Throughout the excerpt Literacy, Discourse, and Linguistics: Introduction by James Paul Gee, Gee discusses Discourses and the impacts that they have on everyone. Gee defines Discourses (capital D) as “saying (writing)-doing-being-valuing, believing combinations.” This “combination” is important to Gee because he believes that one must play the right role in a given social situation. He compares it to learning a second language or socially situated cognition. One cannot just be taught a Discourse, they must be engulfed in the culture, with Gee describing it as an apprenticeship. Gee references F. Niyi Akinnaso and Cheryl Ajirotutu’s simulated job interviews to help support his claims. The second interviewee could have been seen as worthy of the job since she uses better grammar and dialect than the first woman. But Gee disagreed with their thoughts seeing as what she said did not agree with the situation she was in. Another example could be with teaching elementary school. An elementary school teacher addresses her children very politely with a very charismatic tone. This could be very different from a college professor, where they have a more relaxed and normal tone of voice. One would also never use curse words around elementary students either, but no one really minds (or it is more accepted) if a college professor does. One must be able to adjust to their personal social situation within the discourse that they are in at the moment.

On page seven of Gee’s writing, he says, “While you can teach someone linguistics, a body of knowledge, you can’t teach them to be a linguist.” On the same page,  he mentions that it is the same with learning a second language, “hardly anyone ever fluently acquired a second language sitting in a classroom”. Since a Discourse itself is not “a body of knowledge” (such as he described linguistics and second languages) one must engulf themselves in the culture of the subject matter. For example, if one desires to become a linguist, they must not just sit around with their nose inside a linguistics textbook. They must “apprentice” people that have already mastered the Discourse. To become a linguist (or any other discourse) one must be exposed to the culture, watching how linguists act as linguists, how they walk, how they talk, how they experience life. None of this can be taught in a classroom setting.

On page six, Gee brings  F. Niyi Akinnaso and Cheryl Ajirotutu’s simulated job interviews into play. They had found that the second interviewee was the perfect candidate for the job, saying that the woman could have even earned the job if it were a real job interview. But with all of that said, Gee completely disagrees with their case. With references to his own definition of Discourse, Gee feels as though the woman did not present the right values in order for her to receive the job. Yes, the woman made a fine example of perfect grammar compared to the first woman, but she was not confident enough to get the job. She did not show confidence at the interview, and at interviews, one must brag about their best qualities- you have to sell yourself. “She fails to characterize her own expertise in the overly optimistic form called for by such interviews.” Gee did not agree with the interviewers because she did not present the correct values of a person who is in a job interview, she was not confident enough for the job.

 

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