because it is clunky and ugly and I am embarrassed—alright here is an example (it is a blog after all), “…prevent us from seeing people as they appear to be using stereotypes.” Now that I re-read this, I have to say my initial inclination was correct. Help.

Arts of the Contact Zone
Mary Louise Pratt defines contact zones as “social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power, such as colonialism, slavery, or their aftermaths as they lived out in many parts of the world today” (2). Sounds good except—and this is not fully developed especially after reading about the love that was lost in intercultural communications’ cultural dealing section (25-29)—that I want to add something about cultural creation. Unless there is a temporal and numerical clause regarding the establishment of a culture, I think the middle culture described in intercultural communications regardless of how long it exists or how many people are a part of it constitutes the creation of culture through the “meet, clash, and grapple…” But now that I metathink my metathoughts, I wonder if it is worth it to include creation. Maybe contact zone implies creation. What do you think?

HEy,

you may not know this but I am in my fourth semester of the PhD program Rhet/Comp. I have a couple areas of interest regarding my dissertation topic.

One of the ideas regards how the body is created, manipulated, managed through rhetoric by examining egg and sperm “donation” websites.  My favorite is http://www.eggdonor.com


The other idea regards cell-phones—their uses, meanings, and rhetorics.  I reckon I am obsessed with the “need” being manufactured for these cybernetic devices and what they mean to current notions (rhetorics) of public and private.

Through this course, I hope to develop these topics with regards to how non-dominant cultures are discursively responding and adapting to these technologies.  I am also interested in developing a cell-phone pedagogy—not sure what I mean, yet.