Monday, August 14, 2006
On the results of arguing
I think that serious arguing will lead us pretty quickly to talk about discourse, about how we talk and act and even think and how others do and what alternative approaches we are. Arguing with others leads humans to start thinking about how truth is created and passed around (or to insist blindly on the common-sensical obviousness of one's own truth), I suspect, because of the nature of human language and identity. Linguists talk about discourses as more than a language: a discourse involves a set of things, conditions, and states that allow a human to interact with others and with her or himself. As we interact, we rely on words, acts, values, beliefs, attitudes, gestures, glances, body positions, clothes, and other symbols. The logic, rituals, and habits that integrate these characteristics comprise a discourse. Conceived this way, a discourse is an "identity kit" (Gee); every human works with multiple Discourses. We know how to use the discourse of a teacher or a skateboarder or a citizen of Monroe, Washington because we understand the role that each of these people play in their community. Here is a more detailed definition of discourse developed by linguist and education researcher James Paul Gee:
A Discourse is a sort of “identity kit” which comes complete with the appropriate costume and instructions on how to act, talk, and often write, so as to take on a particular role that others will recognize. Being “trained” as a linguist meant that I learned to speak, think, and act like a linguist, and to recognize others when they do so. Some other examples of Discourses: (enacting) being an American or a Russian, a man or a woman, a member of a certain socioeconomic class, a factory worker or a boardroom executive, a doctor or a hospital patient, a teacher, an administrator, or a student, a student of physics or a student of literature, a member of a sewing circle, a club, a street gang, a lunchtime social gathering, or a regular at a local bar. We all have many discourses.
How does one acquire a Discourse? It turns out that much that is claimed, controversially, to be true of second language acquisition . . . is, in fact, more obviously true of the acquisition of Discourses. Discourses are not mastered by overt instruction (even less so than languages, and hardly anyone ever fluently acquired a second language sitting in a classroom), but by enculturation ("apprenticeship") into social practices through scaffolded and supported interaction with people who have already mastered the Discourse (Cazden, 1988; Heath, 1983). This is how we all acquired our native languages and our home-based Discourse. It is how we acquire all later, more public-oriented Discourses. If you have no access to the social practice, you don't get in the Discourse, you don't have it. You cannot overtly teach anyone a Discourse, in a classroom or anywhere else. Discourse are not bodies of knowledge like physics or archeology or linguistics. Therefore, ironically, while you can overtly teach someone linguistics, a body of knowledge, you can't teach them to be a linguist, that is, to use a Discourse. The most you can do is to let them practice being a linguist with you. (7)
No arguer, on this line of thinking, learns a new discourse (like the one that this section of English 101 focuses on) by memorizing and using a set of rules. Instead, humans learn to take up new discourses through supported and intentional practice. This means that picking up a discourse involves more work (and more risk) than learning how to place commas correctly. I think this is why we argue. To see better what sorts of ways truths can be related and to add new tools to our personal bags of tricks.
Gee, James Paul. "Literacy, Discourse, and Linguistics," Journal of Education 171 (1989): 5-25.
A Discourse is a sort of “identity kit” which comes complete with the appropriate costume and instructions on how to act, talk, and often write, so as to take on a particular role that others will recognize. Being “trained” as a linguist meant that I learned to speak, think, and act like a linguist, and to recognize others when they do so. Some other examples of Discourses: (enacting) being an American or a Russian, a man or a woman, a member of a certain socioeconomic class, a factory worker or a boardroom executive, a doctor or a hospital patient, a teacher, an administrator, or a student, a student of physics or a student of literature, a member of a sewing circle, a club, a street gang, a lunchtime social gathering, or a regular at a local bar. We all have many discourses.
How does one acquire a Discourse? It turns out that much that is claimed, controversially, to be true of second language acquisition . . . is, in fact, more obviously true of the acquisition of Discourses. Discourses are not mastered by overt instruction (even less so than languages, and hardly anyone ever fluently acquired a second language sitting in a classroom), but by enculturation ("apprenticeship") into social practices through scaffolded and supported interaction with people who have already mastered the Discourse (Cazden, 1988; Heath, 1983). This is how we all acquired our native languages and our home-based Discourse. It is how we acquire all later, more public-oriented Discourses. If you have no access to the social practice, you don't get in the Discourse, you don't have it. You cannot overtly teach anyone a Discourse, in a classroom or anywhere else. Discourse are not bodies of knowledge like physics or archeology or linguistics. Therefore, ironically, while you can overtly teach someone linguistics, a body of knowledge, you can't teach them to be a linguist, that is, to use a Discourse. The most you can do is to let them practice being a linguist with you. (7)
No arguer, on this line of thinking, learns a new discourse (like the one that this section of English 101 focuses on) by memorizing and using a set of rules. Instead, humans learn to take up new discourses through supported and intentional practice. This means that picking up a discourse involves more work (and more risk) than learning how to place commas correctly. I think this is why we argue. To see better what sorts of ways truths can be related and to add new tools to our personal bags of tricks.
Works Cited
Gee, James Paul. "Literacy, Discourse, and Linguistics," Journal of Education 171 (1989): 5-25.
Argumentation
My approach to this sort of work is wrapped up in my understanding of practical language use (argumentation) and the nature of language (discourse). Argumentation involves being interested in finding "contested validity claims" and "problematic expression"; it is not about clearly stating what everyone or the writer herself already believes. In "Lost Art of Argument," a chapter in his final book, The Revolt of the Elite, Christopher Lasch tried to flesh out a notion of argument that has less to do with personality and more to do with a collaborative process of inquiry. When he died in 1994, Lasch was celebrated as an important, if prickly, analyst of American culture. Lasch comes to a discussion of argument by considering the role that "debate" plays in a democracy, arguing that we know what our interests are (and what our questions are as thinkers but also as citizens) only as we engage in interested, public debate. As he sums up his thoughts about a mass media that increasingly tries to give us expert information but keeps us from any real debate, Lasch clarifies his own notion of argument:
Until we have to defend our opinions in public, they remain opinions in [a] pejorative sense—half-formed convictions based on random impressions and unexamined assumptions. It is the act of articulating and defending our views that lifts them out of the category of "opinions," gives them shape and definition, and makes it possible for others to recognize them as a description of their own experience as well. In short, we come to know our own minds only by explaining ourselves to others.
The attempt to bring others around to our own point of view carries the risk, of course, that we may adopt their point of view instead. We have to enter imaginatively into our opponents' arguments, if only for the purpose of refuting them, and we may end up being persuaded by those we sought to persuade. Argument is risky and unpredictable, therefore educational. Most of us tend to think of it . . . as a clash of rival dogmas, a shouting match in which neither side gives any ground. But arguments are not won by shouting down opponents. They are won by changing opponents' minds—something that can happen only if we give opposing arguments a respectful hearing and still persuade their advocates that there is something wrong with those arguments. In the course of this activity we may well decide that there is something wrong with our own.
Arguments, as Lasch understands them, are not battles to win or avoid. The issue is not "agreeing" or "disagreeing" but involving oneself in the contest and letting the contest move us, in the company of others, to new conclusions.
Lasch, Christopher. The Revolt of the Elite.
Until we have to defend our opinions in public, they remain opinions in [a] pejorative sense—half-formed convictions based on random impressions and unexamined assumptions. It is the act of articulating and defending our views that lifts them out of the category of "opinions," gives them shape and definition, and makes it possible for others to recognize them as a description of their own experience as well. In short, we come to know our own minds only by explaining ourselves to others.
The attempt to bring others around to our own point of view carries the risk, of course, that we may adopt their point of view instead. We have to enter imaginatively into our opponents' arguments, if only for the purpose of refuting them, and we may end up being persuaded by those we sought to persuade. Argument is risky and unpredictable, therefore educational. Most of us tend to think of it . . . as a clash of rival dogmas, a shouting match in which neither side gives any ground. But arguments are not won by shouting down opponents. They are won by changing opponents' minds—something that can happen only if we give opposing arguments a respectful hearing and still persuade their advocates that there is something wrong with those arguments. In the course of this activity we may well decide that there is something wrong with our own.
Arguments, as Lasch understands them, are not battles to win or avoid. The issue is not "agreeing" or "disagreeing" but involving oneself in the contest and letting the contest move us, in the company of others, to new conclusions.
Works Cited
Lasch, Christopher. The Revolt of the Elite.
Saturday, August 12, 2006
The Mission of this Blog
I have two reasons for hosting this blog. The first is a bit ideal, I suppose. I’m holding out for a kind of salon that has its roots in a college class but quickly becomes a public sphere where folk come to build and try out ideas. My second is more practical. I want writing students to come into this space and act like composers (or rhetors) rather than college students. I’m taking my ENG 101 and 102 courses out of school. These classes are composition course, that is, formal situations in which students (and teachers) practice composing. Our topic of study, then, is "college composition" and not English. The second word in the phrase “college composition” is, for me, an interesting one because it describes an activity that many students don’t connect with “English” classes. The English word composition has its roots in the Latin verb componere, “to put with or together.” The first word in the course title, college, is also one I think most of us misunderstand, for we mistake “college” with “degree.” College is, at least etymologically, about relationships (the Latin word here is collegium, association). Relationships with whom? With other members of the immediate learning community, but as importantly, relationships with folks who have thought and composed across time. So, the course will give us practice putting together words and ideas in relationship to what we are reading and what other writers are telling us (these days, the theme I’m engaging is higher education).
I’ll follow this post with I want to offer some additional context for what I hope to happen here by adding discussions of three phrases, argumentation, discourse, and reflective practice.
I’ll follow this post with I want to offer some additional context for what I hope to happen here by adding discussions of three phrases, argumentation, discourse, and reflective practice.
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