Delpit

In Lisa Delpit’s article “The Politics of Teaching Literate Discourse”, she identifies two characteristics of Gee’s argument of literary discourse. The first aspect is explaining that if someone was born into a certain discourse, it would be almost impossible for them to acquire a higher level in “class”. The second part is that when someone is given a discourse after birth, if they so choose, they would difficulty in trying to find another discourse for them to live their lives upon. According to these aspects, we can just imagine someone who was born and raised in the lower middle class, even if they would pursue great goals and accomplish them; they would still find the same trouble as an average Joe attempting the addition of another discourse. It could be a burden and even a waste of someone’s time to find and acquire another dominant discourse.

I would like to say that I do agree with Delpit, because she brought out two of the most important factors about Gee’s idea of discourse. I think that most people would like to find a better discourse, or so they would think. The discourses that we all have and use in our lives vary from person to person all around the world. If we decided to change or even acquire another dominant discourse we would find road blocks that would try and keep us from reaching our goal. Of course there can be certain circumstances that someone successfully added another dominant discourse, but for the most part it will be difficult. In my opinion, I could see that finding and maintaining a dominant discourse that fits you can be extremely difficult, but the way we are born into this discourse doesn’t necessarily mean we can’t work our way out of it, let alone acquire another one. As most of the students in our 201 class are pursuing to become a teacher in the future, they will most likely have the opportunity to help those searching to find a new discourse. Teachers can have a huge impact that can last a student’s whole life, if we can teach our students that they shouldn’t be tied down to any one discourse, but to work their way at bettering themselves.