Reading Response #21 (Delpit)

          "The Politics of Teaching Literate Discourse" is an article written by Lisa Delpit--for those in a classroom discourse, from Freedom's Plow: Teaching in the Multicultural Classroom--that tackles a question that can be raised towards the idea of discourse community itself: can the writings set up by writers such as Gee, Swales, or Flynn cause alienation for those who are not fluent in those communities?  For Delpit, looking up Gee's writings gave those who cannot adapt easily "will find it exceedingly diffract, if not impossible, to acquire such a discourse," resulting in those individuals to never bother contributing to the discourse and find another (182).  Using examples of those who managed to work towards highly respectable jobs many years later, Delpit find a common thread: instead of classrooms, a "significance of teachers in transforming students' futures" is instead valuable (183). By teaching those individuals the features of superficiality-"grammar, style, mechanics"(183) --and pushing hard towards "the more subtle aspects of dominant discourse," (183) such as appearance, eloquent writing, metrical thinking, and expressing character, then they will be a part of specific communities. The teacher, meanwhile, to "help economically disenfranchised students and students of color" have to do what Delpit later proposed to acquire those skills easily. If the teacher:   

1. "acknowledge and validate students' home language without using it to limit students' potential" (186).

2. "recognize the conflict Gee details between students' home discourse and the discourse of school" (187).

And....

3. "acknowledge the unfair 'discourse-stacking' that our society engages in" (187)

then both the teachers and those students "can provide a way both to turn the sorting system on its head and to make available one more voice for resisting and reshaping an oppressive system" for them to be a part of many communities (188).

          Meanwhile, Genva Smitherman, writer of "'God Don't Never Change': Black English from a Black Perspective," talks about how "matters of sheer mechanical 'correctness'" (192) interferes with her language. In her perspective, she is telling her audience that the "ultimately unimportant set of surface grammatical features" (191) that she must deal with complicates the "Black Lexicon" that "lies in situational context, in the Black Cultural Universe," (192) not the linguistic methods that works as a "manifestation of white America's racism (undergirded by or coupled with class elitism)" (190). With these two perspectives of figuring out on how to include other students into a discourse comfortably, the central points of each brings up a conflict of an identify; should the members treat the work of different dietetics based on what matters in whatever they worked on, or should they accept their positions and think about them just as fairly as the other members of the community? By the action of those members, how will the nonmembers react? With Delpit, observing the details of Gee, she brings up that "the members of society need access to dominant discourses to (legally) have access to economic power," along with the knowledge that "have the ability to transform dominant discourses for liberatory purposes" (186). In other words, those individuals have the power to participate in those discourses and can function as significant roles, providing that the members within the community are not aware of that advantage, but are willing to give them the ability. With Smitherman, that advantage might be tempting, but the "clash of the emphasis nature of the American politico-social sensibility," where the collective agreement of classrooms and group thinking reflects a lack of understanding on why she, and others, refuse to participate the society that forms writer culture, opting instead that the problem lies with the members looking past the text itself and focusing the linguistics that form it. To Smitherman, speaking properly does not transform on the constitution of her own community, and they no do wish to fix it, and the frustration lies when others do not see it that way, opting instead to change it to better reflect another community.

          Do I agree with what Delpit is saying? Well, I agree with her idea that members inside of a discourse, particularly teachers, can offer possibilities such as learning the superficial principles, or the "discourse stacking" (187), that can transform individuals into specific voices the people themselves can develop. That way, those individuals can bring a sense of a voice within the interpretations of the rules that binds one group together. The stories she shares, where the people she talks to grew up to respectable jobs, despite less than ideal backgrounds, helps support her claim that it is not the location that determines the potential of someone, but the work ethics they are willing to be involved in that will give them opportunities they desire. The organization that set the stories up in that order certainly gives the article an appeal that works in favor to those who wish to look into the subject more, if they desire. While it gives the standards of Gee's article less bite, her own text might not reflect those who do take the subject seriously, and just herself as a lone voice. Basically, instead of using other academic papers to appear as another part of the continuous discussion of the topic, she instead uses primary sources that strength her argument, making the work inside the context of the article strong in emotion, but less academic in some circles, where her points can trace back to others who do think independently of her own research. Either way, to answer the question, I see no logical faults to argue over, so my answer is 'yes'.

          So, to reiterate, if teachers want students to master the transformation of some discourses, they need to...

1. "acknowledge and validate students' home language without using it to limit students' potential" (186).

2. "recognize the conflict Gee details between students' home discourse and the discourse of school" (187).

And....

3. "acknowledge the unfair 'discourse-stacking' that our society engages in" (187).

That way, teachers can assume authority not to dictate students that benefits his own positions, but to benefit the language by giving the students tool to write their own voices in a way only they know.

          All in all, Delpit's article provided me with an angle I never consider, which was being in a situation where my grades would still be determined by how much I take the work seriously, but can be strengthen not just through the will of my own, but with the opportunity given by the members, not one specific member of one community. That mindset, along with its' details, brought a highly satisfying article, and I enjoyed thinking on how political the whole ideal truly was all this time.