Gee on Discourses and Literacies

[draft]

These appear to be the main points:

Discourses, as described by Gee (2012), are structures of recognizable practices and values.  He writes that Discourses are "socially recognizable identities engaged in specific socially recognizable activities" (p. 152).  Gee qualifies the "structured" element of Discourses by noting that there are "multiple ways" and "partial ways," "contradictory ways" and "disputed ways" of getting recognized; what matters, however, is "enactment and recognition" (p. 153).

Gee makes a distinction between primary and secondary Discourses.  Primary Discourses are acquired through socialization in early life.  This socialization provides one's "initial and often enduring sense of self" (p. 153).  Gee further notes that one's primary Discourse is "biologically and historically rooted" in "face-to-face communications and interactions" (p. 174).  While one's primary Discourse is foundational, it is also capable of change (p. 153).  Secondary Discourses are "acquired within institutions that are part and parcel of wider communities," e.g. voluntary associations, schools, work environments, etc. (p. 154).  Gee notes differences in types of secondary Discourses: "local community-based" Discourses and more public sphere Discourses existing on a continuum (p. 172).  Part of what defines secondary Discourses is that "they involve by definition interaction with people with whom one is either not 'intimate' ... or they involve interactions" that require a person to "take on an identity that transcends" one's "primary socializing group" (p. 172).

Gee defines literacy as "mastery of a secondary Discourse."  Therefore, literacies are always plural (p. 173).  Because there are community-based and public sphere secondary Discourses - and everything in between -  there are community-based literacies and public sphere literacies (p. 173).  Gee, however, sets aside "liberating literacies" as something distinct from others, defined not as mastery over a secondary Discourses but rather as the use of a Discourse, namely to critique other Discourses (p. 174).  Secondary Discourses are acquired through modeling and practice; "liberating discourses" are learned through rational thought (p. 174-175).

There are a number of problems with Gee's approach to literacies as rooted in Discourses.  I am troubled by Gee's use of the term Discourse to talk about how human beings engage with their social environment.  (And it is their social environment as opposed to their physical environment ... and their informational environment?)  The use of the term Discourse leads to a focus on structured ways of being in the world, to a focus on roles and performance in various contexts.  He writes:

"It is sometimes helpful to say that it is not individuals who speak and act, but rather that historically and socially defined Discourses speak to each other through individuals.  The individual instantiates, give voice and body to a Discourse every time he or she acts or speaks, and thus carries it, and ultimately changes it, through time" (p. 159).

The way Gee approaches Discourse, it is difficult to see a role for human agency and the potential for change, though Gee does assert an ability to alter our way of being in the world and to negotiate the performance of a discourse.  What is missing is the bodily, the material.