In the article What is Literacy?, James Paul Gee addresses the functionality of different discourses. A big part of literacy, as he describes it, is understanding the different uses of primary and secondary discourses. In order to master literacy you must know how to use primary and secondary discourses at appropriate times. In this case “function” indicates that these discourses have different uses or occur in different settings.

            When bringing a program that promotes literacy to Northern Ghana, it seemed like an important thing to establish is what kind of discourses occur in the region. In The Leap to Literacy and Life Change in Northern Ghana, there was an emphasis on community building as well as literacy. They stressed that they were teaching children functional literacy, and from the overview it seemed that this was done with a focus on their local life.

There was a stress on incorporating their mother tongue, and teaching the discourse that they were exposed to during a certain family trade. This is different than just teaching children to read and write. Instead they are working to incorporate their life into the classroom. Mixing both “acquisition” (learning through exposure) and “formal learning” seems to be beneficial to students who are trying to master literacy skills.

I try to think that I am open minded, liberal and a thoughtful individual. However, I have also many times been the reproducer, the victim, the oblivious consumer and the creator of a single story. When thinking about the stories I was told and those that I repeat, I know how easy it was when I was younger to believe the words I heard and take them for fact. It was not until much later that I realized I had to learn the language and culture of questioning what I heard people say to me. I think even how people learn to believe and trust is so deeply contextualized in the many intersections of their identity that influence how they view power, authority and respect.  I think in some communities/societies questioning stories and people is a strength and a quality that gives you agency and power. However, in other communities and families cultura, age or gender can have bearing on how you communicate the ability to question.

 I know that I cling to single stories. I hold onto them tightly as if doubting them is challenging me to confront buried contradictions and hypocrisies of many of my own beliefs. I wonder what is more difficult, to create a single story or to dismantle and destroy the single story perspective?

At this point in time, I would consider scientific journal articles to be the main writing of my discipline.  In class, I brought an article that I had written last semester in which I reported results of a five week long experiment.  Whenever I write a scientific journal article, there is a very strict format that I am required to follow.  The introduction provides the reader with the general background information about the experiment at hand.  This includes, but it not limited to, the theory behind the science, the impact of the results of the experiment, previous experimental results, how the experiment described in the paper is new and innovative, and the history and uses of the materials in the experiment.  The section that follows, the results and discussion, should flow like a story and does not have to be in chronological order.  This section presents the results of the experiment so that the reader will understand how the experimenter arrived at a conclusion.  Following the results is a very brief experimental section and an even shorter conclusion.  The conclusion is meant to be one paragraph that restates the results of the experiment and the final conclusion about the experiment.  

Through the Twitter dialogue, I have formed a few questions and fields of exploration that I find especially intriguing.   Some of these thoughts I know will be added to by the readings, and I am really excited to learn and expand upon my knowledge of these areas.  Literacy, by the dictionary and commonly understood definitions, means reading and writing.  A few people tweeted questioning whether music or math had facets of literacy within them.  I completely think they do.  To me, the definition of literacy has always been broader than simply reading or writing, but I am having a hard time defining what exactly literacy can consist of.  I am especially finding it difficult to distinguish between the ideas of literacy and understanding.  Does being literate mean you understand something?  Does understanding something mean you are literate in it?

I think it is important to note that when discussing language, we often observe different dialects and accents as part of the experience of language.  I think that literacy in different disciplines is like speaking a different dialect; there is some common basis, but without the full skill set, it is hard to completely understand eachother.

Although I love the study of gender and sexuality, and believe strongly in (what I now see as one view of) feminism, I am relatively new to the whole idea.  Even as a second semester Sophomore, I am what I would call a "baby feminist." Somehow I managed to grow up without ever having a proper idea of what feminism was about, and therefore I feel that I am still woefully uneducated on the topic.  I find myself agonizing over what to write in this post, because I have very little background in feminism, and although I try my best to educate myself, I would say I am early in my academic journey.  The interesting thing about this class is that clearly there are people who have spent a long time studying this subject and who have very strong opinions about feminism, and there are people like me who feel like they are relatively new to - though not any less interested in - the field, and have fewer opinions on feminsm, if any at all.   And of course there are people who fall in between those two extremes.  

I found that our Thursday in-class group discussions were very interesting, and that the questions were a very intriguing look into our brains. I've realized that I would love to have this discussion again with classmates- not only those who were in my group or in the class, but with others as well. Initially the questions seemed relatively straight-forward, but once we were all sitting down and put thought and effort behind our answers they became signficantly more difficult. All of the questions were very broad, and required more than just a yes or no answer- even, and maybe most especially, the question "Are you a feminist?" Feminism has a complex history of not only different waves, but different circles of thought within those waves that makes it difficult to just say 'yes' or 'no'. Some branches of feminism also have a very uncomfortable history of being exclusionary towards non-white and non-cisfemale women, which adds another layer of complexity to identifying as a feminist. Listening to everyone's reasons behind saying 'yes' or 'no' was very insightful, and I feel could potentially cause someone to rethink their own explanations, and the forces in their lives that made them say 'yes' or 'no'. Attempting to create a definition for feminism, at least in that short amount of time, would have been very difficult, especially since it was so easy to spend a lot of time on the other questions.

Based on some students' comments online, I would be very interested in knowing what their definition of feminism is, or potentially their multitude of definitions.

Kind of relating to some of the other posts people made this week, here are some pictures from when I was in NYC for my externship. I was staying with a relative and when we were walking around the city, we stopped in a store to get out of the cold while we double-checked which direction we were walking in. The pictures are blurry, but of course you can tell what they're saying because they're "color-coded."

As an English major, the college essays that I have thus-far written for my field have all been based on other people's work.  The topic may be as specific as a single poem, or cover several different works of literature, but the point is to make an argument about a specific idea or theme found in the work(s) being written about.  The style is very detached; while I am putting forth my own opinion, I still need to write in an unemotional way, basing my statements on quotations and facts.  The paper is my own interpretation of the work(s) involved, and it is written to be -- if not outright persuasive -- at least a sound argument.  Still, everything is far more clinical than, for example, the Jonathan Lethem essay that we read in class, "The Ecstasy of Influence: A Plagiarism."  Like an academic essay on English literature, Lethem made an argument and supported it with literary examples, but his tone was far warmer and more informal that both anything I have found myself called upon to write and the vast majority of academic essays that I have read -- though it was similar to non-fiction books, which generally have more of their authors' personalities than do essays.