A Rather Enjoyable Paper on Discourses:
Written by someone who knows enjoyment
ERH 101, Section 1
Date Due: 19 July 2014
Date Sub: 19 July 2014
Paper No. 3
Help Received: PeerResponse with (Worksheet Attached)
Suggestions from LTC Ticen
Conversation with my Father
(Robert E. Chandler Jr.
Seth A. Chandler
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The VMI rugby team prides itself on it’s win/lose streak. They are proud that they
consistently have the highest win/lose average. They pride themselves on their comradery.
When they are on the field they play for each other, they bleed for each other, they hit for
each other, they take hits for each other, and they always have each other’s backs. In fact they
hit so hard that in an interview for the Institute report (2014-04) Coach Howe says “We did
tackle very hard…that’s the…mentality…to light someone up.”
They take pride in the fact that they are a club sport, which means that they don’t
adhere to the NCAA rules. Rats playing still participate in rat activities and but they practice
just as hard if not harder than a NCAA team. They take pride in being some of the only social
cadets at VMI. While other cadets stay in barracks and never leave or interact with others not
in VMI, the rugby team prides itself in going out on the weekends for a match. They pride
themselves in fighting tooth and nail against an opposing team on Saturday and then
immediately go out and party with the other players after the match. Rugby is a brutal sport, a
sport proud in fighting. Rugby is a sport that helps it’s new comers and teaches them to be a
part of the team. Rugby is about brotherhood and they is no room for isolationism when you
are up against men trying to separate your head from body. If you aren’t there for your mates
then you are hurting yourself, and the rest of the team.
The rugby team is very disciplined, and everyone can tell they are from VMI due to
their sound military like training. In a letter to the VMI rugby team written in 1979, a referee
writes, “Had VMI in two games, very impressed with their attitude, and sportsmanship, very
respectful of referee…good discipline, no doubt reflecting sound military training. A pleasure
to referee them…” (Mellish, John R. personal communication) That discipline isn’t
something that one comes to VMI with, that is something taught through the VMI discourse.
And it isn’t something that can be taken way once you leave the discourse, so no one ever
really leaves, it just becomes who they are.
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“The various Discourses which constitute each of us as persons are changing and
often are not fully consistent with each other…” (Gee 485)
During a conversation with my father today we talked about the leadership class he is
taking and some of the lessons he is learning. The particular lesson is one about thinking out
side of the box. The question they were told to figure out (as a group) goes as follows;
Scene: You and your class mates are meeting up to hang out. When you get there you
see a man in a uniform running away, when he spots a man in a mask holding a
dreaded object. The man in the uniform then runs back to where he came.
Question: Where are you and your class mates? And Who is the man running?
Now the results of this test lead me to a rather brilliant idea (or rather “view point”)
on Discourse communities. The class, consisting of all law enforcement officers, came up
with these results;
Roughly (the number is irrelevant) half of the class stays in a hotel, while the others
stay at home, because they live nearby. The class usually meets together around 1730
to go to dinner and socialize with each other. The part of the group that stay at the
hotel assumed that they were in the lobby because that is where they meet to leave for
dinner. The others that live in town assumed they were at the bar because that is
where they meet the group from the hotel. They all (being officers of the law) decided
that the “man in a uniform” was a cop or someone of authority in the law. The also
assumed that the “dreaded object” was a weapon. And lastly, they concluded that the
man was running from some sort of danger, probably an armed robbery.
They couldn’t have been more wrong. They all made assumption based on their
Discourse community, being that all of them shared a similar genre. Only when they dropped
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all of their knowledge of their Discourses could they find out the true answer, which is as
follows;
Answer: You and your mates are at a baseball game. The man in the uniform is a
player running from third to home. And the man in the mask is the catcher holding the
ball.
I believe it would be safe to assume that a baseball player or a member of that
community would have figured that out pretty quick. But the fact that the members of the
class are in a Law Enforcement exclusive class, they were totally submerged in that
Discourse and were blind to all other Discourse communities they might belong to. So here I
argue Gee’s theory, “…there is often conflict and tension between the values, beliefs,
attitudes, interactional styles, uses of language, and ways of being in the world which two or
more Discourses represent. Thus, there is no real sense in which we humans are consistent or
well integrated creatures from a cognitive or social viewpoint, though, in fact, most
Discourses assume that we are (and thus we do too, while we are in them).” I argue that we
shut off all other discourses while we are in one. And even, have the ability to be in more
than one Discourse at once, which is where the overlap Gee speaks of occurs.
Imagine you are in a dark room, slowly over time the lights get brighter and you are
slowly able to see more and more of the rooms objects and layout until the room is at full
brightness. Now, let us say you leave that room to go next door, the room is different and
dark. Again the lights get brighter and slowly you are able to see more of the rooms features.
The number of rooms are infinite and you can enter most of them (some are off limits). But
while you are in one room you cannot see anything that is in the other rooms, you are
completely blind you any room you have been in. And seeing as how it is impossible to be in
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two rooms at once, you find yourself running between rooms and refreshing yourself with
each room as you go in (due to changes).
Now, let us say that you wanted to be in multiply rooms at once, so you built a cat
walk that takes you over all of the rooms. But since you are higher and away from the rooms
you are unable to see any one room clearly and even still, you have to switch your focus from
one room to another because you cannot look in multiple directions. So therefore the only
way to be completely fluent in one room (Discourse) you must be completely in that room
and not on the cat walk.
Just in case I lost you in my metaphor, let me explain my theory more clearly. It is my
belief that one can be a part of multiply discourses, and fluent in all of them. However, one
cannot be fluent in multiple discourses at once. One may still have knowledge of multiple
discourses and may find it easy to switch from one discourse to another but while submerged
in one, the others will fade out.
“If I enter my neighbourhood bar and say to my drinking bubby, as I sit down, ‘Gime
a match, wouldya?,’ while placing a napkin on the bar stool to avoid getting my newly
pressed designer jeans dirty, I have said the right thing, but my ‘saying-doing’ [non-verbal]
combination is nonetheless all wrong.” (Gee 483). Discourse communities are a trick subject,
they seem small on the outside but in reality they are a lot larger once you get inside. When it
comes to discourse communities it is a matter of verbal/non-verbal communication. And in a
matter of importance, non-verbal takes the cake. My father always used to tell me, “If you
say you are having a great day with a scowl on your face, people will only see the scowl. It
doesn’t matter what words come out of your mouth, it only matters what they see.” And that
is one hundred percent true. To allude to my room metaphor, each room has a difference
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layout and if you try to walk the same path as in the other rooms you will most certainly hit a
wall.
I have had a problem showing my emotions on my face since a young age, and the
military has only made it worst. I would walk around the hallways with an emotionless face
and people would ask me all the time what was wrong. And even though I was have a great
day, not a single person would believe me, they would keep interrogating me as if I would
break down any minute and tell them I was about to jump off the roof, but that was far from
the fact.
All discourse communities work like this. I could research rugby all day and night,
and watch video after video, and eventually I could get the lingo down. But if I walked on the
pitch and didn’t give it all or didn’t sacrifice myself for the team, they would never accept me
a team member, let alone an actual rugby player.
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Works Cited
Gee, James P. “Literacy, Discourse, and Linguistics: Introduction.” Writing About Writing
(2011): 481-495. Print.
Stinnett, Daniel 2014. VMI Institute Report. England Trip Offers Cultural Experience and
Fast-Paced Rugby. 7