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Primary Discourse

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1) The two types of Discourses, “saying (writing)-doing-being-valuing- believing combinations,” James Paul Gee addresses in his essay “Literacy, Discourse, and Linguistics” are Primary Discourses and Secondary Discourses. These Discourses are “ways of being in the world; they are forms of life which integrate words, acts, values, beliefs, attitudes, and social identities as well as gestures, glances, body positions, and clothes.” Both Discourses are acquired through acculturation. Our primary Discourse is acquired in the home and peer groups. While secondary Discourses are obtained through “various non-home based social institutions,” such as churches, schools, and organizations. 4) Lindquist and Seitz argue that the No Child Left Behind …show more content…

She theorizes that reading and writing is a mosaic of diverse practices that are situated events and related to larger social configurations” (Kalman, p. 526). Throughout different times in history, a literate person has been defined by many skills and abilities. Literacy is situated in specific events as well as influenced by access and availability. Kalman views literacy through mediation, multiple literacies, context, and …show more content…

From this idea one can interpret that writing systems led to literacy, and that no full sense of literacy existed beforehand. This idea is credited to first being seen by Jack Goody and Ian Watt, they “saw literacy as a primary factor in the rise of what we now call a literate society, and more grandly, civilization: civil society, the society of rules and laws” (3). This idea that literacy was a primary factor in a civil society of rules and laws came with oppositions from scholars. The four claims of why this hypothesis does not hold are that “no firm line can be drawn between oral and written,” “the relation between literacy and social development are far more complicated than had been suspected,” “literacy takes many forms suited to particular social functions in particular social contexts,” and lastly, “the formerly accepted idea that because writing is permanent, it has been a fixity of meaning, may have to be revised.” While “writing and literacy have become essential aspects of understanding language, mind and society,” there are biases that writing puts on language and

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