Reading Response 24

Summary
In her article "Tilli Tlapalli: The Path of the Red and Black Ink," Gloria Anzaldua argues for the importance of  identity in writing.  She puts herself and her past into her own writing, making it much more personal and, in her opinion, better.  She also describes the difference between Western and tribal cultures in terms of art.  Tribal cultures treat their art as living things, but Westerners treat their art as just dead objects.

Synthesis
This article relates to bell hook's article.  Both of them deal with identity, and how putting it in your writing can help you as well as improve your writing.  These articles are not entirely similar, hooks argues more that writing autobiographically will improve your writing and allow you to come to terms with your past while Anzaldua describes how realizing your past will improve your writing

Review
I like this article more than most that we have read because it was short and simple.  It was easy to understand on the surface, although I don't know if I got all of her more complex ideas.  It was difficult for me to summarize and synthesize this piece because it was more about her and less about writing in general.

AE
1.  Western art is more individual than tribal art because tribal art has a similar meaning to all members of the community.  Small tribal communities are closely knit and the members are more likely to have similar belief systems than people of Western communities.  Literacy and art are becoming more individual because they are ways for people to express themselves and as time goes on people are becoming more free to express themselves.

2.  If this piece was written using a traditional method it would have been easier to understand but that would have come with a loss to how personal this article seems.  When I read this article I feel like I understand the author more than if I was reading an article written traditionally.

Reading Response 23

Summary
In her article "VIEWPOINT The Laugh of the Medusa," Helene Cixous argues that women should 'write themselves,' or in other words use their voice in their writing instead of using a male or non-gendered voice.  Writing allows women to discover who they really are, but (like everything else that is important) it has been primarily reserved for men.  Cixous expresses many other views in her article, such as how writing allows you to let go of the past and that men have made women hate women, but this seems to be her main argument.

Synthesis
This article primarily relates to the articles by Flynn and Alexander.  Flynn and Cixous both write about how it is different for men and women to compose.  Cixous has a much more negative attitude towards men and blames them for the fact that women are less confidant in their writing while Flynn focuses on the differences in their composition styles.  Cixous and Alexander both write about gender and sexuality.  While Cixous challenged the classical conception of bisexuality Alexander wrote about what it is like to compose as a transgender person.

Review
I did not like this article at all.  It was extremely confusing for me and I did not understand parts of it.  It is outdated, it was written in 1976 when gender roles were very different.  I do not know what it was like to be  a woman then compared to today so I will not judge Cixous too terribly but she seems to really hate men.  In  paragraph 12 she even wrote "Men have committed the greatest crime against women.  Insidiously, violently, they have led them to hate women, to be their own enemies, to mobilize their immense strength against themselves, to be the executants of their virile needs"(ROW 248).

QD
1.  This piece did make me uncomfortable, but not as much as it may have if I had understood it perfectly.  Cixous seems to really hate men and to stereotype them as all being evil.  I know that that can't actually be true; she must be exaggerating in order to prove her point.  I think that she intended to make the reader uncomfortable because she purposefully wrote a very strong article.

2.  Cixous wants females to write using their own voice, to put themselves into their writing.  She is suggesting that writing can help you discover your own identity.

Reading Response 22

Goals: "to demonstrate how transgender theories can inspire pedagogical methods that complement feminist compositionist approaches to understanding the narration of gender as a social construct; and second, to suggest how such theories might usefully expand and extend-for ourselves and for our students- our analysis of the stories we tell about gender." 9   What is the story we tell about gender?

Summary
In his article "Transgender Rhetoric: (Re)Composing Narratives of the Gendered Body," Jonathan Alexander argues that how we perceive gender is a social construct.  Gender is a set of rules that you are supposed to follow, and if you don't you may be outcast.

Synthesis
This article relates to the articles on identity that we have read this year, such as Wardle's article.  Alexander argues that your gender should have less of an effect on you identity than it does for most people. This article also strongly relates to Flynn's article; Flynn was even mention in it.  Flynn writes about the difference in composing as a man and as a women which directly relates to this piece because it is about gender identity.

Review
I did not like this article, it was way too long.  It seemed to hit on some of the same points multiple times and I think that the author could have made it shorter.  With that being said, I'm not sure if I agree with Alexander or not because I did not completely grasp his argument.

AE
3.  "Normally" gendered students can learn to look at gender as a social construction and begin to realize the things that you do because of you gender.  It can also help them empathize with transgender students.  Both of these are also true for every minority discourse we have read because learning about any group will help you empathize and understand them.

4.  Gender is a construct because it is a way that we look at the world based on what we think.  Men and women are each supposed to act certain, different ways.  People who don't want to act the way that people of their gender are supposed to act are looked down upon.  We have constructed gender roles.  These can also be political because historically men have had more power than woman because they are stereotyped as being better leaders and more intelligent.

Reading Response 21 Delpit

 Summary

 In her article “The Politics of Teaching Literate Discourse” Lisa Delpit argues that it is possible to join a secondary Discourse through schooling.  James Paul Gee wrote that it is only possible to join a Discourse through assimilation and Delpit is rejecting this theory.  She details many instances of poor, uneducated, black students who become successful and able to write well through the classroom.  She argues that since school is how these people joined an academic Discourse it must be possible for school to let someone join a Discourse

Synthesis

This article obviously relates to James Paul Gee’s writing because it is arguing against his ideas.  James Paul Gee writes that you can only join a Discourse through assimilation; interacting with people in the Discourse and adopting the identity of someone in the Discourse.  Delpit writes that it is possible to join a Discourse through studying it.  I think that there is a middle ground between these two authors.  When in school you are interacting with your teachers and classmates who have joined the Discourse, so you are actually assimilating into the classroom and therefore the Discourse.  Smitherman argues for a different way for black students who speak differently (what she calls Black English) to be successful.  She believes that rather than learn how to speak “properly” it is fine for people to maintain their current dialect.

Review

I found this to be more interesting than most pieces.  It was also easier for me to understand than most articles that we have read.  I agree with what she is saying, about how studying and good teachers can make you successful.

QD

3.  I agree with Delpit’s argument.  I have personally known people who came from poor uneducated families (not inner-city kids though) and worked extra hard in school and became very literate and successful.  She is very effective when she gives examples of students that came from parents that didn’t even graduate from high school and became very successful through hard work.  She does not include any counter examples to her argument, such as people in such bad locations that they have not opportunity to join a dominant Discourse, which are sure to exist. 

4.  To help students master dominant Discourses teachers should first “acknowledge and validate students’ home language without using it to limit students’ potential”(186).  They should next figure out 

Reading Response 20

Getting Ready to Read

I have experienced gender differences in class before.  I have had teachers that are sexist.  In middle school my woodshop teacher (an old man) was nicer to the girls in my class and was easier when grading their projects. 

Summary

 In her article “Composing as a Woman” Elizabeth Flynn argues that there are multiple differences in the way that men and women write.  One of her first theories is that when describing a past dilemma, women are more likely to focus on how frightened they felt while men are more likely to emphasize their enjoyment.  Women are also less competitive when they write and mostly write about interaction, connection, or frustrated connection while men write about achievement, separation, or frustrated achievement.

Synthesis

This article does not directly relate to any of the articles that we have read so far.  It covers a similar topic as Wardle; identity.  Flynn describes how your gender influences your identity and therefore how you write.  Wardle describes how your workplace influences your identity and how you write.

QD
1.  In the past, women have not been allowed to write books or express their opinions.  Even after that changed, it was still very frowned upon for women to even express their opinion in public.  This is similar to what happened to minorities because they too had no way of making their voices heard and were pushed down by the majority.

Reading Response 19

Summary
In his article "Memoria is a Friend of Ours: On the Discourses of Color" Victor Villanueva argues that although memoria is a good tool to use in writing, it "simply cannot be adequately portrayed in the conventional discourse of the academy."  He also writes about pathos, ethos,and logos.  They are the Greek words for emotion, credibility, and logic.  Many documents will have two of them and lack the third, but incorporating them all into a document is would make the document much stronger.

Synthesis
This article relates to Elizabeth Wardle's article.  Villanueva details his immigration to the United States and how he assimilated into the culture.  At first he did not know much about how Americans wrote, but eventually he learned and went to college.  In Wardle's article she writes about a man who tries to assimilate into a new workplace.

Review
I didn't mind the other texts in this text, it made the reading shorter and easier.  It was at times hard to follow his argument and I would have to go back to the last essay part and reread it.  Overall this article was better than most that we have read.

QD 7
Villanueva's primary Discourse is that of his Puerto Rican family.  His secondary Discourse would be any that involve English.  His situation is much more complex than this because he barely knows Spanish, the language of Puerto Rico, and he is fluent in English.  Gee would say that he is not in a Puerto Rican Discourse at all, because he argues that you are either fluent in a Discourse or are not part of it at all.

Reading Response 18

Summary
In their article  "Autism and Rhetoric" Paul Heilker and Melanie Yergeau attempt to change the readers view of autism.  They view autism as a rhetoric, or a way of experiencing the world through language.  People with autism don't view language in the same way or give language the same purpose, therefor they use it differently and talk differently.  The authors argue strongly against the current public view of autism as a disorder, rather than a difference.

Synthesis
This article relates to the Wardle article because they both deal with something being viewed as wrong when it is just different.  Wardle discusses how employees must adjust their writing style to fit a new workplace of be viewed as an outcast, even if their writing is good it may be viewed as defective, rather than just different. Heilker and Yergeau argue that autism should also be viewed as a different rhetoric, rather than a wrong one.

Review
I found parts of this article to be simple at some points and more difficult to understand at others.  I think that the concept of autism being a rhetoric is an interesting one and would like to read a response to this article that argued against it and see which one makes stronger points.

Project 3 Intro/Conversation

The concept of discourse communities is one that has been widely debated among English scholars.  Discourse community may have many definitions,  but James Porter' definition as "a group of individuals bound by a common interest who communicate through approved channels and whose discourse is regulated"(WAW) is a good one to begin with.  Basically what this means is any group of people read each other's writings and will talk, write, and act in a common way.  It is important to understand the concept of discourse community when reading because if you know who the person writing is and who their intended audience is, then you can more easily frame the document to how the writer intended it to be interpreted.  When writing, it is also important to realize what discourse community you are writing for so that you can determine how your writing will be interpreted.

Different scholars have written about their thoughts on different aspects of discourse community.  James Paul Gee describes discourse communities, or as he calls them Discourses, as a major part of a person's identity.  He calls Discourses "identity kits" which consist of how you act, talk, write, value, and think.  Since Discourses determine so much about their members, it is impossible to be somewhat fluent in one; either you are fluent or you aren't.  He also argues that you cannot become fluent in a Discourse by studying it, you must actually join it.  These views contradict the views of Swales who argues that joining a discourse community may or may not result in assimilation to the community's views of the world.  He gives the example of spies, who may join a discourse community because they do not agree with its views.  Swales also argues that "If they also assimilate they cease to be single spies but become double agents"(WAW 476).  This suggests that it is possible to "fake" being part of a discourse community.

In her article "Identity, Authority, and Learning to Write in New Workplaces" Elizabeth Wardle argues that "for workers to be successfully enculturated into new communities of practice or activity systems, including learning to write in ways that are appropriate to those new communities, neophytes must learn and conform to the conventions, codes, and genres of those communities"(WAW 521).  This means adapting to more than just how people in your new workplace write; you must also assimilate into all aspect of their discourse community.  As Gee would say, you must adopt their ways of saying, doing, valuing, believing, and all of the other parts of the identity kit.

One major aspect of discourse communities is genre.  As it relates to discourse communities, genre is a document that has a certain meaning to a discourse community.  For example, in the discourse community of runners, Runner's World magazine is a genre.  Amy J. Devitt points out in her article "Where Communities Collide: Exploring a Legal Genre" that there can be a disconnect between the author and reader of genres.  The author of a genre may have a different level of knowledge of the discourse community than the reader, so the reader may not interpret the genre the right way.  She gives the example of jury instructions and how they are written by lawyers, who are highly literate in the law discourse community, but read by jurors who are not nearly as familiar with the law discourse community.