Blog #10: So we have a research paper. Where are YOU headed?

So . . .  I'm back from Seaport Village. We got lots of amazing cheeses at Venessimo and also some chocolates from some amazing chocolate place. I don't know what that's called, but the chocolates were amazing.

There are only a few more blogs.
You might have done ENOUGH blogs, but a few extra points never hurt anyone, right? And this one could be useful.

This blog isn't based on a reading. Think about your research paper.

What discourse community/community of practice do you want to research?
Why? What is it about this community that interests you?
What do you already know about this community?

Where are you headed? What will you research?
Remember, this isn't about how great the community is or what this community does. This research paper is about the community's communicative practices.

How do you want to approach this paper? What do you want to learn about the communicative practice?

How are these communicative practices acquired? (Swales, Johns, Gee, Wardle)
What does it take for members to enculturate themselves? (Johns, Gee, Wardle, Mirabelli)
What literacies to members need to acquire? (Mirabelli)
What is this community's "way of being" (Johns, Gee, Wardle)
What does it cost to take on this community? (Wardle, Johns)
What values are reinforced by this community? (Devitt, Wardle, Johns)
How do readers need to see themselves? How do they need to consider authorities? How do they need to align themselves? (Wardle)

There are other questions you could ask based on the readings, but I'll leave it for you to come up with those. 

Who will you interview? What can you observe? What genres does this community have?

And so on. And so on. Begin imagining this paper.  And brainstorm.

Blog #9: Wardle and Work (Who Are You?)

NOTE:  Write Blog #8 or Blog #9 or both for extra points.

All semester we've been talking about identity kits and figuring out how to adapt to audiences and genres. Why?

Because when you leave SDSU, you will have to create an identity kit suitable for whatever job or role you play in your next life. 

And you have to figure out how to new audiences and write new ways and use new genres. 

In a way, all our experiments with op/eds and narratives and blogs and journals and reflections is about looking what other people do, feeling uncomfortable, and trying something new. Because that is what you will do when you leave this wonderful place. (Yes, I really do think it's wonderful. That's why I'm still here.)


When you leave here, you'll go to grad school or you'll get a job, hopefully in your desired career field, and you will have to figure out what it is that you need to be and how you need to be that. 

I can't teach you that. But I can ask you to think critically about what it takes to learn to do that. 

That's what Elizabeth Wardle talks about in "Identity, Authority, and Learning to Write in New Workplaces."

Like Mirabelli, Wardle asserts that learning to communicate in new situations and new communities of practice is complex. It requires learning and conforming to "conventions, codes, and genres" (521). It requires a new way of being which can challenge your sense of identity as well as your values. It asks you to take on a way of being.  And that can cost you.

And if that sounds a lot like Gee and Devitt and Johns, well, that was on purpose. 

Take a look at what Wardle says about identity and authority and learning how to adapt in a new workplace. Talk about what you will have to do in your desired career or talk about the challenges of learning how to adapt in your internship or talk about what it will cost you. Or synthesize some of the ideas we've been working on.

Or something.

Blog #8: What are YOU Learning to Read?

NOTE:  Respond to Blog #8 or Blog #9 or both, for extra points.

My friends took me out to dinner to celebrate after I finished grad school. The server asked us what we were celebrating, and after I told her, she said that she finished grad school a year ago and was still looking for other work. I felt sorry for and afraid for me.

It's not that I thought the server was stupid or anything, but a service job was NOT what I went to grad school for. I guess I just wanted something better than that.

Am I a snob? I'm not sure. Do I dismiss the skills of servers? No. Honestly, I see this as very hard work. I've worked in service industry jobs before, and I don't want to work in those jobs again. But it does sort of seems like going backward, away from what I wanted to do. 

Do I see the service industry as less prestigious than working for a university? Maybe. I'm not sure. Now that I work at SDSU, I don't see my job as prestigious in any way. And I do know servers in high-end restaurants who make more money than I do. 

But I digress, as I often do.  In "Learning to Serve," Tony Mirabelli rejects the common assumption that service worker jobs are low-skilled professions that contribute very little to society and sets out to show that while the language used in a diner is DIFFERENT than language used in a classroom or one of Swales' fancy discourse communities, that doesn't mean that it is less complex. And like Gee, who talks about identity kits, he shows that language isn't just limited to words, either written or spoken. He illustrates these ideas by describing how he had to learn to read menus AND people in his work as a server at Lou's Italian Restaurant while he worked on his own grad school degree.

In this blog, you can respond to Peter Drucker's assertion that "interactive service workers lack the necessary education to be 'knowledge workers'" (145) or to others who consider service work to be "'mindless,' involving routine and repetitive tasks that require little education" (145) because these jobs don't require identification of problems, ability to solve those problems, or other complex abilities.  In fact, the National Skills Standards Board has determined that it only takes a ninth grade education to be a server (Mirabelli 145). 

Or you can compare Mirabelli's ideas about literacy to something you have experienced in your own life.