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.