My gatherings have pointed to the many layerings of what literacy actually entails. It is abysmally deeper than the mere ability to read and write. It has millions upon millions of subcategories. Anything considered to have fluency levels has levels of literacy. James Paul Gee, an author in the educational field, has reflected upon this. He connects two types of discourses: “Discourse” and “discourse.”
Lower-case “discourse” is the rapport of a subject. For example, a teacher in the education industry may discuss source material for a class with another colleague. That colleague becomes engaged. However engaged either party is, they are partaking in simple conversation that isn’t more than that. Both share in a somewhat-specialized conversation sparked by the similar field of work. Upper-case “Discourse” is not only “discourse” but there becomes a goal of what the conversation is expected to accomplish. The colleagues may take the rapport and engage in a school project because of it.
This happens to be a secondary discourse, which simply means it cannot acquire outside of the public: school, church, community, etc. By Gee’s analysis, such example would also qualify as dominant. Gee defines this as a means to complement the advancement on social, professional and monetary ladders. Non-dominant discourse is socialization in much more loose terms. There are no statuses referred to in nondominant, or recessive, discourse.
More onto the topic of literacy, if it happens to be a basic understanding of a particular thing, this is where either “discourse” or “Discourse” follows. If you understand etiquette that advances your social or monetary status, then you must interact with it loosely or rigidly to further increase that literacy. Depending on which discourse, each interaction may have different results and yield different outcomes.
Leave a Reply