Digital Literacy
As video and computer gaming has started occupy a considerable place and time in our college classrooms, Literacy and Composition instructors can make use of them in order to develop students’ reading skills and critical thinking. In her article Gaming, Student Literacies, and the Composition Classroom: Some possibilities for Transformation, Alexander contends that “ incorporating a strong consideration of gaming into composition course may not only enliven writing instruction for many of our students, but also transform our approach to literacy” (37). She also argues that by analyzing and dissecting students’ attitudes towards gaming, teachers can design teaching materials that concentrate on topics such as gender, sexuality, sexism, and stereotyping and their relation to literacy.
I totally support the use of technologies in the teaching and learning process especially if they attract students. And this is what we lack in our traditional literacy. Psychologists believe that lack of motivation is one of the factors that hinder learning. This is because without motivation processes such as concentration and curiosity, which I consider key factors in operating memory, will be absent. Thus, any means that pushes our literacy forward is welcomed. However, we need to be mindful of some issues these games may bring to the educational classrooms: racism and stereotyping, for example. As we know almost most of these games create an imaginable war between a hero and rogues who should be from different races. The hero is always the winner, and the rogues the defeated. Now let us imagine this scenario. A heterogeneous X classroom consists of students of different races some of whom are Arabs. They are watching a game called Delta Force: Land Warriors, which project Arabs as enemies for the US. It also represents them as savage, barbarian, hateful, and rogues. Now the question is how these students will feel and react. There is no doubt that they will feel degraded and discriminated. They will resist all that and even may turn into “ difficult students”.
The conclusion that we can draw from this discussion is that games available now may work perfectly in homogeneous classrooms which consists of the same race. And here is the limitation of these games as audiovisual aids. We all realize that games are originally designed for entertainment. Thus, teachers should carefully choose the ones they want to use and see if a student will be hurt. Practically this is difficult because it is not only a matter of race, but also of gender, sexuality, and class. What is the solution, then? We should design games for pedagogical purposes.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Rural Liteacy
In his article Rhetoric and Realities: The History and Effects of Stereotypes about Rural Literacies, Kim Donehower states that culture plays a very important role “in shaping public notions of literacy in rural communities”(37). Kim believes that this culture may appear in others’ eyes as something strange and then it turns into stereotypes or stigmas. And in his article, he gives Appalachia as a region that suffers a lot from such stigmatization. One of the stereotypes associated with Appalachian natives is that “they are either barbarians or paragons of the pioneer spirit or, somehow, simultaneously, both”(39).
What struck me the most in the article is the suggestions that Shapiro made to remove these stigmas. The most destructive suggestion is relocating Appalachians to cities and their suburbs. In my point of view, this is an unreasonable solution. First, these people have the right to live in the place they were born into. Second, the country needs farmers and cattlemen. And if they are evacuated, who will take their place? I find his suggestion that these people be modernized is very logical. It is the role of the government to provide them with all modern life conveniences such as technologies and economical systems.
I am coming from a rural area in the Green Mountain, Libya where people farm and raise cattles. In 1950s and 60s, 98% of the population were illiterate because they were cut off from the urban life with all its systems including cultural and educational ones. So, people in that region were stigmatized with ignorance and barbarism. In 1970, the government began its project of developing all rural areas in Libya and one of them was ours. The government spent generously to turn these areas into small modern towns with telecommunication systems and well-equipped institutions. If you wander these towns now, you will see a small model of big cities. In spite of what the government did so far in the region, it could not wipe out the stigmas associated with “mountaineers” (as we are called in big cities). We are still ignorant and barbarian.
I do support Kim in his claim that stereotypes are cultural. I can say that all stereotypes about mountaineers in Libya are projected in jokes, comedic serials, and films. They are part of our popular culture and have become fossilized concepts. For me as a mountaineer who studied in a big city, I did not feel embarrassed when I heard these stigma though some of them were insulting. The reason was that I led the same life as they did and I spoke and learned the same accent. I was completely assimilated into the city. The problem was with those mountaineers who showed little difference, especially different accent or behavior. Once they were recognized, they were peppered with jokes and criticism. I know many who left the city and their academic study and came back to the region. And this is the most destructive part in this issue.
What struck me the most in the article is the suggestions that Shapiro made to remove these stigmas. The most destructive suggestion is relocating Appalachians to cities and their suburbs. In my point of view, this is an unreasonable solution. First, these people have the right to live in the place they were born into. Second, the country needs farmers and cattlemen. And if they are evacuated, who will take their place? I find his suggestion that these people be modernized is very logical. It is the role of the government to provide them with all modern life conveniences such as technologies and economical systems.
I am coming from a rural area in the Green Mountain, Libya where people farm and raise cattles. In 1950s and 60s, 98% of the population were illiterate because they were cut off from the urban life with all its systems including cultural and educational ones. So, people in that region were stigmatized with ignorance and barbarism. In 1970, the government began its project of developing all rural areas in Libya and one of them was ours. The government spent generously to turn these areas into small modern towns with telecommunication systems and well-equipped institutions. If you wander these towns now, you will see a small model of big cities. In spite of what the government did so far in the region, it could not wipe out the stigmas associated with “mountaineers” (as we are called in big cities). We are still ignorant and barbarian.
I do support Kim in his claim that stereotypes are cultural. I can say that all stereotypes about mountaineers in Libya are projected in jokes, comedic serials, and films. They are part of our popular culture and have become fossilized concepts. For me as a mountaineer who studied in a big city, I did not feel embarrassed when I heard these stigma though some of them were insulting. The reason was that I led the same life as they did and I spoke and learned the same accent. I was completely assimilated into the city. The problem was with those mountaineers who showed little difference, especially different accent or behavior. Once they were recognized, they were peppered with jokes and criticism. I know many who left the city and their academic study and came back to the region. And this is the most destructive part in this issue.
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Academic Discourse vs. Home Discourse
Barbara’s article Plateau Indian Ways with Words shows how the indigenous rhetoric affect Plateau Indian students’ writing and brings us back to our discussion of home discourse vs. academic discourse, but in a broader way. Reading the previous articles and the current ones, I can confirm one fact: the person who speaks is the person who writes. However when we write, we always put on a different identity with scientific characteristics. We try to use different expressions and different syntactical structures as well as we exert efforts to explain every point mentioned since we do not expect that our readers know our context or our subject. But in oral discourse the case is different. When we speak, we use different registers and depend largely on stress, rhythm and intonation. The difference between the two discourses, then, is fait accompli; but the most important questions that we should ask are “ is there anything bad with either discourse?” and “can we combine both discourses in a piece of composition?”
And to answer the two questions, we need first to discuss the issue of identity. It is a truism that one’s identity is a complex structure. It is shaped and carved by our social practices ( economical, political and cultural) as well as by our social forces (gender, race, and sexuality), all of which differ from one place to another, from one time to another and from one society to another. It is also a truism that our behavior including language is a projection of this identity. The way we eat , the way we walk and the way we speak and write will tell you who we are. It is impossible to find two people who share all these social elements. They may have some in common, but not all of them. In other words, our identities are like our fingerprints. They characterizes us. So, Ali ( a male, heterosexual Arab who came from a working class family, subjected to dictatorship and lived in an Islamic culture) will be different from any other person in our 597 cohort.
We come back to our point. As I said above, our language reflects our identity. Thus, all our social practices and forces will form our language and give it a different flavor. Since this is the case, we should not blame our students for writing such and such or for using a particular expression. In addition, we should not distinguish between them based on the way they write. Our students coming from middle class families, for example, will write better than those coming from poor families, as a general rule. As teachers, then, we should take all this into consideration. We should appreciate what our students compose and understand that their productions are a result of different factors, many of which are not controllable. The challenge for teachers, in my point of view, is how to make academic discourse be part of our students’ identities and how to push them to combine the two discourses in a distinctive and interesting way.
I remember when I was a high school student, I could not differentiate between the two discourses though I wrote very well. The only thing that I considered while I was writing was inserting as many formal expressions as possible. I do not remember I was aware of the other elements of academic discourse. This humble experience confirms the fact that academic discourse should be not be learned but acquired. The hard question is” how do we lead our students to reach this stage”.
And to answer the two questions, we need first to discuss the issue of identity. It is a truism that one’s identity is a complex structure. It is shaped and carved by our social practices ( economical, political and cultural) as well as by our social forces (gender, race, and sexuality), all of which differ from one place to another, from one time to another and from one society to another. It is also a truism that our behavior including language is a projection of this identity. The way we eat , the way we walk and the way we speak and write will tell you who we are. It is impossible to find two people who share all these social elements. They may have some in common, but not all of them. In other words, our identities are like our fingerprints. They characterizes us. So, Ali ( a male, heterosexual Arab who came from a working class family, subjected to dictatorship and lived in an Islamic culture) will be different from any other person in our 597 cohort.
We come back to our point. As I said above, our language reflects our identity. Thus, all our social practices and forces will form our language and give it a different flavor. Since this is the case, we should not blame our students for writing such and such or for using a particular expression. In addition, we should not distinguish between them based on the way they write. Our students coming from middle class families, for example, will write better than those coming from poor families, as a general rule. As teachers, then, we should take all this into consideration. We should appreciate what our students compose and understand that their productions are a result of different factors, many of which are not controllable. The challenge for teachers, in my point of view, is how to make academic discourse be part of our students’ identities and how to push them to combine the two discourses in a distinctive and interesting way.
I remember when I was a high school student, I could not differentiate between the two discourses though I wrote very well. The only thing that I considered while I was writing was inserting as many formal expressions as possible. I do not remember I was aware of the other elements of academic discourse. This humble experience confirms the fact that academic discourse should be not be learned but acquired. The hard question is” how do we lead our students to reach this stage”.
Monday, February 22, 2010
It is all about identity; it is all about otherness. It is all about how you leave your print in your piece of composition. In her article Toward a Mestiza Rhetoric, Lunsford argues for that. She asks for breaking rules. She calls for developing one’s norms. The change, she knows, is not easy. The process is inclusive. “ It is kind of like a fish in the Pacific Ocean, with the analogy that the Pacific Ocean is the dominant field and the fish is this postcolonial, this feminist, or this queer, or whoever is trying to make changes”(50). The problem for her is how to make students involved in this. She realizes that they will never dare that. She believes that their instructors will not accept their exotic style. Swearingen and Moe give an example of the way we perceive the world with different lenses. They argue that the rhetoric of their Chinese predecessors are not explained very well and their they contributed to rhetoric in the same way their Western peers did.
I do agree with Lunsford that everybody should write his point of view and should show readers how he sees the world around him. However I disagree with her when it comes to second language learning. In my experience, speaking and writing cross culturally are so dangerous. This is because your writing will reflect your identity which is a product of a culture different from natives. I remember when I was in the Intensive American Language Center, I wrote a paper on September 11 event in which I discussed the topic from an Islamic viewpoint. I showed in detail that what happened was against Islamic teaching and that Islam was always a religion of peace and goodwill. I remember I presented the paper in front of three teachers. I could see signs of dissatisfaction on their faces. They perhaps did not like me to praise another religion in front of them or perhaps associated the event with Islam. In sum, they were unhappy. However, in the case of natives, Lunsford’s ideas are illuminating; they will help people think for themselves and develop their critical sense.
The applicability of her ideas in teaching composition seems to be difficult. Her model is amorphous. No specific rules; no definite steps. It is a great challenge. It is all left to the student to choose his own way of joining the conversation. Even if the student writes very well, teachers will not appreciate that. From an observer point of view, I can confirm that some of our 597 blogs are of that kind. They are personal and academic. The important question is can we teach this experience to our 101 students? Can we urge them to find their way?
I do agree with Lunsford that everybody should write his point of view and should show readers how he sees the world around him. However I disagree with her when it comes to second language learning. In my experience, speaking and writing cross culturally are so dangerous. This is because your writing will reflect your identity which is a product of a culture different from natives. I remember when I was in the Intensive American Language Center, I wrote a paper on September 11 event in which I discussed the topic from an Islamic viewpoint. I showed in detail that what happened was against Islamic teaching and that Islam was always a religion of peace and goodwill. I remember I presented the paper in front of three teachers. I could see signs of dissatisfaction on their faces. They perhaps did not like me to praise another religion in front of them or perhaps associated the event with Islam. In sum, they were unhappy. However, in the case of natives, Lunsford’s ideas are illuminating; they will help people think for themselves and develop their critical sense.
The applicability of her ideas in teaching composition seems to be difficult. Her model is amorphous. No specific rules; no definite steps. It is a great challenge. It is all left to the student to choose his own way of joining the conversation. Even if the student writes very well, teachers will not appreciate that. From an observer point of view, I can confirm that some of our 597 blogs are of that kind. They are personal and academic. The important question is can we teach this experience to our 101 students? Can we urge them to find their way?
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Discourse Analysis
Discourse Analysis
In his article Inquiry and Discourse, Gees presents a more different concept of discourse than that we have studied earlier in this semester. For him discourse it is not that stretch of sentences and utterances that we produce in order to communicate with others. For him, discourse is a way of “combining and integrating language, actions, interactions, ways of thinking, believing, valuing, and using various symbols, tools, and objects to enact a particular sort of socially recognizable identity”(21). For him discourse is the scenes that we live everyday in every place (our homes, schools , streets, workplace, etc…) The discourse he is talking about is that one connected to previous discourses; the discourse he is addressing is a complex net of relations. The idea he wants to communicate is that our life is a thread of beads. Each bead represents a discourse and each bead consists of different elements. In her chapter Putting One’s Business on Front Street, Monroe takes one bead of her life and the lives of some people in two schools in Michigan State and analyses its elements. In her chapter she wants to show how these elements ( technology, people, institution, and knowledge) interact together to produce a different discourse.
The findings of her analysis are in sync with Gee’s idea that discourse changes according to time, situation, and people. The results she is presenting only applies to her situation. The people she was studying, the technology she was using and the situation she was in were unique in terms of identities, culture, family backgrounds and quality. Since I was a teacher of English as a foreign language, I had a similar experience of using technology in teaching. My people were female and male, Libyan students who formed a
homogenous group in terms of race, class and culture. My situation was teaching Advanced Composition. My time was Spring 2007. The topic I was teaching was How to Write a Formal and Personal Letter. The assignment was to write two letters( formal and personal) and send them over email to me. The results were different from Monroe’s, of course. My students did very well with formal letters. The expressions they used and the topics they broached were so formal. The topics ranged from applying to a job or a university, asking for one day leave from the boss or inviting me to a party to writing a formal complaint to the dean. The students made every effort to use so formal expressions that many native speakers may not write in similar situation. In sum, their emails were amazing.
The students’ problems arose when it came to writing a personal letter. Around 90% of them wrote about formal topics and used less formal expressions than those written in the previous letters. The topics were about some hot issues in the media, discussing some points in class, or explaining the recipe of some dishes. Only 10% of them performed very well on this assignment. They talked about their personal lives- their likes and dislikes, families, hobbies, etc… And all of them were male students.
The reason was our culture. The student-teacher relationship is so formal in Libya. When a student converses with his instructor, he should use titles such as Dr., your honor, discuss formal topics, and talk while standing even if the teacher is sitting. It is such nice a dream to have a seat in her office. This is why my students wrote perfect formal letters and failed to write personal ones. In my point of view, they found it difficult to paint a picture in their minds of their teacher other than that of a stern and scowling face. It is true, then, that a discourse draws another discourse.
In his article Inquiry and Discourse, Gees presents a more different concept of discourse than that we have studied earlier in this semester. For him discourse it is not that stretch of sentences and utterances that we produce in order to communicate with others. For him, discourse is a way of “combining and integrating language, actions, interactions, ways of thinking, believing, valuing, and using various symbols, tools, and objects to enact a particular sort of socially recognizable identity”(21). For him discourse is the scenes that we live everyday in every place (our homes, schools , streets, workplace, etc…) The discourse he is talking about is that one connected to previous discourses; the discourse he is addressing is a complex net of relations. The idea he wants to communicate is that our life is a thread of beads. Each bead represents a discourse and each bead consists of different elements. In her chapter Putting One’s Business on Front Street, Monroe takes one bead of her life and the lives of some people in two schools in Michigan State and analyses its elements. In her chapter she wants to show how these elements ( technology, people, institution, and knowledge) interact together to produce a different discourse.
The findings of her analysis are in sync with Gee’s idea that discourse changes according to time, situation, and people. The results she is presenting only applies to her situation. The people she was studying, the technology she was using and the situation she was in were unique in terms of identities, culture, family backgrounds and quality. Since I was a teacher of English as a foreign language, I had a similar experience of using technology in teaching. My people were female and male, Libyan students who formed a
homogenous group in terms of race, class and culture. My situation was teaching Advanced Composition. My time was Spring 2007. The topic I was teaching was How to Write a Formal and Personal Letter. The assignment was to write two letters( formal and personal) and send them over email to me. The results were different from Monroe’s, of course. My students did very well with formal letters. The expressions they used and the topics they broached were so formal. The topics ranged from applying to a job or a university, asking for one day leave from the boss or inviting me to a party to writing a formal complaint to the dean. The students made every effort to use so formal expressions that many native speakers may not write in similar situation. In sum, their emails were amazing.
The students’ problems arose when it came to writing a personal letter. Around 90% of them wrote about formal topics and used less formal expressions than those written in the previous letters. The topics were about some hot issues in the media, discussing some points in class, or explaining the recipe of some dishes. Only 10% of them performed very well on this assignment. They talked about their personal lives- their likes and dislikes, families, hobbies, etc… And all of them were male students.
The reason was our culture. The student-teacher relationship is so formal in Libya. When a student converses with his instructor, he should use titles such as Dr., your honor, discuss formal topics, and talk while standing even if the teacher is sitting. It is such nice a dream to have a seat in her office. This is why my students wrote perfect formal letters and failed to write personal ones. In my point of view, they found it difficult to paint a picture in their minds of their teacher other than that of a stern and scowling face. It is true, then, that a discourse draws another discourse.
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Identity and Culture
I strongly agree with Manroe's statement that "ethnicity alone should not be taken as having predictive value. A teacher should not prejudge that an individual student will automatically produce a certain kind of narratives, basing that prediction solely on a student's ethnicity"(89). We, as teachers and researchers, should not attribute students' educational problems to a specific element of the social force(race, gender, or class) And here, of course, I am not belittling previuos research or refuting their results. What I want to get at here is that we live in a large discourse consisting of many elements each of which affect and contribute to our culture and, thus, to our identity. This, perhaps, acounts for the conflicting results of the previous research. some studies mentioned class as a cause for educational problems; others considered race and gender as direct reasons for them. In other words, no fixed and lasting reason exist.
It was always the concern of scholars to disclose the factors that affect our identity and form our culture. Classical and orthodox marxists, for example, relied on economic reductionism to do so. They argue that the base( economy) overdetermines our life(social relations, education, politics, etc...) Consequently, economy is the engine that generates everything in the society. This, of course, was refuted by cultural theorists who believe that our culture consists of " a relationship among levels [race, gender, class, etc...], constituted in relations reducible to a single essential one-to-one correspondence"(Slack,2007:117) Accordingly, our education is affected by all these levels, all of which contribute in one way or another to it. What remains is the degree of affect of each level.
( Sorry for being late, Malcolm. I have a cold)
References
Slack, Jennifer(2007)'The Theory and Method of Articulation in Cultural Studies' in Morley, David and Chen, Kuan-Hsing (eds) Staurt Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies, London: Routledge.
It was always the concern of scholars to disclose the factors that affect our identity and form our culture. Classical and orthodox marxists, for example, relied on economic reductionism to do so. They argue that the base( economy) overdetermines our life(social relations, education, politics, etc...) Consequently, economy is the engine that generates everything in the society. This, of course, was refuted by cultural theorists who believe that our culture consists of " a relationship among levels [race, gender, class, etc...], constituted in relations reducible to a single essential one-to-one correspondence"(Slack,2007:117) Accordingly, our education is affected by all these levels, all of which contribute in one way or another to it. What remains is the degree of affect of each level.
( Sorry for being late, Malcolm. I have a cold)
References
Slack, Jennifer(2007)'The Theory and Method of Articulation in Cultural Studies' in Morley, David and Chen, Kuan-Hsing (eds) Staurt Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies, London: Routledge.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Academic Discourse again
This week’s articles and the last one’s give good examples of the problem of discourse they try to solve and show how intricate for specialists this problem is. The problem, in my point of view, is not discourse itself; the problem is the way we look at discourse. In the four articles that we have studied so far discourse is defined as the traditional academic language we use in our classrooms, essays, or publications. And this is a narrow meaning of discourse. In fact, discourse is a group of non-congenial things that produce a meaning. In the case of the academic discourse, the discourse will be us (instructors, scientists, and students), our culture (including language), the principles and rules of science, and the educational institutions, all of which are historically bound and all of which affect the type and quality of the discourse.
According to this definition, Royster’s statement that “ academic discourse, like all language use, is an invention of a particular social milieu, not a natural phenomenon” is not precise. This is because she excludes the nature of science in forming our language. The fact is that the type of science overdetermines the type of language we use. For example, in Physics we use a language that is scientific because we deal with a field that is concrete and rule-governed. In contrast, in philosophy or literature, our language she should be conjectural, emotional, and imaginative because our interest is in values, emotions and senses.
The other idea I find strange in the reading is that only traditional academic discourses are objective, argumentative and skeptical. What about our home discourses? What is the clause “I don’t think so”, that we use in our daily conversations, about? If I say to you this is an interesting film and you respond by saying I do not think so, this means that you want to start arguing; you want to present antithesis; you want to convince me with a different idea. Likewise, if I say to you I saw a ghost yesterday and you respond by saying are you serious?, you are posing a question; you are doubting; you are asking for facts; What I want to communicate here is that our home discourses have the same traits as academic discourses do; but what they differ in is the context and style. In home discourses, the conversation is between two or more people who speak face to face or through signals and who maintain the conversation by feedback. In academic discourses, on the other hand, the conversation is between a writer and a reader one of whom is absent. And here lies the problem. When students move to the new academic discourse, they do not realize the fact that they will maintain a conversation with a different nature in which they will be either readers or writers; a conversation in which their partners are unknown.
The other difference between the two discourses is the style. In home discourses, we use colloquial language which depends on abbreviations, reduction and informal lexicon. In contrast, academic discourses make use of standard language with formal vocabularies and structures.
According to this definition, Royster’s statement that “ academic discourse, like all language use, is an invention of a particular social milieu, not a natural phenomenon” is not precise. This is because she excludes the nature of science in forming our language. The fact is that the type of science overdetermines the type of language we use. For example, in Physics we use a language that is scientific because we deal with a field that is concrete and rule-governed. In contrast, in philosophy or literature, our language she should be conjectural, emotional, and imaginative because our interest is in values, emotions and senses.
The other idea I find strange in the reading is that only traditional academic discourses are objective, argumentative and skeptical. What about our home discourses? What is the clause “I don’t think so”, that we use in our daily conversations, about? If I say to you this is an interesting film and you respond by saying I do not think so, this means that you want to start arguing; you want to present antithesis; you want to convince me with a different idea. Likewise, if I say to you I saw a ghost yesterday and you respond by saying are you serious?, you are posing a question; you are doubting; you are asking for facts; What I want to communicate here is that our home discourses have the same traits as academic discourses do; but what they differ in is the context and style. In home discourses, the conversation is between two or more people who speak face to face or through signals and who maintain the conversation by feedback. In academic discourses, on the other hand, the conversation is between a writer and a reader one of whom is absent. And here lies the problem. When students move to the new academic discourse, they do not realize the fact that they will maintain a conversation with a different nature in which they will be either readers or writers; a conversation in which their partners are unknown.
The other difference between the two discourses is the style. In home discourses, we use colloquial language which depends on abbreviations, reduction and informal lexicon. In contrast, academic discourses make use of standard language with formal vocabularies and structures.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Academic Discourse
The fact that we should consider when we talk about the academic discourse, and that Bizzell never formulated very well in her two articles, is that language is a social activity that can not be spoken by itself; it can not occur other than through communication between its people; any something new in the society-invention or idea- will find its way through language. As a result, language is a reflection of people’s education, thoughts, emotions and their perspectives of the world. So home discourses that our students bring to college are this language; they are a normal delivery of people’s interactions. Since they are real and spontaneous, they should be respected. Ignoring these discourses is ignoring societies and a span of time that students lived before they come to college.
Bizzell argues that intellectuals and students should not restrict their writing to traditional academic discourse. At the same time, she wrote that she never claimed that every student should have her own home discourse. For me, this is paradoxical because she changed the domain of restriction from traditional academic discourse to hybrid academic discourse for which she set certain traits. So the move is from a set of traits to other ones. What I see as best is that we should encourage our students to use their own discourse; we should also tell them that they do not live in their societies any more; they live in a new community called academe, which has its own way of life. This requires of them to adjust themselves to it (we should make them feel as if they moved to another country, say, China. Do they need to be stripped of their own culture to adjust? The answer is no, of course) They should know that this new community has certain traits which are part of its scientific nature and which they should keep while writing. I totally disagree with Bizzell’s idea that the academic discourse has characteristics that “ are most in accord with the personality traits that they [White male] are already socialized to develop”(56). By this statement she hinted at the idea that the traits of academic discourse was part of all White males’ societies, which means that they, at a historical span of time, spoke in a academic way. I do acknowledge that in the USA this type of discourse was connected with White males not because of special race traits but because of their economical privilege as she put it in an ambiguous way.
The other point on which I disagree with the author is that the text creates us and we do not create the text. My point of view is that neither we nor the text creates each other if the word “text” means the rules and principles of science. The fact is that we and the text are part of a large discourse- the universe which is created by God. To simply put it, this large discourse consists of sub-discourses, each of which consists of elements; we and the text are two of these elements. We are created separately. Our relation is a complementary one. The discourse that includes us can not occur if one of us is not there. Take the scientific discourse as an example. This discourse consists of us, the environment and the principles and rules of science(let’s narrow down this to the Physics discourse) We and physics are created separately. We are here without physics and physics is there without us. As Physicists, we do not create the rules and principles of Physics. We just discover them. We observe their behavior and record it.
Bizzell argues that intellectuals and students should not restrict their writing to traditional academic discourse. At the same time, she wrote that she never claimed that every student should have her own home discourse. For me, this is paradoxical because she changed the domain of restriction from traditional academic discourse to hybrid academic discourse for which she set certain traits. So the move is from a set of traits to other ones. What I see as best is that we should encourage our students to use their own discourse; we should also tell them that they do not live in their societies any more; they live in a new community called academe, which has its own way of life. This requires of them to adjust themselves to it (we should make them feel as if they moved to another country, say, China. Do they need to be stripped of their own culture to adjust? The answer is no, of course) They should know that this new community has certain traits which are part of its scientific nature and which they should keep while writing. I totally disagree with Bizzell’s idea that the academic discourse has characteristics that “ are most in accord with the personality traits that they [White male] are already socialized to develop”(56). By this statement she hinted at the idea that the traits of academic discourse was part of all White males’ societies, which means that they, at a historical span of time, spoke in a academic way. I do acknowledge that in the USA this type of discourse was connected with White males not because of special race traits but because of their economical privilege as she put it in an ambiguous way.
The other point on which I disagree with the author is that the text creates us and we do not create the text. My point of view is that neither we nor the text creates each other if the word “text” means the rules and principles of science. The fact is that we and the text are part of a large discourse- the universe which is created by God. To simply put it, this large discourse consists of sub-discourses, each of which consists of elements; we and the text are two of these elements. We are created separately. Our relation is a complementary one. The discourse that includes us can not occur if one of us is not there. Take the scientific discourse as an example. This discourse consists of us, the environment and the principles and rules of science(let’s narrow down this to the Physics discourse) We and physics are created separately. We are here without physics and physics is there without us. As Physicists, we do not create the rules and principles of Physics. We just discover them. We observe their behavior and record it.
Monday, January 18, 2010
Contact Zone
Anwr Adam
Rhetoric of Contact Zone
Dr. Barbara Manroe
01/18/2010
Rhetoric of Contact Zone
I am sure that no one in our cohort has been affected by Kaplan’s Contrastive Rhetoric more than I have; I am sure that no one will live the events of Contact Zone more than I will. It is my life. It has stirred my emotions and probed my short memories in the USA. I feel a strong kinship to this topic. As a foreign language learner, I know how shocking and frustrating it is when I speak and write crossculturally; how dangerous it is when I address and converse with people who they know nothing about me, about my people, about my life, about the chisel that curved my identity, about the vessel that nurtured my thought, about my culture; the culture that shaped a cosmic being called Anwar. I know how it is when an eastern graduate student studying in different schools of thought and burdened with others’ mistakes bursts into a western culture. I can guess the problem that he will face; I can see the frustration that he will live; I can feel the discrimination and degradation that he will gulp. This is his problem and the problem of a whole generation of Muslim expatriates in the US. And it is the problem that Rhetoric of Contact Zone tries to solve.
What I want to write about here is not those occasional events that we face in streets or stores, but those systematic scenes that occur in the American educational institutions. What I want to say identifies itself with Kaplan’s question “what may be discussed?”. The incident I want to tell shows how the tension between the American teacher and a foreign language learner occurs; how difficult choosing a topic it is. How appropriate or inappropriate a topic might be for two cultures. How the class might be a point of cultural clash. This incident happened to me in one of the American institutions in Pullman. And for academic honesty, I have narrated it in one paper presented to fulfill the requirements of 501 class. The story is as follows:
The other bitter scene was when she asked us to choose a topic for our research paper. She told us that the topic should be related to our field of study and that it should address a current issue; Like other students I chose mine; I told her that I would write about the racial discrimination and its effect on students; she frowned on me; then she said “racism does not exist any more”. I told her that it did exist and that hundreds of articles were being published on this topic; but she insisted that I change the topic. And because of this insistence, I had to go to the director who was a nice woman. I told her what happened. She talked to her and convinced her to accept the topic; finally she did. This was not a happy ending. When we started writing our papers, she ordered us to submit a section every week. The first section I submitted was marked “rewrite it”. The comments she made were silly; one of them was “you have never talked about Black Americans’ racism”. The second section was unsatisfactory, too; the third, the fourth. I went to the director again; I complained, but in vein. She told me that the teacher was the authority in my case. I decided to quit. I told the teacher that. She said “you are free”. I failed the course.
It goes without saying that the teacher in this scene- although I accused her of being a racist in 501 paper- lives the feeling of the “imagined community”. She thinks that the American society is homogenous. She is hoaxed by such banners as nationalism, Americanism, one anthem, one flag, which, in my point of view, are false ideologies which hide a set of relations that negate them. They hide the fact that America consists of different races, different religions, and different subcultures. And this is what the power point pictures that we studied in class hinted at. The first picture shows how families in different countries view the world cup, which, I think, represents a visual metaphor showing how families from different races lead their lives differently in the US. The second picture reinforces the idea of false ideology. It shows how intimacy hides racism; how hugging and hilarity hide racial differences; how they do not eliminate them; White is White; Black is Black; and Asian is Asian; The third picture displays how cards made of plastic differ in numbers. For me this means how the people who are American differ in character, identity and culture. The fourth picture articulates this clearly. It explains how dogs from different kinds sitting around a table (America) and holding different play cards (identities and cultures) represents a state of being in the USA.
Friday, January 15, 2010
Hi Dr. Victor,
One of the things I wish you did is to give us a schema for Contemprory Rhetoric. it should not be like the one you gave us last semester but a one which will give us an overview of the types of Con. Rhet. In other words, you break down into its types.
With regard ot the assignment, the following are the terms:
Feminism: a term used to describe a political, cultural or economical movement aimed at establishing equal rights and legal protection for women.
Modernism: describes both a set of cultural tendecies and an array of associated cultural movements, arising from changes in western society in the late nineteenth century and early 20th century.
postmodernism: refers to a point of departure for desciplines in the late 20th century and early 21 century. It is in one way or another an extention to modernism.
Thatcherism: describes the idealogy, politics and political style of the British conservative politician Margret Thatcher.
Essentialism: is the view that any specific kind of entity has a set of characteristics and properties.
Noe essentialism: assumes that it is necssary for any kind of identity to have soecific traits.
One of the things I wish you did is to give us a schema for Contemprory Rhetoric. it should not be like the one you gave us last semester but a one which will give us an overview of the types of Con. Rhet. In other words, you break down into its types.
With regard ot the assignment, the following are the terms:
Feminism: a term used to describe a political, cultural or economical movement aimed at establishing equal rights and legal protection for women.
Modernism: describes both a set of cultural tendecies and an array of associated cultural movements, arising from changes in western society in the late nineteenth century and early 20th century.
postmodernism: refers to a point of departure for desciplines in the late 20th century and early 21 century. It is in one way or another an extention to modernism.
Thatcherism: describes the idealogy, politics and political style of the British conservative politician Margret Thatcher.
Essentialism: is the view that any specific kind of entity has a set of characteristics and properties.
Noe essentialism: assumes that it is necssary for any kind of identity to have soecific traits.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
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