Examining "Coaches Can Read, Too"

Brannick utilizes Swales' 'CARS model' to effectively introduce his paper. He spends four pages establishing the territory, or content, that is relevant to his paper. He examines the role and actions of a coach while referencing other academic material on the subject of coaching. It's important for him to spend time on the first aspect of the 'CARS model', because it outlines the 'conversation' surrounding this topic, and allows him to move to the next step of the model: establishing a niche.

After examining present material on the subject of coaching, Brannick finds that there is a clear gap or lack of research with regards to the player-coach relationship, and how it affects both party's performance, and how it affects the game. He notes that "there have been many articles written on the X's and the O's (specific strategies)" of football, but he also finds that "scholars have yet to study a coach's ability to read his players and the game as a form of literacy". In about a page, Brannick makes the transition from outlining the 'conversation' in question, and identifies a niche for potential enlightening/worthwhile examination.

Brannick makes his move to occupy the niche he finds in a unique way. Instead of outlining his purpose, or announcing principle findings, or indicating the structure of his research article, he performs a meta-move by posing a question, and referencing, while offering, his article as an answer to the question.

I don't like this way of 'occupying a niche', or otherwise communicating the central purpose of an article, because it seems too self-reflexive. However, many authors in different fields regularly do this. One can't use a word in the definition of the same word, and I believe the same principle applies to articles in the context of 'academic conversations'.

Learning to Serve

It seems that Mirabelli's aim for his research is to fit in the paradigm of the "work in this book [that] argues that literacy extends beyond individual experiences of reading and writing to include the various modes of communication and situations of any socially meaningful group or network where language is used in multiple ways." He doesn't seem to explicitly state his research question, but he states his goal again, asserting "there is something unique and complex about the ways waiters and waitresses in diners use language and literacy in doing their work." I think his research question would be something like 'are interactive service workers learning a unique literacy, if so, how does it work?'

Mirabelli collects data from two different restaurants, one privately owned and one a chain place. He said he used direct participation, observation, and transcriptions, among other items, to document the interactions in these restaurants.

One of his big conclusions is that meaning via communication is and can be constructed through various types of non-text conduits. Another interesting bit he found was that waiters and waitresses must be mutable when it comes to authority, because it's a useful tool in customer interactions, while they are more subjected TO it when talking in the kitchen. I do remember this two-facedness necessary for food service workers, as I used to wait in a little diner, and it was hard.

Discourse Community Ethnography

The discourse community I will examine for the ethnography project is a black market; the network of people who distribute and consume a certain illegal substance recreationally. My friends have had experience with this community for a few years, and I have learned about different genres of communication, types of identities, and the common goals that members of this community share.

This type of community is quite unique, because it’s members are influenced by a number of external pressures. The first and most obvious is the law. As the primary function and activities of this community are illegal in most of the United States at this time, one common goal is to keep the network and community structure secret. This facet of this community affects it’s members’ identity is numerous ways, and also affects their ability to integrate with other types of discourse communities.

Being a sort of ‘secret society’, it’s hard to accurately measure statistics about the membership of this community, but I can safely assume certain things, through anecdotal evidence, to estimate the size and spread of this group. This community is certainly global, and operates in a tier system. The size of this community is also certainly massive, and like any other massive group, has smaller groups that may operate independently from each other. For this reason, I’ve decided to focus my examination on the discourse community I am familiar with, one that is more local.

I feel that it would be extremely liberating, for both the discourse community of academia and for the one that I will examine, to have a serious and honest look at how this community and it’s modus operandi affect the individuals involved, either indirectly or by proxy. I also feel that my examination may shed some light on the nature of black markets and the people involved, and help adjust our view of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, as it often comes down to large discourse communities pitted against one another with different (or, perhaps more similar than one would believe?) motives and beliefs.

I hope to learn more about how membership in a particular discourse community affects an individual’s identity and ability to participate in other communities. The discourse community I will examine is certainly a non-dominant Discourse, and rarely is it ever a primary discourse. In this case, identity in a black market community will be at odds with other identities that an individual must assume when functioning in other aspects of their lives; even more so than other non-dominant Discourses, like Judaism, because being a Jew isn’t illegal (although perhaps we may draw parallels between persecution of a non-dominant Discourse at different periods of time?).

I feel like I can add much to the conversation in terms of the role discourse communities have on identity formation, or in this case, identity splicing. Participation in this community comes with a limit. Entering the community demands a certain type of saying-doing-being-valuing identity kit combination. However, the longer one stays in the community, the more it will replace one’s primary discourse, and the harder it will be to re-integrate into one’s original primary discourse, or for that matter dominant discourses. There is also an obvious psychological/behavioral altering element that comes hand in hand with membership, and while this won’t be the focus of my examination, I will allude to it when necessary, as it definitely has a formative influence in an individual’s identity formation within this group.

I expect to use Gee’s article Literacy, Discourse, and Linguistics to help define and prove this group as a discourse community, to help examine identity formation, and in comparing different discourse communities. I also plan to use Swale’s article The Concept of Discourse Community to challenge the notion of a discourse community. Finally, I plan to use Wardle’s article, Identity, Authority, and Learning to Write in New Workplaces to help conclude how different notions of identity are connected with miscommunication in groups.

Pencils to Pixels

One of Dennis Baron's points in his article "From Pencils to Pixels: The Stages of Literacy Technologies" is that technology is changing the writing process - whether for the good or for the worse, he leaves up to personal opinion. He notes that after using computers, it's hard for him to draft anything on a simple piece of paper. I wholly disagree.

At least for creative, fictional, narrative pieces, I feel like I need a pencil and paper. I need to be able to feel the paper, and physically writing the words allows my brain a few more moments of meta-analysis of whatever I'm scratching on the paper. Most of my editing when it comes to syntax and diction happens in these brief moments between pencil strokes. I can touch type much faster on a computer; this in combination with my lethargy when it comes to editing means that stuff I write on paper is probably better, more whole, than junk I fling into cyberspace.

However, access to this technology has it's benefits. Having the internet at your fingertips is a very useful tool for any writer, actually, anybody. However, I have a little pocket gadget that can surf the web, so my best set up is legal pad and pen, with my 3G six shooter primed for action.

Case Studies

Of the four case studies we read about, I feel most connected to Danielle DeVoss's reflection about her sponsers of literacy. She had an interest in computers, and due to her socio- economic background, she had the means to pursue this interest. As a kid, my parents told me that I could do anything and they'd support it (although they never let me do karate or even gymnastics). This unwavering, encouraging support certainly affected which kinds of literacy I chose to learn, and how proficient I would become in those fields.

For example, I am somewhat literate when it comes to stage productions, especially musicals. My first opportunity to be part of a production came in 8th grade when I was living abroad; our school decided to put on "Guys and Dolls", and I decided to try out for it. Strangely enough, a year later and back in the states, my high school also decided to put on "Guys and Dolls". I was cast as a different part, which helped me gain perspective, as I now had to speak for the antagonist instead. This perception shift helped me tweak my acting style for the next and last musical I'd be in, "West Side Story".

My Literacy Sponsers

I suppose I've had a good amount of literacy sponsors, but it's hard to say because it seems like 'literacy' is synonymous with 'proficiency' in this sense. A whale has impressive diving literacy.

Having re-read a little, I now find that literacy is more like a red-tape way to bring back the caste system for institutions. People like tiers, it gives them a sense of order. Actually, reading this article has made me feel a little "destabilized about contemporary literacy" and in general (Brandt 345). With so many 'literacies' to choose from, the possibility is paralyzing.

My primary literacy sponsors are my parents (aided by Shel, Dr. Suess, Roald Dahl), countless television shows and video games, the Internet, the schools I went to in Cincinnati, London, Columbus and Athens, my grandparents (who gave me $100 to learn the stock market - I forgot about it for a couple of years and it tanked with everything else), my walks holding hands with the trip God through it's garden, and my friends who like to play music.

I'm sure there are others that I haven't thought of, but what also makes people unique are what literacies they aren't a part of. I'm not religious, I only speak english, I'm not really involved in politics, or even current events, and I don't like to go shopping (I'm pretty sure consumerism is a literacy - The Price Is Right winners?).

I feel like the literacies I'm most familiar with I've reached out for myself, and they were readily accessible for the most part. Most of my literacies have to do with electricity and all that modern jazz, something starkly apparent when the power goes out. I need to work towards being more 'cooking literate'. With access to countless ingredients from all over the world, countless appliances, techniques, and recipes, it's once again almost paralyzing to have that much choice.

So I pop in a hot pocket.

Wikipedia, and having to deal with physical text

I have never created a Wikipedia article before, but since I have been using Wikipedia for years now, I was excited at the prospect of adding to the website for this class assignment. I felt familiar with the writing style and tone of the articles, as each article is strikingly similar in that regard despite the number of them, so I anticipated the research to be the bulk of this project.

Brainstorming about the topic I wanted to cover was the first step. After coming up with ideas, I decided against writing about a South Park episode, or the console game Oblivion, or a concept I learned about in another class, the ‘Loveworld’. I liked the idea of writing about the ‘Loveworld’ because it was just erudite enough to stroke my ego, but I felt that it wasn’t notable enough to have it’s own article. Instead, I decided to write about another term I came across in my African studies class: somatocentricity.

I remember coming across the term in an article we read for class, and after researching it online, I found that not only did the term not have a wikipedia page, but that no other sources used the term as this author had. All I could find were the definitions of the roots of the word: somato and centric. I was surprised, usually the internet is all-knowing, and here it came up short. Learning about this term was almost like a revelation; somatocentricity denotes a social system that I have, unbeknownst to me, been a part of my whole life. I felt that this was an especially noteworthy topic, and seeing as I couldn’t find it easily on the internet, I decided to write my wikipedia article about this concept.

The most important part of any Wikipedia article are the first few lines that define the idea. I spent the most time on those lines than any others, trying to balance defining the term in broad strokes, but being specific enough to be true to the term. I also spent time deciding how many sentences I wanted to include in the first bit; I felt that one sentence was too little to bear the load of what I wanted to express, whereas three sentences were not concise enough. I decided to balance being broad and being specific with using two sentences, the first to outline the term and the second to explain more specifically how the term works.

Of course, writing the first line came after compiling enough sources to support the article. Upon further investigation of some deep internet catacombs, I found a few sources that used the actual word ‘somatocentric’, but the rest of my sources were used to support examples of somatocentric thinking. I felt like I was artificially pushing towards a longer article due to the minimum word limit. I was worried that adding irrelevant information would hurt the chances of it getting past the editors, as wikipedia articles need to be succinct but effective. I toyed around with the format of the article to umbrella the smaller examples under larger issues that stem from somatocentrism. I hope that people expand upon my examples, and provide new categories of their own.

This being the first time I’ve written a wikipedia article, I learned a bunch about the writing process, specifically source retrieval and integration. This was also the first time I’ve written for something as public and popular as wikipedia, so I had to consider how to tweak my writing for this specific discourse community. The potential for collaboration also set this writing experience apart from others, my goal for this piece was to create a ‘good enough’ article to stick around until other people can add to or edit the text. For me, the goal of this type of writing is more altruistic. The end is spreading knowledge to people through an anonymous forum, instead of a personal or capitalistic end of making money.

The other big thing that made this writing experience unique was I felt more motivated to do my best on this assignment than others, as evidenced by my voracious appetite for finding new sources. Usually I consider source retrieval for papers a type of busy work, and I strive to meet the bare minimum. I think part of this attitude was that requirements for other research papers usually called for a vast majority of print sources, and allowed for only one or two web sources. This project encouraged the use of sources with less black-and-white discrimination. I could find all sorts of fascinating scholarly journals to use for my article on reputable websites, instead of trawling through a dinosaur like the library directory to find outdated information in musty books. I believe this speaks to the social aspect this type of writing lends itself to, and the pace of society in general. New studies, ideas, and information bubble up faster now than ever before - breaking news usually breaks online - so wikipedia is a perfect place to both record current knowledge and catalog it’s progress through years, months, or even days.

My enthusiasm to find sources gave me a ton of material to work with, so I also took pleasure in making one-line statements that essentially summarized an article to use for more credibility. Usually I scrape for the minimum amount of sources, then beat them to death for quotes, stretching concepts with liberal ellipses so I can satisfy my teacher’s need for credibility. I remember being told that even if I thought of a concept related to the purpose of a research paper, I needed to find a quote to back it up. I would have to work backwards, keeping in mind my idea and finding sheisty ways to chop up one of my four sources to ‘support’ my idea. I remember certain instances getting away with source integration manslaughter, if my teachers took the time to see the context of quotes I used, they would realize it had nothing to do with my idea. I felt like I was ‘cheating’ by connecting my idea with bits of words from dusty tomes on shaky grounds, but I was acting under the construct that writers don’t have credibility unless they’ve been published.

I avoided quoting altogether in this article for a few reasons. In general, I feel that quotes should be used sparingly while paraphrases should make up the bulk of source integration. Quotes are very effective if you want to preserve the aesthetic beauty of a phrase, or if you need to connect people to their words as to compare and contrast with other peoples words. Otherwise, if you’re trying to express in broad strokes a concept, or if you want to be concise, paraphrasing works just fine. I also feel that the nature of wikipedia lends itself to annotated paraphrases, especially this article, which was a broad strokes type deal. I could summarize an article and provide a link to the original source, so if a reader felt uneasy or disagreed with the statement, they could read the article themselves.

I also didn’t include quotes because I felt it would interfere with the tone of the article. The act of quoting, to me, seems like a slight against objectivity and impartiality. Quotes are used to great effect in persuasive or argumentative pieces, but you would never see them in something like Encyclopedia Britannica (unless it’s an article about a person), which uses the same neutral, unbiased tone encouraged by wikipedia founders.

Intertextuality takes a pleasing form in wikipedia. I feel shady about quotes because I don’t know the context, but with wikipedia you can find the original article with supreme ease and figure it out yourself. Quotes in books are more likely to slip under the radar of being questioned, as it takes much more effort to physically find the quote in a text. I figured this out as a high school student trying to BS quotes into my papers, so I must figure that people smarter than me have done the same thing in sneakier ways (maybe even in the books I used for my BS!). Wikipedia does not allow sneakiness, as checking up on the source is just a click away.

To conclude, I learned a few key concepts that I hadn’t considered before writing this article. I learned that writing for a discourse community affects the goals a writer considers before writing; for example, wikipedia articles don’t “[become] “solid”... with the final casting - publication”, because these articles are never published, they are always in flux (Tomlinson 255). Knowing people can edit your article distances yourself as an individual from your work, allowing you to be more truthful and altruistic about the knowledge you want people to learn about. In this community you don’t worry about your “shitty first draft”, because in this sense it’s the whole world’s shitty first draft (Lamott 301). Motivation from this realization caused me to search for a bunch of sources, where I learned how to usefully and legitimately use sources, instead of backwards integrating it into my paper (as I wrote this line I combed this thing to see where I could fit some in... I didn’t get very far). Wikipedia is changing how knowledge is created, edited, accessed, cataloged, and referenced in their corner of the internet that grows every day. I believe these changes are for the better. If anything, they work to break down many constructs surrounding “traditional” ways of referencing and cataloging knowledge born out of a world having to deal with physical text.

Works Cited

Lamott, Anne. “Shitty First Drafts.” Writing about Writing. 1st ed. Wardle, Elizabeth and Downs, Doug, eds. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2011. 301-304. Print.

Tomlinson, Barbara. “Tuning, Tying, and Training Texts.” Writing about Writing. 1st ed. Wardle, Elizabeth and Downs, Doug, eds. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2011. 252-265. Print.