Personal Discourse Description and Analysis We've read James Paul Gee's theories on discourse and literacy, and we've read and watched a few essays, articles, and videos that discuss how identity interacts with discourse. Now it's your turn to write an exploration of how discourse interacts with your own identity.
In this 3 - 5 pageessay, you will use Gee as a lens to describe your literacy in one of your secondary discourses, the features of this particular discourse, and how it serves to shape your identity. Since this paper will focus on a secondary discourse, you should not write about your native tongue, but, rather, about a discourse that you have learned and/or acquired beyond your home language. This discourse could be a second language that you have learned, the slang you use with your friends, the jargon you use while playing a sport, the specific terminology related to your job, the specialized vocabulary of your favorite sci-fi/fantasy fandom, or any number of alternatives. While I want you to detail aspects of this discourse, you should not simply provide a list of definitions for the pertinent terminology: you need to focus on showing the reader how you learned or acquired that terminology and how it pertains to your identity specifically.
You must incorporate at least two sources into your essay: Gee's "Literacy, Discourse, and Linguistics: Introduction" and one of the other discourse-related readings/multimodal texts we have done/will do together in class: Gloria Anzaldua's "How to Tame a Wild Tongue," Andrew Lam's "The Language of Violence," Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's TED Talk "The Danger of a Single Story," Amy Tan's "The Language of Discretion," Jamila Lyiscott's "Three Ways of Speaking English," and Erin Dietel-McLaughlin's video literacy narrative "An Army Wife's Tale: What the Military Taught Me About Literacy and Community," or you may choose a piece from the Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives.
The Anecdote is a key part of this paper. An anecdote is a story, and an effective anecdote includes details that draw the reader into the story. This section will be graded based on the effectiveness of your anecdote: Do you describe the scene well? Do you establish characters and setting? Do you bring in specific details? Your goal here is to vividly describe your experience.
The Analysis is the other key part of this paper. A good analysis will make connections to the discourse concepts we have been discussing in class. What kinds of discourse are you discussing in your paper? How have your past experiences contributed to your current literacy? What kinds of apprenticeship did you undergo to enculturate yourself into a particular discourse? The goal here is to make sure that your paper goes beyond just telling a story and connects back to discourse theory specifically. To do that, the next category will come in handy.