Reading Response #17

          "Identify, Authority, and Learning to Write in New Workplaces" is an article written by Elizabeth Wardle--as a web page formed with academic authority in mind--that brings attention to a "complex view of communication" that pits newcomers of any subjects against conformation of experienced members of a discourse community (Writing About Writing, 521). If the story of "Alan" described in the second half of the article explained anything, it proves to the reader that no matter where the location of this battle comes in, issues of "identify and authority" always come into play, where conflict arrives when the thoughts on the individuals, from others, contradicts with the beliefs of the individual himself (Writing About Writing, 522-523). For example, when Alan refused to work "successfully behind the scenes," such as sending poorly written emails to graduate students than following the convention of traditional proofreading, ignoring to speak to the problems and clung to his own opinion on the writing, a conflict was created behind his back. Responding to this problem--using a theory from Etienne Wenger--Wardle suggests, for both the individual and the community, to apply "three interrelated modes of belonging": engagement, imagination, and alignment" (Writing About Writing, 524).  If applied correctly with these practices, which ranges from personal feelings and new practices beyond the person's control, the newly formed identify must now negotiate with the authority above him, and community below him, to get what he wants, no matter how harsh the demands may be, even if the person is aware on how much he has "confined most of his directives" to parts of the community (Writing About Writing, 532). As seen with Alan quitting his employment for "non-participation," the risk for not meeting those demands will result in a lose of that authority; trying harder to get along, or give up and move on (Writing About Writing, 531).

          All in all, bringing together this idea of entitlement between an individual and a discourse community this article brought leaves an interesting dynamic to the concept of what exactly those communities are. If Wardle was trying to teach its' readers "that learning to write in new communities entails more than learning discrete sets of skills or improving cognitive abilities" (Writing About Writing, 533), then it simply adds to John Swales's article ("The Concept of Discourse Community") of staying away from  the "communities [that] are only to be associated with intellectual paradigms or scholarly cliques" (Writing About Writing, 473). In other words, looking at Swales' six characteristics of discourse community, he would argue for the freedom of individuals away from one specific community, for various reasons, into other communities that better fit the genre they belong to. With these freedoms, they would led into what James Paul Gee ("Literacy, Discourse, and Linguistics") describes as not "be let into the game after missing the apprenticeship and be expected to have a fair shot at playing it," where the individual will have to go beyond of learning his own craft, his fluency, to gain the trust of the community around him--a point Wardle empathizes in her story with 'Alan'  (Writing About Writing, 487). Even the use of genre, where the use of the theory "may yield insight into teaching, research, and social interaction" (like when Devitt et al used their professions--lawyers and teachers--to further extend ethnomethodology as a research tool) has a place within Wardle's article (Reading About Writing, 98). Essentially, as a reflection of the community, each genre has a set of rules that "participants beyond a narrow community" have to solve on their own, whenever it involves voting on a ballot, filling out a PMHF, or using research as a student.

          Yes, this conflicts a bit with Wardle, where it's the individual against the establishment, instead of someone trying to understand a concept within their hands to solve. And if someone rereads Gee's purpose of "how the languages from different Discourse transfer into, interfere with, and otherwise influence each other" (Writing About Writing, 490),  they will discover what Gee really calls in favor of. Basically, the Discourses that "constitute each of us as persons are changing and often are not consistent with each other," which can then be applied to "values, beliefs, attitudes, interactional styles, uses of language, and ways of being in the world," instead of a center attitude of an individual controlling those discourse that is against that individualistic thinking (Writing About Writing, 485). Even then, both points are against the purpose of what Swales wanted to do with discourse communities. As he mentions, he just wanted "to clarify, for procedural purposes, what is to be understood by discourse community," setting up characteristics that appeals more to discourse communities that revolves under the participation of the individual within a community--deciding to add or leave at his own will-- that is not set up by socialized communicates of high expectations. But as Wardle puts it, it will be up to authority the individual THINKS he has that will define his place within the community, not the "norm-developed" criterion the individual has to work with to be with (Writing About Writing, 477). In other words, the person's own character, to Wardle, determines what will happen to the person within the community, while Swales believes that the group as a whole controls the individuals who work there.

Either way I put it, Haters Gonna Hate.